The story of twelve years of Apple without Steve Jobs

    1985 year. Apple is losing sales due to the advent of the IBM PC, a more sophisticated computer than what Cupertino could offer. The company left Andy Hertzfeld, Joanna Hoffman, Barrell Smith - the key figures of the Macintosh project, seriously thinking about finally leaving the company and Steve Wozniak.

    Steve Jobs, who founded Apple Computer at age 21, became a millionaire at 23, and at 30 managed to fly out of his own company. We all remember John Scully and his growing confrontation with Jobs well. After the latter, in the absence of the former head of Pepsico, tried to arrange a coup on the board of directors, on May 24, 1985, Jobs was fired from his post as head of the Macintosh department.

    After five months of total neglect - he simply stopped going to work, but no one noticed this - Jobs also refused the post of chairman of the board of directors of the company. Jobs was not taken to the Shuttle, at some stage his candidacy was actually considered for space flight. By the way, he was very lucky here - the teacher Krista McAuliffe, who was chosen instead of him, died at the start of the Challenger. He rejected the idea of ​​founding a computer company in the Soviet Union, taking a telemaster for a scout during a visit to Moscow. In the same year, he spent $ 7 million to launch the NeXT.

    It so happened that Steve Jobs is synonymous with Apple. We mention the chapter, but we mean the most expensive brand in the world . And it is not surprising that any biography of Jobs is a biography of Apple.

    But it also makes those years when he was removed from her leadership falling out of our sight. Almost all the works about Jobs’s life do not tell anything about what happened at Apple between 1985 and 1997, they stop at his work at NeXT and Pixar, but not about Apple’s life. The best that you can learn from is that the company has quietly stagnated.

    Here we will talk about ten of the many products that have been released in these twelve years without Jobs. Some of them were failures and were not remembered for anything special, and some were either successful, or in some other way influenced the future of Apple.

    Macintosh portable


    The first battery-powered Macintosh was launched in 1989. The machine weighed 7.2 kilograms (most of it was a lead-acid battery) and had 1 megabyte of RAM with the possibility of increasing to 9, the later released model with a backlight had 8 megabytes of RAM. The heart was a Motorola 68000 processor running at 16 MHz. External drives were presented in three configurations: with one floppy disk drive, with two or with floppy disk drive and a special 40-megabyte hard drive Conner CP-3045 with low power consumption. The computer was running System 6 and System 7.

    The cost of the device was $ 6,500.

    In general, despite the praise of critics, the model was unsuccessful. The computer could not work from the network due to the weakness of the power supply, and in some cases the hard drive could not spin up.

    Powerbook 100


    Apple's new laptop computer was first shown at COMDEX in October 1991. He had a nine-inch black-and-white display with a backlight resolution of 640 × 400 pixels, a 20-40 MB hard drive, the same processor Motorola 68000 and 2-8 MB RAM running at the same frequency. This "halved" version of the Macintosh Portable cost just $ 2,300. The computer weighed about 2.2 kilograms and worked with System 6.

    Scully personally followed the project begun in 1990. One million dollars was spent on its marketing, but revenue amounted to a billion in the first year. Users soon began to neglect the 100 model and more and more actively bought the 140 and 170 models, because they had a floppy drive. The model turned out to be so successful that the marketing name PowerBook even survived a reshuffle after Jobs returned, and existed before the MacBook brand was accepted as a baton in 2006.

    Powerbook duo


    From 1992 to 1997, Apple released a more compact model PowerBook. The computer weighed only 1.86 kilograms and had a thickness of 36 millimeters; it was slightly wider than a sheet of A4 paper (280 × 220 mm).

    Different models had different characteristics: from 4 to 56 megabytes of RAM, options for the Motorola 68030 and 68040 processors, and in the PowerBook Duo 2300c - PowerPC 603e.

    The computer owes its name to the ability to connect to the Duo docking station through a 156-pin connector, which gave full access to both the central processor of the laptop and data buses. A closed laptop was inserted into the Duo-dock like a cassette into a video player, as a result, we got a full-sized computer familiar to everyone, powered by an electric network, with a monitor, keyboard, mouse and all standard ports. The dock could have a drive, an additional processor cache of the second level, a mathematical coprocessor, additional video memory and NuBus expansion slots, thanks to which it was possible to connect up to 3 monitors.

    In addition, mini and micro-docks were available, the popularity of which was caused by various solutions from third-party manufacturers. These docking stations allowed you to connect many devices: Ehthernet, NTSC and PAL video outputs, external speakers, display and others.

    Newton messagepad


    The first Apple Newton handheld computer was released in 1987, and MessagePad appeared in 1993. This was a significant update to the Newton line. The original MessagePad had on board the ARM 610 RISC processor characteristic of all Newton devices, operating at a frequency of 20 MHz, all the RAM capacity was 640 kilobytes, 4 megabytes of internal storage, a modem at 9.6 kb / s, a black and white display with a resolution of 336 × 240. The weight of the device was about 640 grams.

    On August 2, 1993, the Boston Macworld Expo MessagePad was the most popular product, and easily cost $ 900 apiece. The PDA entered the wide sale at a price of $ 700. In the first three months, 50 thousand devices were sold.

    The implementation of handwriting is interesting: in the early versions of the operating system there was a Calligrapher system from the Russian company Paragraph. The recognition system learned to recognize the input of a specific person, but sometimes it was not accurate, it was even ridiculed in The Simpsons in the series Lisa on Ice. But the cartoons, she was completely blown away, were also criticized by her.

    Another negative quality was the lack of the ability to connect the PDA to a desktop computer, although this was added in later models. The quality of handwriting recognition was also fixed. Thanks to this, even today, Apple Newton is valued in the old hardware market higher than models of the same time period. In 2006, CNET compared the Apple MessagePad 2000 with the Samsung Q1, and Newton was preferred.

    Macintosh TV


    This was Apple's first attempt to integrate a computer with a TV. In total, 10 thousand devices were released. Macintosh TV began selling in October 1997 for $ 2,097.

    Operating system - System 7, upgrade to Mac OS 9.1 is possible. In fact, it was a LC 520 in a black case with a TV tuner that allowed you to watch TV on a 14-inch screen without getting up from the workplace. It sounds somewhat tempting, but the implementation let us down: you can either watch TV or work - it is impossible to move the window with the picture of television. This test helped in the future, the TV tuner was a popular option in the lineup Performa and LC.

    Included was a remote control that can also work with Sony TVs. Interestingly, this was the first Macintosh in black. Inside, there were 5 MB of RAM, a Motorola 68030 processor with a 32 MHz operating frequency, 512 KB of video memory (maximum resolution 640 × 480), an optical disk drive and a 160 megabyte hard drive.

    Power Macintosh 9500


    The 1995 model had a very strong hardware: PowerPC 604 or 604e processors operating at frequencies from 120 to 200 MHz depending on the model, the mezzanine board allowed for quick replacement and configuration of two processors with a frequency of 180 MHz. This was the first Mac that had PCI ports, there were six in all, one of which was always occupied by the video card.

    The computer was running System 7.5, but with some modifications you can install Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on it, which makes it the oldest Mac on which Mac OS X stands up.

    Powerful filling made the model attractive for graphic designers and people who make music.

    Powercd


    Work on the project went with Philips. The 1993 PowerCD was supposed to be a separate, self-contained and portable CD player that could read ordinary computer CDs and photo disks (supported by Kodak format) paired with Mac via a SCSI port, audio system or TV.

    This failed attempt to create Apple's first non-computer and non-peripheral device for the computer was caused by the success of Newton, after which Cupertino saw new markets for its electronics. Yes, all desktop Macs already had a CD drive, but they weren’t in the PowerBook yet. The Mac Like Things department, before transforming into the New Media Group, managed to create only PowerCD and AppleDesign Powered Speakers speakers.

    Apple QuickTake


    20 years ago, Kodak, together with Apple, launched a digital camera project, the resolution of which sounds ridiculous by today's standards - it is only 0.3 megapixels (640 × 480). Modern smartphones and the front camera are many times better, but it was one of the first consumer cameras. It is often called the very first, for example, as Time Magazine described it , although Logitech FotoMan was the first.

    The models were 3: 100 and 150 were compatible with both Windows and Apple Macintosh, and 200 officially worked only with Macs. “Officially” - this is because the two-hundredth model was almost completely similar to Samsung's Fuji DS-7 and Kenox SSC-350N, so you can still get it to work with the Microsoft OS.

    The rest of its characteristics were as modest as the resolution: QuickTake, PICT formats were supported, and the 150 and 200 models also included BMP, JPEG, PCX and TIFF. Inside was a megabyte of EPROM memory or 2-4 megabytes of SmartMedia card in later models. The cost of the three models was 749, 700 and 600 dollars. Here is a picture from QuickTake 150 for clarity.

    Bandai pippin


    Yes, Apple released a game console, and this is not even a joke. However, there is nothing much to be surprised at: today the company from Cupertino manages one of the largest markets for mobile games, and this does not shock anyone.

    The 1996 console used the PiPP! N multimedia platform to create a low-cost device with four-speed optical drive capabilities. Bandai Pippin was also able to work with the network via a 14.4 kb / s modem. System 7.5.2 controlled a 66-MHz PowerPC 603 processor and 16-bit graphics. You could connect many devices to the console, including an Apple printer.

    A total of 42 thousand devices were sold, and, in general, it all ended in a silent failure. Mostly the console lacked software: less than 80 games and applications were available in the Japanese market, only 18 games were available in the USA.

    Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM)


    Apple was late: the twentieth anniversary of the company happened on April 1, 1996, and the model of the twentieth anniversary was shown at the MacWorld Expo on January 7 of the following, 1997. The $ 7,499 price tag made it clear: this is a model for a high-leadership table. In general, a price of $ 9,000 was expected, but later it was lowered to $ 3,500. And this is not surprising: the Power Macintosh 6500 with similar characteristics cost $ 2999, which clearly signaled the overpriced TAM. As a rule, a new model of Apple computers is sold for exactly one year, and when the time was drawing to a close, the price dropped even to 1995 dollars.

    The design departed from the bored in the lines of all manufacturers of plastic parallelepipeds. For this model, a futuristic design and metallic colors were chosen, and that is why TAM has appeared in several films. Inside was a PowerPC 603e processor with a frequency of 250 MHz and with a second level cache of up to 1 megabyte, 2 RAM slots with expandability up to 128 MB, a two-gigabyte hard drive, Apple SuperDrive and a four-speed CD drive. Supported up to 800 × 600 resolution and 16-bit colors.

    A total of 11601 computers were sold, one each received Wozniak and Jobs. Today, TAM has a high collection value in certain circles of dedicated Apple fans.



    In 1997, Steve Jobs, as a result of the acquisition by Apple, NeXT Software was again among his native environment. It was beneficial for him too - NeXT no longer manufactured its perfect, but too expensive computers for the consumer market, and cringed up to a small company of 240 people supplying software. After that, a variety of personnel shifts began at Apple, everything began to move, they refused something, they listened to something, despite the fact that Jobs was considered to be just a consultant. Over the years at the helm, Jobs has been able to change Apple beyond recognition.

    Was it for the best? Certainly, yes, this can be evidenced even by the clumsy growth at the end of the nineties and often the failure of the exhibits of the cemetery of equipment, which we can see above.

    This is evidenced by financial indicators: for twelve years without one of its creators, Apple's market share fell from 16 percent to 4, and with Jobs, the Cupertino company became the most expensive in human history .

    Based on ABC News , The Apple Revolution , Wikipedia.org, and Engadget .

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