The Insanely Great Story of the Apple Newton

What if the Apple Newton had lived up to its promise? The Newton was, and is, revolutionary:

• 24 hours of continuous battery life.
• Excellent handwriting recognition.
• ’Data soup’ information storage, allowing all programs access to, and understanding of, all other programs data.
• A fantastic operating system. Think of how much better the iPhone’s OS is than other phones, that’s at least how much better NewtonOS was then anything in its time. Including, at least in ease of use, a desktop in a lot of regards.

(Cnet put a MessagePad 2000 (1997) against a Samsung Q1 (2006) Ultra-Mobile Personal Computer (UMPC) and the Newton won—due to ease of use and battery life.)

The original Newton project goal was to reinvent personal computing, and then reinvent application development with ‘Dylan’ a brand new very advanced programming language (for example it had ‘managed code’, the same idea Microsoft used for C# a decade later, which basically meant code executed on a virtual machine for both security and programmer convenience).

Apple moved to a smaller form factor for the Newton (it was supposed to be tablet size) and Dylan was replaced by NewtonScript—which was still pretty good, but not revolutionary. Likewise they gave up the reinvention of personal computing thing to make it a PDA—Personal Digital Assistant. Constraints forced on them without Dylan, and with slower (smaller) hardware.

What if a later launch means Dylan is kept, and the smaller form factor doesn’t impact on their goal?

• Better applications & an actual laptop replacement sometime in 1994? (IOTL applications didn’t really take off until NewtonOS 2.0 in late 1995 and it didn’t become a proper laptop replacement until MessagePad 2000/2100 with NewtonOS 2.1 in early 1997.)
• Likewise the later launch also means the Newton’s originally poor handwriting may be as good as the NewtonOS 2.0 version which is still considered some of the best handwriting recognition in the world.
• Better syncing. A big reason Palm Pilots did so well was that they had excellent syncing, and the Newton did not. A later launch may help.
• Better hardware. A year later gives it much better hardware, which allows them to meet ‘future of computing’ goal in smaller package instead of giving up and going to the PDA.

To the details:

IOTL John Scully got forced out because of poor stock performance. He was followed by two people before Steve Jobs returned, Michael Spindler who didn’t like the Newton and Gil Amelio who did (Spindler sucked, Amelio did a lot of the work needed for Apple to do as well as it did under Jobs). If John Scully stays longer, the Newton gets more love. Or, if Scully is replaced by somebody else the Newton gets more love.

Our point of divergence centres around a man named Jean-Louis Gassée. He left when Scully did (because he knew Spindler was getting the top job) and took with him a number of quality Apple people, including Steve Sakoman—the guy in charge of the Newton project. Furthermore Gassée developed BeOS upon leaving Apple (and one thing Apple needed in the 90s was a new operating system) and is very much a manager, but also a visionary. Outside of Steve Jobs (who needs his exile from Apple to mellow) he’s probably the best guy to run the joint.

Furthermore Gassée believed in third party development, upgradability and expandability—all three of them in direct contrast to Steve Jobs, which makes him a nearly ideal partner later in the timeline. Note the iPhone, for instance, compared to the Newton. The Newton has card slots, can be upgraded (and were), and had a SDK for third party developers. The iPhone has none of those things.

Heck Gassée was even one of the people behind the Newton project & the Pocket Crystal project (think networked PDA that talks to other Pocket Crystal’s around it). Pocket Crystal got spun off as General Magic, but it could have stayed and if it had many of Apple’s best people would have also stayed (Andy Hertzfeld, for instance, one of the creators of the Mac, plus people like Bill Atkinson & Darin Adler). Especially because the Newton & the Pocket Crystal wound up very similar when the Newton was shrunk and Dylan was tossed.

So if he stays it’s entirely possible to change the entire course of Apple for the 90s, not to mention the Newton. Perhaps not the sales implications, mostly, but certainly the fundamentals Apple will posses post-Windows 95 will be much better.


Long Term Implications

• Newton, unlike Palm, will likely embrace mobile phone technology (because of the Pocket Crystal project DNA) and lead the smartphone revolution.
• Newton will provide a stripped down subnotebook (OTL's eMate) that's cheap (unlike modern subnotebooks), has a long battery life (unlike Palm's cancelled Foleo of OTL), and a great machine for writing.
• Newton provides Apple with a tablet form once it's scaled upwards.

Jean-Lousie Gassée provides Apple with proper management in 1993 instead of Gil Amelio in 1997. Gassée builds a next generation operating system throughout the 90s instead of the failure of Copland, and Apple having to buy Be or Next. Gassée keeps the Newton alive. Steve Jobs likes Gassée and they compliment each other, so if Jobs comes back ITTL they’re a good match.

Essentially Newton could advance the entire state of mobile technology by several years, at the least. Think of getting the iPhone in 2004 instead of 2007 and it having handwriting, third party application development, way more software, and so forth.

Furthermore a stronger Apple in the 90s may mean Microsoft innovates instead of stagnating, which would provide general overall benefits to software and—especially—the internet, given Internet Explorer’s inability to follow web standards.

Etc….



POD:
Jean-Louis Gassée doesn’t ship the Mac Portable in 1989. It was a rare misstep for the man, and I think we can alter his course. (Essentially the Mac Portable was a 16 pound portable desktop. Nobody wanted to lug it around.) Instead let’s say that he takes a more active role in the Newton group and merges Pocket Crystal in with it—giving the device an additional communications focus. Without the Mac Portable blotching his record he wins the silent war against Spindler.

In 1990 Microsoft released Windows 3.0 and by 1992 there were 4.5 copies of Windows in use for every Mac in use: Apple’s share price dropped by 20%, and they had only their second quarterly loss in history. IOTL this meant the Board of Directors forced Scully out and put the (horrible) Spindler in his place. ITTL Apple will force Scully out, and replace him with Gassée.



Postscript:
The title for this timeline comes from The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac was Made by Andy Hertzfeld. Excellent book.

Reference Guide

Books

• Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company,
• Defying Gravity: The Making of the Newton
• Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything.
• The Cult of Mac

CEOs of Apple

• John Scully
• Michael Spindler
• Gil Amelio

Pivotal Figures

• Steve Jobs
• Jean-Louise Gassée [1] [2]
• Jonathan Ive

Other Figures

• Steve Sakoman
• [Newton Team] Steve Capps, Walter Smith, Michael Tchao, Larry Yaeger, Brandyn Webb & Michael Kaplan

Technology

• Apple Newton [Wiki] [Review] [Pen Computing Notes] [Newton Lessons] [Scully's Dream]
• Dylan programming language
• Next
• NeXTstep
• BeOS

Randomly Interesting Things From OTL While I Research For The ATL

Near-Future Newtons
Several new Newton hardware and form-factor designs were discussed. Akia Fujio of Matsushita announced […] a Global Positioning System (GPS) PC card for Newton. […]

Apple is also preparing a clipboard-sized Newton targeted at corporate users. It will have a 640x480 pixel monochrome passive-matrix screen and will weigh in at about three pounds. Improved infrared will allow the slate to connect to IR AppleTalk networks. Expect it to ship in October.

Motorola and Apple have teamed up to make a handheld cellular phone with a Newton screen built-in. When I told my fiancée about this device she said "I want one NOW!" Unfortunately, she’ll just have to wait until the August release.


Marco
Motorola’s new Marco Wireless Communicator opens up even more possibilities, and delivers on John Scully’s original promise of a pocket-sized wireless information tool for everyone. Marco is essentially a Newton MessagePad 120 with a built in wireless radio modem. However expensive, bulky, and graceless Marco is now, it’s the real model for a personal digital assistant. When these things are half an inch thick, have backlit color screens, run for a week on a battery charge, come with an Internet email account, and cost less than $500, the market will explode just like cellular phones did.


Size Matters
It is generally agreed that the next generation of Newtons from Apple Computer will either be much smaller or much larger. These two possibilities raise interesting philosophical questions about the future direction of not only Newton devices but PDAs in general. Do we want small, cheap, pocket-size PDAs with screens big enough to scribble a phone number and a name but little else? Or will we carry around big color screen PDAs that pack enough power and memory to rival notebook computers? What do we want, and how much will we pay for it?

Newton DocuPad 100
Scenario: Apple builds the fabled slate Newton, the DocuPad 100, selling for US$999. The first model has a backlit active-matrix 640 x 480 portrait display with 256 shades of gray, with an active-matrix color TFT display-equipped model coming a bit later. The DocuPad is thin enough to fit in a FedEx letter envelope, with a rolltop desk style screen protector. A thin, full-size membrane keyboard detaches from the back panel of the unit, and features an IR connection instead of a cable. There is a fold-out brace that serves as either a carry handle or a desk stand, and you can jack a desktop computer into a port to use the display if you like. It can also output video to a computer monitor or television. Memory and storage are no problem due to the DocuPad’s dual Type II/III PCMCIA slots. A built-in microphone can record up to an hour of voice-quality digital audio at a touch of a dedicated button recessed into the front case. Apple’s AnyWire, combination wireless/POTS/cable modem is a popular internal slot option, as is the hands-free cellphone PC Card from Motorola.

For software, we have Netscape’s Newtigator, a full-featured Java-enabled web browser, Claris Emailer for Newton, and LandWare’s NoteWord, an elegant extension of the Newton’s Note Pad that rivals personal computer word processors in functionality, without the bulk.

Suddenly, carrying around a big Newton becomes cool. Conventional clamshell notebooks look clunky and quaint.

Newton MemoPad LC
Scenario: Geekiness goes out of fashion, so all electro-toys must be carefully concealed about your person. Small is more beautiful than ever, so Apple builds the Newton MemoPad LC, a US$199 Palm Pilot killer. The 3x5 inch base unit is essentially a backlit 16 level gray scale display with a StrongARM processor, ROM-based organizer applications, and enough memory to store 500 names and three months worth of data. It can fit in your palm, but has expansion slots on the top and bottom of the unit for expansion modules, including a Sony cellphone with retractable headset, a two-way pager, wired 28.8 modem, a game module with controls, external battery modules, a still video camera, and a 7 inch 480x320 color display module.

Too small to accommodate a conventional PC Card slot, the MemoPad relies on CompactFlash cards that are compatible with digital cameras and newer notebook computers. Application software is either downloaded from the web or a personal computer, or is available for purchase on read-only CompactFlash cards.

Then I woke up
Both devices sound good to me, but I probably wouldn’t buy them both. They overlap just enough to be a problem. Not unlike my MessagePad and my PowerBook, come to think of it. So what is a PDA, then? The next evolution of the personal computer after subnotebooks, or something else altogether? Would you call the DocuPad 100 a computer or a PDA? Computer companies won’t want to cannibalize their computer sales by offering computer-class PDAs for less money, so you might have to buy both to get what you want.

Small may be beautiful, but it isn’t very readable. Big may be better, but the burden of size, weight, and increased fragility work against the goal of taking the thing everywhere. Until we can simply jack these things into our skulls, we will be carrying the utility vs. portability problem around with us in our pockets, backpacks, briefcases, and shoulder bags.


Imagine A World That Revolves Around You

NewtonMail
Of the many things I miss about the early days of Newton, I’d have to say NewtonMail ranks high. It was the only email system I’ve ever used with a handheld computer that worked, flawlessly, every time. […] For sheer simplicity and reliability, though, NewtonMail ruled. You could send and receive Newton packages (applications) or any other Newton data type and it would be received without any fuss on another Newton device. We routinely sent each other appointments, tasks, and name cards. The service, as well as the OS, were optimized for the low bandwidth available at the time.

MessagePad 2500
In a different set of circumstances, this column could have been written on an exciting new Newton device instead of my trusty PowerBook G3/292. What would a MessagePad 2500 look like? It’s safe to assume it would be of similar proportion to the MP2100, only slimmer, more slate-like, due to the elimination of AA cells in favor of a wide and flat lithium-ion pack. It would contain version 3.0 of the Newton OS, and would sport a 64,000 color display for almost photorealistic images. Integrated wireless communication options would slide into a dedicated bay, with the screen cover serving as the antenna. It would be translucent green, like the eMate, with a subtle glow from the backlight giving the device an unearthly aspect.

Performance would be equally unearthly due to its new 1.5v highly integrated Intel StrongARM SA-1100 microprocessor running at 200MHz. You can watch QuickTime clips on your MP2500 without skipping a frame. The integrated IBM MicroDrive hard disk would provide 500MB of storage, while the fast IR and USB ports make it easy to get the data in and out.

Newton Connection Utilities Pro would make other synch tools look primitive. Simply bringing the MP2500 in proximity to your desktop or notebook would transfer your most important information--appointments, tasks, names, notes--invisibly. Apple would supply a self-powered, inexpensive fast IR transceiver for both Macs and Windows PCs so slim and light that it would essentially disappear into the woodwork. Wireless options would allow the same "prioritized synchronization" via moderate bandwidth wireless IP carriers. You simply always have the latest information, fully transactioned for total reliability.

I miss the MessagePad 2500.

Gees, sounds like an interesting idea.

Why did we end up with Windows and the IBM pc when there was so much better stuff out there?

Apple could have done it if they allowed their hardware to be cloned like the IBM pc and concentrated on the software and innovatory products.

In the OTL this factor ensured the IBM PC's dominance. Microshaft's marketing and favoured position provided by its O/S killed the competition.

In my view this set back computing about 5 years!

Your TL is sensible in that with the right decisions this could be being written on an Apple Clone.

hammo1j said:

Why did we end up with Windows and the IBM pc when there was so much better stuff out there?

Apple could have done it if they allowed their hardware to be cloned like the IBM pc and concentrated on the software and innovatory products.

In the OTL this factor ensured the IBM PC's dominance. Microshaft's marketing and favoured position provided by its O/S killed the competition.

In my view this set back computing about 5 years!

Your TL is sensible in that with the right decisions this could be being written on an Apple Clone.

Click to expand...

A very long story. Basically IBM was stupid enough to sign a non-exclusive contract for MS-DOS/Windows which let Microsoft sell MS-DOS/Windows to everybody else (which eventually meant they could sell Microsoft Office to everybody). Furthermore Scully was dumb enough to give away the 'Look and Feel' of the Mac to Microsoft in return for a couple years of Microsoft Office development on the Mac (note that Microsoft made a great deal of their money at that time selling Office on the Mac, so Apple really did have the upper hand).

Then Microsoft waved their magic wand and said 'Cairo' was coming which switched the debate from System 7 versus Windows 3.0 in 1991 (where Mac System 7 kicked Windows 3.0's ass) to System 7 versus magical not released Windows software. Amusingly Cairo, as stated, never did ship. Instead Windows 95-XP and Windows NT-2000 eventually shipped and Cairo's features got shoved into Longhorn/Vista and then cancelled. Some history is here and here

Apple, you must remember, has always been a hardware company. They make all their money off of hardware, and they invest a lot of to create good software—as quality software + hardware design are the main reasons to go with a Mac over anything else. This will not change ITTL (note that frogdesign won't be fired, and hence 90s Apple hardware will continue to be interesting looking).

No clones, I'm afraid, as Jean-Louis Gassée—who I need to save the Newton—was firmly against clones.

Furthermore the licensing thing was not as clear cut as it seems. Check out Daring Fireball here and here for more. Basically even if Apple did licence they might well have gone bankrupt, or not done any better.

Dan1988 said:

Gees, sounds like an interesting idea.

Click to expand...

Thanks.




More comments, anyone?

Some questions to be answered:

Ideally I'd like to save the Dylan programming language (should I, though?) for the Newton and its big brother Ralph for Pink. Are they really good? Should I save them, or wait for something else?

With any luck a Newton in 1994 with NewtonOS 2.0 handwriting abilities + 1994 hardware + Dylan is a much more attractive starting out platform. Especially if Scully doesn't blab his big mouth about it.

I'd like to ship Pink sometime in the mid 90s with Ralph and hopefully NuKernel, maybe some BeOS type things, other Apple tech that went nowhere. Perhaps I'm wrong, feel free to educate me.

The desktop Mac line needs redoing (frogdesign is going to stay on, I think) as there's a million models.

Without the Mac Portable will enough lessons be learned for the PowerBook?

I'd like Pink not to be closed off, and hence have the various technologies Apple was working on (NewtonOS, for instance) part of it.

CPU platforms: Probably still ARM, eventually, for the Newton, but is there any way Motorola/IBM can do better with PowerPC in a wider fashion? i.e. Roughly match Intel's development dollars, perhaps via more alternate computing platforms?


Of course all of it must be plausible, and within Gassée's personality (+ General Magic/Be Inc. people who will stay in this timeline—Sakoman, Hertzfeld, Atkinson, etc…).



Comments?

Elsewhere

Because of the particular relavance to Mac people (like me, natch) this thread is also linked:

• AppleInsider
• AppleNova
• Macintoshian Achaia

Of course the whole alternate history bit seems to be throwing things off, but I'm mostly shooting for technical details & critiques over there.

Well this timeline certainly isn't going to be a wank….

It seems clear that Gassée needs someone to balance him[1]. Scully didn't pay enough attention to Apple (and did crazy reorganizations[2]) but Gassée had his own problems. I'm not sure how well Apple's going to after all. Hmm.

A Collection Of Gassée Mistakes: [LowEndMac]

To keep attracting high end buyers who would be willing to buy products with a huge profit margin, Gassée created a bevy of expensive, powerful Macs, reasoning that users would be willing to pay to avoid DOS. As a result, with nine models available in 1989, there were no Macs that cost less than $3,000.

This trend reached its apex in 1990 (when Gassée was on his way out) with the release of the Macintosh IIfx, which would be the most expensive Macintosh ever, costing $9,870 with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

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Apple was beginning to stumble publicly. Gassée was irrationally protective of his high profit margins (sometimes over 60%, double what other PC manufacturers commanded). As a result, he was dead set against any low-end Macintosh. He feared that any such product would cannibalize sales and hurt Apple Product's budget.

Apple Products was totally out of control. Gassée did little to limit the engineers to feasible projects or even keep them to release schedules. Apple invested around $500 million a year in research but only managed to release around six new products annually. Most of the money was sunk into massive, dead-end products with huge staffs and unclear goals.

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As the 1980s wore on, the Macintosh had begun to lose its technical edge. The 68k line of processors had once been the architecture of choice for workstation manufacturers everywhere, but it was being superseded by custom RISC chips, like the Clipper, SPARC, and Alpha. Engineers in the Apple think tank, Advanced Technology Group, believed that Apple's only solution was to design a microprocessor on its own.

This new project was named Aquarius, and it was totally infeasible. Apple was not a microchip company, and it didn't have the resources to become one. It would have to hire a staff familiar with microprocessor design, buy the equipment required to implement the designs, then manufacture the final products (or hire a firm like Fujitsu or Hitachi to do so). Companies like Intel and Motorola spent billions of dollars a year designing and manufacturing microprocessors. Apple was well off, but it didn't have billions to spend.

Sam Holland, the man who had proposed the idea in the first place, was tapped to lead the project. The other engineers at Apple were aghast, including Steve Sakoman, who had personally urged Gassée to can the project. Nonetheless, Gassée did not hesitate to lavish the project with resources. He even authorized the purchase of a $15 million Cray supercomputer.

Covering his tail, Gassée told investors that the machine was used to model Apple hardware.

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Another ill-fated project was started in 1987. Sakoman, who had so roundly condemned the Aquarius project, was now interested in creating the successor to the Macintosh. He had worked on several dead-end projects and had made a name for himself as a competent engineer and popular leader, so Gassée had no qualms on allowing him to start a research project to research tablets. He moved to a nondescript building on Bubb Road and named the project Newton.

Gassée had a problem saying no to his engineers, and he authorized another project with much the same focus, Looking Glass. Led by Marc Porat and staffed by the legendary Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson, Looking Glass would create a line of tablets connected via a wireless network. They would be equipped with "agents", programs that would gather information on a network and then act on it. For instance, a stockbroker might create an agent that polls the share price of a particular stock, and when it drops below a certain point, would send an email alerting the broker of the change.

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Sculley always believed that market share was important not only to getting more consumers, but for developer relationships as well. Gassée vehemently disagreed. He was fully confident that users and developers alike would never defect from the Macintosh because there was nothing of similar quality on the market. As a result, when manufacturing chief Debi Coleman suggested that the company produce a "secretary Macintosh", Gassée shot her down immediately. Luckily for Apple, there were no viable alternatives to the Mac.

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In 1989, Apple would outrage both its consumers and an incredibly important developer. Without PostScript, the Adobe printing language, the Macintosh would have never become a major force in desktop publishing. Apple was one of Adobe's earliest and largest customers. Adobe's software shipped with every Macintosh and LaserWriter sold, which allowed users to create true WYSIWYG output. PostScript defined all of the shapes, fonts, and colors in a single document in a language that allowed it to be printed very accurately and be easily manipulated.

The software was well respected and very expensive. During the development of the LaserWriter, Jobs had invested $2.5 million for a 15% stake in Adobe. On top of that significant investment (which made Apple the largest stockholder of Adobe), Adobe charged Apple $300 for the fonts that shipped with the LaserWriter in addition to the money it charged for the standard PostScript software.

Gassée was being pressed to lower prices - but not profit margins - and cutting off Adobe would be an easy way of doing it. Gassée invited the normally placid cofounder and CEO of Adobe, John Warnock, to lunch at the Good Earth Café and told him that Apple would not use Adobe's software on low-end Macs. Instead, Apple would create its own font technology.

Warnock was outraged. He left in a huff and was almost in tears. Gassée then initiated the Royal project, which was to replace the expensive Type A Postscript fonts from Adobe that Apple spent hundreds of dollars on for every printer it sold.

Microsoft was also looking for a cheap printing technology for the upcoming Windows 3.0 and OS/2 releases. Instead of developing its own technology, Microsoft acquired Bauer Enterprises, which had created a competitor to PostScript called TrueImage. Several of Bauers' employees had left to work with Apple on a new font technology that was named Royal, which was by now almost complete. Gassée still did not have a technology to render shapes and images on printed page, and TrueImage did not have a font technology.

Gassée was desperate to get the cheap technology into Macs and reached an agreement with Microsoft to license TrueImage and Royal. Royal was then renamed TrueType and would be used in subsequent releases of the Macintosh System and Windows.

Sculley was to be announce the agreement at the Seybold Desktop Publishing Conference in San Francisco. The program was a total surprise to Sculley, who had no idea that Gassée had made an end-run around Apple's vital ally, Adobe - especially one with Microsoft in the middle of the look and feel case. He was incensed.

So was the mild-mannered Warnock. During his speech, he compared the new technology (which provided inferior output compared to PostScript) to snake oil. He had reason to be upset. His long time ally had caused Adobe's stock price to drop by almost 50%. Apple's whim had cost Adobe and its investors millions of dollars (including Apple). Apple then unloaded its shares and got a $79 million return on its investment.

For all the duress caused, Apple quickly dumped TrueType. The printers never yielded very good output and were relegated to the cheapest, lowest profit printers and computers. For almost no gain, Apple had alienated its most valuable developer. The two would eventually make up, but not before Apple got a reputation for abusing developers and had essentially given Microsoft free Apple technology.

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Gassée stumbled again when he allowed the system software division to split up. One group would create a stopgap version of the Mac OS, and the other would create the next generation version. The teams were named, respectively, Blue and Pink. Naturally, the engineers all flocked to the more advanced project, and Blue suffered. The heads of the Blue team, Gifford Calenda and Sheila Brady, were forced to hire engineers with no experience. Almost the entire graduating class of Dartmouth was hired to work on Blue. Both projects would miss their deadlines by several years and ate up resources from successful projects.

In 1989, Gassée and Loren made the biggest mistake of their careers and severely damaged Apple's stellar reputation with customers. The PC market took off in a big way as IBM faltered with their proprietary PS/2 line. There was a binge of computers on the market, and that taxed the suppliers of DRAM chips. Prices soared, though Apple's hefty profit margins could sustain the hit.

Unfortunately for Apple, Gassée and Loren had no intention of reducing profit margins and decided instead to raise prices across the board. Apple lost its opportunity to drop prices, and even worse, alienated its customers. Sales plummeted for the first time since 1984. DRAM prices eventually settled down, but Apple's stellar reputation had been sullied.

Gassée would ultimately lose his job for the dip in demand and customer loyalty. In 1989, he was stripped of most responsibilities, and he resigned one year later to found Be Inc.

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[1] Perhaps this guy, if he cuts a deal with Gassée to save himself from Sullivan & Spindler[2].

The other important man in the executive suite was Del Yocam, a plain Methodist who had signed on with Apple in 1979 and cleaned up operations. Before, parts were littered through Apple's Bandley Drive offices, and manufacturing was handled by several contractors of varying degrees of quality (and a few outright sweatshops). This made it difficult for Apple to meet demand, much less expand and invest in research.

Yocam brought a sense of discipline to the company. Every manager became accountable. Yocam went to meetings and recorded the manager's demand predictions in a green engineer's notebook, and if that goal was not met, the manager was held accountable. This attitude was unpopular amongst the executives, but most Apple employees were enamored with Yocam's straightforward personality.

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[2]

The more clout Spindler gained, the more difficulty he had dealing with stress - and the more personal attacks he made about Sculley. Famously, during a tour of the Apple campus for the new head of Apple USA (Apple's US sales division), Allan Loren, Spindler could not be found in his office. A few minutes later, Spindler walked out and introduced himself. He had either been under his desk or in his closet, the two places that were not visible through the glass wall covering one side of his office.

Sculley sometimes caught wind of Spindler's attacks, but Spindler always denied them. In Sculley's world, people did not lie, so he accepted these denials.

Those attacks found an eager audience with a new member of the executive suite, Kevin Sullivan, the straight laced human resources director. Sullivan seemed to have no ambition outside of self preservation and was a natural ally of Spindler. Spindler would march into Sullivan's office in a rage about some slight, and Sullivan would pace around with him and listen to him vent. Many speculate that Sullivan decided that Spindler was the only executive inside Apple who had the momentum to be CEO (he had become a vice president in less than four years).

Spindler became all the more ambitious after a series of major missteps on the part of Gassée.

[…]

Apple's fortunes were much improved in 1988, and the executives were clamoring for more power and the elimination of Yocam as COO. Yocam held people like Gassée and the brand new Apple USA head, Allen Loren, accountable, and they didn't appreciate it. Sculley, always the hands off manager, wanted nothing more than to placate the executives and continue to promote Apple in the media (he was finishing his autobiography and beginning a book tour that would include a famous Playboy interview), so he approved a reorganization plan to flatten Apple's structure and eliminate Yocam as a threat.

[…]

Sculley's detached style, deferring most of the management decisions to his subordinates, would prove ineffective, though the extent of Apple's inefficiency would only become evident years after Sculley left.

The first of these missteps came when Sculley decided to spin off Apple's software arm into a brand new company and eventually allow it to go public. Sculley wanted a company he could count on to produce Macintosh software, and he was willing to sacrifice developer relationships to accomplish that aim. Claris would be headed by Bill Campbell, the affable head of Apple Americas. The plans to take Claris public quickly fell through, and Claris became an ordinary software company (albeit on with well respected products).

Allan Loren was recruited from Cigna, where he had been the IT director for the insurance giant. Sculley named him successor to Campbell, presumably because he would be able to woo over the high volume corporate customers that Sculley so lusted after.

Loren was a terrible salesman and an uninspiring leader. One of his salesmen had taken him on a sales call to one of the most important Macintosh customers, Motorola. After they arrived, Loren launched into a tirade on how Motorola had to adapt to beat the Japanese semiconductor manufacturers. The CIO was so angry with Loren that he told the salesman that he would remove every Macintosh from Motorola if Loren ever came again.

Perhaps even worse than that, Loren was rude to subordinates. He fell asleep during presentations, and he ripped them apart when he was awake. Several times he reduced the presenter to tears. Loren was hardly qualified to run a sales force, much less the largest subsidiary at Apple.

The executive staff was in turmoil. Everybody feared the power that Yocam was amassing, thinking that he would soon succeed Sculley as CEO. At a meeting in Paris to discuss the upcoming 1989 fiscal year plan, Kevin Sullivan, VP of human resources, told Sculley that he, Gassée, Spindler, and Loren would not work with Yocam.

Sullivan, Gassée, Spindler, and Loren all reported to Yocam, and it drove them crazy. Yocam had a type-A personality and kept meticulous records of his meetings with the executives. If they didn't meet their claims, they would have to explain why to Yocam. The others made such a fuss that Sculley reorganized Yocam out of Apple in August 1988 by eliminating the COO position - and sealed his own fate.

Engineered by Sullivan, the very man who had spearheaded the effort to get Yocam out, the reorganization made little sense to the Apple rank and file. Gassée's division, Apple Products, took responsibility product marketing in addition to product development. Spindler was the head of a larger Apple Europe, and Loren's fief was renamed Apple USA.

Yocam's role was much less clear. Yocam was assigned to a new division that combined the enormous education sales division and the Pacific sales subsidiary (covering the Pacific Rim and Australia). The combination was inexplicable. Sculley was unable to rationalize Yocam's new position, so he had the PR people draft a glowing press release. It was no matter; Yocam resigned only a few days after his reassignment.

Apple's employees were shocked and angered at the reorganization. The old structure had grown the installed base Macs from 500,000 to 2.25 million in only three years. Apple had become a $4 billion company, larger than Microsoft several times over. Now an outsider had created a "flatter organization - one with few layers of management - that will allow a larger Apple to become even more innovative, flexible, and locally responsive than we are today," according to Apple's annual report to stockholders, but really he had merely divvied up Apple into inefficient, feuding fiefs. Everything was set for a power struggle, and Sculley had allowed it to happen.

Click to expand...

hammo1j said:

Why did we end up with Windows and the IBM pc when there was so much better stuff out there?

Click to expand...

You kind of answered this: cheap commodity PC-compatible hardware and 3rd-party MS-DOS/Windows availablility. IBM chose to violate all its established principles and used outside hardware and software to make a cheap PC quickly; this is what led to its success (a similar story, only without the force of IBM behind it, was true for earlier systems with the S-100 bus, an Intel 8080 or a Zilog Z80 processor, and CP/M).

But there were much better systems, for quite a long time. Apple wasn't the only one. Heck, at times even Microsoft had better, but wasted it.

As early as 1983, there were machines running UNIX-like OSes (including Microsoft XENIX!) for as little as $5,000 or so, comparable in price/equipment to a PC/XT - and that's multi-tasking, multi-user, and with far more features than MS-DOS 2..... But businesses went for IBM/MS-DOS, even though the PC/AT in 1985 could run XENIX or Coherent. Problem was, the 'real' UNIXes like XENIX back then had to pay huge royalties to AT&T, making them more expensive than DOS... some of these computers include the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 16, several high-end Cromemcos, and the ill-fated IBM PC-RT.

8-bit computers with a Motorola 6809 could run the multi-user OS-9 operating system. The best known of these systems was the Radio Shack CoCo.

In the 1980s, you could get a mainframe OS on DEC microcomputers, again for around $5,000.

In 1985, Commodore offered the Amiga, which could multitask years before even the Mac could, and ran rings around everyone with its advanced graphics and sound (back in '85, Macs were black/white only). Atari STs were single-tasking, but they still had a nice, color GUI. The Commodore 900, cancelled in favor of the Amiga, used Coherent as a UNIX-like system.

OS/2 2.0, in 1993, had features that weren't in Windows 95 (like a full 32-bit file system).... OS/2 is a lot like Windows, even to the point of sucking in some of the same ways...and OS/2 up to version 1.3 was a joint IBM/Microsoft project. By that time, Plan 9 had features that have yet to be replicated by any mainstream OS... same-era NeXTs had functionality duplicated by Linux and others 5-10 years later...

GUIs: You could use the (single-tasking) GEOS GUI on a stock Commodore 64... other GUIs existed before 1990 that were at least as good as, if not better than, Windows 3.0 for MS-DOS... like GEM or DESQView. The later GeoWorks (based loosely on GEOS) could run a Windows-95-like GUI on a PC/AT... heck, there is a Windows-95-like GUI (granted, in only 4 colors) available now for MSX machines with 128k RAM, a (limited) UNIX-like OS for Commodore, an embedded OS which can run a GUI on around 40k RAM minimum...

Even concerning Windows, MS often goofed up the home versions. Windows NT 3.5 in 1995, in every respect but GUI, made a complete fool out of Windows 95 (granted, it required twice the RAM). Windows 2000 vs. Windows Me? Ha. 2k is quite possibly the best version of Windows ever made (that isn't saying much, mind), and Me was basically 98 with more bugs. And now, Vista is no real improvement over XP SP2...

Hmm. I might have to change my POD.

I still think Gassée would be a very good CEO if he had someone in the COO slot to keep control of him, but… he might present more problems then it's worth.

The only real alternative seems to be keeping Scully on. To do that he has to be more forceful:

• He has to rein in Gassée's vast budgets.
• He has to take Gassée's Apple Products group margins from 55-60% to 30% or so. This should also allow a low price Mac.
• He has to keep Yocam as COO, hopefully toss Loren, and not reorganize the whole company.
• Spindler needs to be brought into a general strategic role for the company, as that seems to be his one talent.
• He has to not blab all about the Newton, and he needs to find some way to buy it more time.
• The Apple software group needs some serious crack down, refocus, and reorganization.
• Apple needs a future CPU—either PowerPC that's used more widely (and thus can compete with Intel's development dollars), or move to Intel's x86. One problem with this is that Scully wanted to shift Apple to licensing and software development… this is kinda silly because Apple has always made money almost solely off of hardware, and they sell said hardware because they have better software. Note too that anybody that goes up directly against Microsoft in the OS/Office space has lost, so there's no real reason to think Apple can win the battle of the OS.

To me, any collection of hardware boils down to the software that runs on it -- if it's not simple and useful, the hardware is useless. That's why people use Windows and not MS-DOS, and why people are still staying away from Linux. If you've got to mess around with the command line, it's too complicated.

In OTL, games were the software that really got people locked into Windows. They bought those beige boxes for their kids, then realized that actual work could get done on them. Can you keep the Mac a gaming-friendly platform?

Gaming's a hard thing to do. Most games, IIRC, were coded for MS-DOS and C64/Amiga. Not for Mac OS. I'm unsure of why this is so, since I'm not a programmer. I suspect it has something to do with the graphics hardware/software, or the way MacOS is set up. Cost and ease might be the other reason. This is probably why DOS and Windows came to dominate the PC market.

Don't underestimate the power of gaming, people. It's the singular reason why most people buy the latest-and-greatest hardware. Media creation, while taking up huge amounts of CPU time, storage space, and RAM, doesn't require too much else aside from good programming. Coding primarily relies on CPU time for compiling, and I can't think of anything else that requires that much resources, aside from those two.

Amerigo Vespucci said:

To me, any collection of hardware boils down to the software that runs on it -- if it's not simple and useful, the hardware is useless. That's why people use Windows and not MS-DOS, and why people are still staying away from Linux. If you've got to mess around with the command line, it's too complicated.


In OTL, games were the software that really got people locked into Windows. They bought those beige boxes for their kids, then realized that actual work could get done on them. Can you keep the Mac a gaming-friendly platform?

Click to expand...

And NewtonOS rocked in that department . People loved their Newtons, and it killed Palms software (even today) and as I said in user interface quality it remains on par with anything today (partially excepting the iPhone). Likewise if Pink can ship before Windows 95 then MacOS is going to look way better in comparison (as well as being better, objectively) and perhaps MacOS can keep ~10% market share.

Is there anyway in the early 90s for Windows to lose their monopoly (outside big business, anyway)? Perhaps Commodore/Amiga go into the OS business or NeXT is allowed to compete (IOTL they signed a non-compete with existing Apple computers contract which locked them out of the PC market) on OS standards against Windows?

With a different Scully we have more room to play… perhaps he doesn't sign the deal allowing Windows to copy MacOS?


I'd argue the main reason people were locked into Windows was that corporations bought IBM/IBM compatible (nobody ever got fired for buying IBM) which came with MS-DOS/Windows. This remained a lock-in for two main reasons: expense to switch to a new platform; and the fact that if (say) they switched to Macs the IT department would face massive cut backs—as the chief technology officer at a company depended on the size of IT for his personal clout this means there is a direct reason to stick with crash-y Windows as it gives him more IT drones.

Computer they use at work = computer they use at home. It seems people are too lazy to do the (very limited) work required to learn a new OS & learn how to send documents between OSs. Look at all the effort Apple puts into it these days against XP/Vista both of which suck compared to OS X but people stay with them regardless (and these days Macs are about the same price as an equivalent PC).

Amerigo Vespucci said:

In OTL, games were the software that really got people locked into Windows. They bought those beige boxes for their kids, then realized that actual work could get done on them. Can you keep the Mac a gaming-friendly platform?

Click to expand...

pieman3141 said:

Gaming's a hard thing to do. Most games, IIRC, were coded for MS-DOS and C64/Amiga. Not for Mac OS. I'm unsure of why this is so, since I'm not a programmer. I suspect it has something to do with the graphics hardware/software, or the way MacOS is set up. Cost and ease might be the other reason. This is probably why DOS and Windows came to dominate the PC market.

Don't underestimate the power of gaming, people. It's the singular reason why most people buy the latest-and-greatest hardware. Media creation, while taking up huge amounts of CPU time, storage space, and RAM, doesn't require too much else aside from good programming. Coding primarily relies on CPU time for compiling, and I can't think of anything else that requires that much resources, aside from those two.

Click to expand...

Steve Jobs hates/hated games.

Don't underestimate how much of Apple was/is shaped by the guy. For one, that's a big reason the Newton was fought against; the Mac had replaced the Apple II and everybody feared the Newton would replace the Mac. Apple simply didn't have the culture for two co-existing brands—Newton & Macintosh. (They deliberately killed the profitable/well selling Apple ][ for instance.)

Hmm. Macs were big in education, so that's one inroad we could exploit. Consoles doing better and/or Commodore/Amiga surviving as an alternate OS might work (perhaps they switch to x86). Maybe a Commodore/Amiga alliance with SEGA or Nintendo? Console games on your computer? That would be a pretty big bonus factor, and wouldn't hurt console sales for SEGA/Nintendo given the price difference between a console and a computer.

NOTES

Alternate Timeline Books About Apple Computer, Inc.:

Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World’s Most Colorful Company
Owen W. Linzmayer
No Starch Publishing, San Francisco: 2007.

Defying Gravity: The Making of Newton
Doug Menuez, Photography & Markos Kounalakis, Text.
Beyond Words Press; Hillsboro, Oregon: 1995.

Infinite Loop: Behind the Legend, The (Incomplete) True Story of of Apple Computer, Inc.
Michael S. Malone.
Subtext/Doubleday, New York: 2002

Macworld Japan: Apple Computer & The Land of the Rising Sun.
Akira Asada.
No Starch Publishing, San Francisco: 2010.


Our Timeline:
Apple Confidential 2.0 was actually published in 2004 by No Starch Press.

Defying Gravity was actually published in 1993 by Beyond Words Publishing.

Infinite Loop was actually published in 1999, by Currancy/Doubleday (divisions of Random House) with a subtitle of ‘ How the World’s Most Insanely Great Computer Company Went Insane’.

Macworld Japan is entirely made up. IOTL Apple’s second largest market was Japan, not least because of close relationships between companies like Sony & Sharp, and this persisted for quite a while even as Jobs era Apple (1997-present) systematically ignored Japan. ITTL Apple is going to pay more attention to Japan for longer, hence the book. I don’t know enough about Apple Europe to follow that closely, I’m afraid.

I will add [ATL], [OTL], and [Adapted OTL] tags to each book entry (although Macworld Japan’s will all be [ATL] for the sake of consistency & clarity). The ‘alternate timeline’ ones I will write myself, the ‘our timeline’ ones I will copy out of the book, and the ‘adapted our timeline’ ones will be heavily based on the book, but with some stuff changed to suit this timeline.

In terms of bias, roughly speaking, Linzmayer is neutral on Apple, Kounalakis is pro on the Newton (& Scully) , and Malone is negative on Apple. Akira Asada is somewhat pro Apple, depending on what he talks about.


Obviously conversations between the real people that make up the story never took place, and I am portraying real people in a fictional manner.

[OTL]
Defying Gravity: The Making of Newton
Doug Menuez, Photography & Markos Kounalakis, Text.
Beyond Words Press; Hillsboro, Oregon: 1995.

[Steve Sakoman was] … A hardware specialist from Hewlett-Packard, Sakoman had come to Cupertino in 1984 to work on MacPhone[1], an early Macintosh-telephone interface that AT&T and Apple were interested in developing jointly. Sakaoman has arrived at Apple with high hopes. Bored and restless after completing work on Hewlett-Packard’s first portable computer, Sakoman craved greater creativity: “I saw myself building DOS clones for the rest of my life. I thought Apple might be more fun.”

While there was seldom a dull moment with Jobs around, Apple’s entertainment quotient dipped after his displacement. Motivating the stunned remaining staff was a tough task for Sakoman, who was put in charge of the Apple ][ and Macintosh hardware groups. He shared the task with his boss, Macintosh’s new general manager, Jean-Louis Gassée, a flamboyant, diamond-stud-sporting mathematician who had been brought to California after running Apple’s French division.

[…]

But after the successful February 1987 introduction of the powerful Macintosh II, a computer that dramatically increased Apple’s market share, the engineering teams found a moment to pause and reflect on their work. Sakoman, feeling a sense of déjà vu, was once again in a creative dilemma: “I saw myself in the position of doing mac clones for the rest of my life and didn’t sound like very much fun.”

Like other in Silicon Valley that year, Sakoman decided it might be time to strike out on his own […] Years earlier, while at Hewlett-Packard, Sakoman had enjoyed spending his spare time toying with “hand-entry” devices, machines without keyboards. He found data-entry machines awkward and believed that “It’s an accident of history that computers are the way they are—that we bang on them.” He knew that pen and paper were the simplest and most natural tools people used to capture thoughts, and he had always wanted to experiment further with what he called his “bootleg project.”

He confided in Gassée that he was looking to get out of Apple. Tired of the trade-offs and politics involved in corporate projects, he was going to start his own company where he would be free to research his ideas about a computer should be. But Gassée’s influence had grown at Apple in the past couple of years, and now, as head of new-product development, he was able to make Sakaoman a tempting offer: Would he stay if Gassée could create an independent unit within Apple?



[1] Something like this I imagine.

If anyone is curious about the operating system Macs are going to wind up with ITTL, Taligent is roughly what I'm going for.

Document centred, multi-user networked, direct manipulation interface with infinite session undo under a principal interface paradigm of People, Places, Things. People are your contacts, Places are environments that can be like folders today or be structured around tasks and projects and users and you can even make them collaborative, and Things are fax machines, printers, and everything that's not a People/Place such as applications, documents, and so forth.

For example you could all work on notes for class together in a Place, and then each person could send it to a Thing to be dealt with—whether the thing was a printer, or a fax machine, or simply a document outside the Place—or simply leave it be and then you can go look at it again in your place with any changes spread back across the other users of the Place. Or everyone could subscribe to a shared calendar in a Place editable by all you choose to allow, and every time you go alone your calendar is updated to match the current revision.

Remember, this is in the mid 90s. Some of the technology has been done today, some of it hasn't, but it approaches things from an entirely different metaphor paradigm.

Buzzwords, if anybody feels like reading 90s computing history.

• NuKernel
• Ralph (subset Dylan, for NewtonOS)
• Hardware abstraction layer
• NewtonOS ideas (automatically save everything)
• QuickDraw GX & 3D? Printing/Font handling for Windows & Adobe.
• PowerTalk. Reconfigured as server side to get Apple’s version of Exchange?
• Active & intelligent assistance like NewtonOS
• Preemptive (both background and user interface) & symmetric multitasking. Protected memory. Commonplace now, less common when purposed in 1988.
• Classic (emulation for System 7)
• New filesystem? ZFS / BFS / Reiser4 ideas.
• Limited version of OpenDoc

[Adapted OTL]

Infinite Loop: Behind the Legend, The (Incomplete) True Story of of Apple Computer, Inc.
Michael S. Malone.
Subtext/Doubleday, New York: 2002

No battle in American business history has been as protracted or vicious as that between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. For nearly a century, the two companies have beaten up each in the marketplace, cheering a percentage point shift in marketshare as either a magnificent victory or a crushing defeat.

[…]

But Scully had his own ideas. For a start, he committed the ultimate marketing sin of revivifying a marginally successful marketing campaign the company had abandoned a few years before—”The Pepsi Generation.” Next, he added the incoherent, but catchy tag line “You’ve got a lot to live and Pepsi’s got a lot to give.”

This was lifestyle marketing just at the moment baby boomers became independent consumers. Coke, still playing off its history and tradition, was caught with its pants down. And Scully didn’t stop. He spent millions on advertising filled with vignettes of the youth culture. And he backed up this fluff with some hard reengineering of point-of-sale presentation, a reorganization of the company’s reporting structure and a redirected emphasis on important new retail channels, such as drugstore chains. The result, beginning in 1970, was a record three and half years of continuous gains in market share.

It was a remarkable achievement, though in the process Scully had become notorious in the company for tearing through one subordinate after another. So, for this combination of ruthlessness and creative brlliance, Scully was “rewarded” (many in the company thought it a demotion) with the job of running Pepsi’s screwed-up and unprofitable international foods division.

He then spent nearly four years traveling the world, putting out fires everywhere he went. He shut down some operations and rebuilt others. In some countries, he focused on manufacturing, in others on marketing and brand awareness. It was exciting stuff. And in the process, Scully built a kind of SWAT team of talented people who traveled with him, ready to deal with anything they encountered. Over the months this team became very tight-knit, and Scully, for the first time submerging his personality into a team, was enthralled.

Once again he succeeded brilliantly, turning an $83 million usiness with annual losses of $16 million into a $270 million business turning an annual pretax proft of $30 million. In his memoirs he wrote, “It had been perhaps the best time of my life, but in doing so I had to confront my own inadequacies. Namely that I didn’t know the technology I was confronted with and had relied on the wrong people in my team to help me with it. I had discovered simply knowing marketing and being a good manager wasn’t enough, if you didn’t also have good managers and knowledgeable people to rely on. The team was what mattered, as long as it had the right leadership, but my team had been flawed. I vowed not to let that happen to me again.”

[…]

[Scully] He went back to Pepsi, but now he was a changed man. As he would later write, in his memiors: “I was one of Kendall’s [Pepsi CEO] most competitive soldiers, yet after sixteen years of being constantly tested, I was discovering I didn’t just enjoy competing, I enjoyed building.”

He continued, “Apple was exactly the place to do that. At Pepsi I might add a point to our marketshare, or increase sales overseas, but at the end of the day it was all the same. Personal computing seemed much more volatile, but it also offered the chance to create something.”

I've decided to add the OTL versions when I post Adapted OTL stuff. It helps, as I imagine most people don't know a lot about computing in the 90s.

The POD has changed somewhat, given that the more I read about Gassée the more I don't want him running Apple.

The new POD is when Scully goes overseas to fix Pepsi's international food division he relies on his team to help him. In this scenario a couple people on his team let down as regards technology (say a bottling plant, or something) and in management.

As Scully loves having a team he makes sure not to let this happen to him again by always being prepared. ITTL that means he's more likely to talk to engineers so as to know what's up with the products, and has a better grasp of the people who should be on his team.

Notably back in 1985 when he reorganized he lacked both a high priest of technology (eventually using Gassée with pretty bad results) and someone experienced in the business. I'm not sure who the high preist is yet, but the experienced in the business person is Floyd Kvamme.

Kvamme was brought into Apple having done semi-conductor work, computer work, marketing, and had shown he could run a company; most assumed he was the next CEO of Apple once he got a few months experience. IOTL Jobs goes with his number 2 CEO choice, Scully, (number 1 would have been brilliant: Don Estridge, of IBM, who made the first IBM PC. However he doesn't get me the Newton, so we're sticking with Scully) and Kvamme leaves soon after.

ITTL Scully values another industry veteran who understands business and will find a way to keep Kvamme—perhaps in the Chief Technology Officer position.



[OTL Version]

No battle in American business history has been as protracted or vicious as that between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. For nearly a century, the two companies have beaten up each in the marketplace, cheering a percentage point shift in marketshare as either a magnificent victory or a crushing defeat.

[…]

But Scully had his own ideas. For a start, he committed the ultimate marketing sin of revivifying a marginally successful marketing campaign the company had abandoned a few years before—”The Pepsi Generation.” Next, he added the incoherent, but catchy tag line “You’ve got a lot to live and Pepsi’s got a lot to give.”

This was lifestyle marketing just at the moment baby boomers became independent consumers. Coke, still playing off its history and tradition, was caught with its pants down. And Scully didn’t stop. He spent millions on advertising filled with vignettes of the youth culture. And he backed up this fluff with some hard reengineering of point-of-sale presentation, a reorganization of the company’s reporting structure and a redirected emphasis on important new retail channels, such as drugstore chains. The result, beginning in 1970, was a record three and half years of continuous gains in market share.

It was a remarkable achievement, though in the process Scully had become notorious in the company for tearing through one subordinate after another. So, for this combination of ruthlessness and creative brlliance, Scully was “rewarded” (many in the company thought it a demotion) with the job of running Pepsi’s screwed-up and unprofitable international foods division.

He then spent nearly four years traveling the world, putting out fires everywhere he went. He shut down some operations and rebuilt others. In some countries, he focused on manufacturing, in others on marketing and brand awareness. It was exciting stuff. And in the process, Scully built a kind of SWAT team of talented people who traveled with him, ready to deal with anything they encountered. Over the months this team became very tight-knit, and Scully, for the first time submerging his personality into a team, was enthralled.

Once again he succeeded brilliantly, turning an $83 million usiness with annual losses of $16 million into a $300 million business turning an annual pretax proft of $40 million.

[…]

[Scully] He went back to Pepsi, but now he was a changed man. As he would later write, in an extraordinary admission: “I was one of Kendall’s most competitive soldiers, yet after sixteen years of being constantly tested, I was discovering I didn’t enjoy competing, I enjoyed building.”

Had Steve Jobs known at the time that these were John Scully’s real feelings, the subsequent history of Apple, Pepsi, Scully and Jobs might have been entirely different. Scully, it seems, had a completely misguided view of the personal computer industry—because beneath the teamwork and the inovation and the youthful energy lay one of the competitive business landscapes of all. The cola battles only seemed more competitive; yet so established was the marketplace that even the biggest executive screwup in that business might mean the loss of a point or two of marketshare. In personal computing, by comparison, you could appear to make the right decisions and be dead tomorrow.

I was planning on writing a computer industry timeline, but now if I write one it will look like crap in comparison to this one...

A very interesting timeline, and the OTL updates are helpful because I don't really have much knowledge of Apple in this period.