The Growing Windows Threat: Jean Louis Gassée, now the head of product development at Apple, predicted that Apple would maintain its lead in the personal computing world indefinitely. He oversaw the introduction of the critically acclaimed Mac IIci and System 7 (and also several flops) and felt that no company would be able to wrest […]
Author Archives: Tom Hormby
1986 marked the replacement of Mike Murray as head of marketing with Jean-Louis Gassée. Gassée started Apple’s French division and drove it in a few years to become one of the most successful divisions in Apple. Unlike Steve Jobs’ vision of an information appliance, Gassée hoped that the Macintosh would turn into an open platform […]
Even with the fabulous press reception given to the Macintosh upon its release (see my previous article), it did not sell well. There were a number of reasons for that.
The Commodore Amiga began its life at Atari. Jay Miner, an engineer at the enormous video game company and the creator of the Atari 800 personal computer, wanted to create a console centered around a 16-bit processor and a floppy drive, which would make development for the new console very easy and inexpensive.
The Color Classic has been lauded by many Mac faithful as what the original Macintosh should have been. The computer was made available to the general public on February 10, 1993, and was received well by reviewers.
The Treo revolutionized the PDA market. Earlier attempts at wireless PDAs failed to make an impression on the market – the Motorola Marco and the Qualcomm pdQ were notable examples. They were much larger than their non-wireless counterparts, were expensive, and had only limited wireless functionality.
Palm Computing was largely the creation and vision of one man, Jeff Hawkins. Palm first brought tablet computing to consumers in the form of PDAs (but was beaten by Apple and its scions). The later – and more momentous – goal was to bring consumers to PDAs through simple and very fast user interfaces. This […]
Prior to 2006, PowerBook was consistently one of the most respected and lusted after brands in the portable computing market.
One of the less well known Mac clone lines, MaxxBoxx was released in Germany in July 1997 to fill the needs of users with very demanding applications.
The first computer worthy of the name “computer” was produced more than 60 years ago. It was a monstrous machine, covering more than 136 square meters and used 18,000 vacuum tubes (the predecessors to the transistor). It was capable of computing the sum of 5,000 numbers ten digits in length per second. It’s name was ENIAC, […]
Realizing that the Apple II would not sustain Apple forever, the Sara project began. The main idea of Sara was to create a more powerful and capable Apple II. It would include 128 KB of RAM, an integrated floppy drive, and a high resolution display – 80 columns wide instead of the Apple II’s 40.
With the Motorola 680×0 architecture running out of steam and Motorola’s 88000 making haste slowly, Apple had to look a bit further afield for its next processor architecture. Here’s how IBM’s RISC project became the heart of the Mac.
Alex Schure founded the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in 1955 to take advantage of the wave of students studying under the GI Bill. NYIT was initially a correspondence school awarding technical certificates. It distinguished itself from the other technical schools by sending graduates a mess of electronics parts supposedly taken from Soviet warehouses […]
John Sculley, who had once been hailed as Apple’s savior for huge sales increases and good PR (like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Steve Jobs rolled in one) had presided over the splintering of the product line and a sharp decline in market share. The same trends continued after Sculley was forced out, and the […]
2005.11.15 From the day of his appointment as Apple CEO in February 1996, Gil Amelio presided over an ailing company. After the near-disastrous reign of Michael Spindler, Amelio promised to change the corporate ethos of Apple.
Adobe Photoshop™ was, for a time, the killer app for the Macintosh. During the mid-90s, publishing and graphic design had supplanted consumers as the most important market to target, at least in the eyes of former Apple CEOs Gil Amelio and Michael Spindler.
Apple Corps was founded as a tax haven for the Beatles’ considerable cash reserves in January 1968. Apple Corps would finance a record label and other pet projects of the band members while also providing a “front” for their financial activities to reduce personal liability and taxes.