Randy Sutherland is a research analyst at Dataquest, a San Jose, CA, market research firm, source of this Apple sales projection.
You know the Apple story: Steve Wozniak builds a nifty plaything, Steve Jobs turns a project into a product, VisiCalc turns it into a business tool, and the Apple of Woz's eye invades corporations through backdoors and budget loopholes. Apple Computer bootstraps itself overnight into the Fortune 500, whereupon IBM wakes up, blesses Microsoft, and calls all the shots for the next two years.
That was the world of personal computing when the Apple Macintosh was born in January 1984. Fitted with a user interface that was a generation beyond anything else commercially available, the 128K machine was nevertheless hopelessly bogged down by that very interface. The learning curve for developers was steep, and Apple had bundled powerful applications with the machine, which discouraged development. Third-party software was slow in coming.
Then in 1987, the Mac was born again. Now Apple profits are soaring, and even Mitch Kapor is developing software for the Mac. What is behind the Mac's rebirth?
One answer is power. Hard disks, more memory, slots, and a decent local-area network all help to put a real structure behind the snazzy facade. DOS or Unix software developers who had never considered developing Mac applications are now taking a second look at the computer that has evolved from an appliance to a full-blown development platform that supports a lucrative third-party industry.
But another answer involves the balance between flexibility and standards.
The open design of the Apple II and the IBM PC provided programmers with a canvas for their creativity. But creativity in the design of user interfaces forces the user to thread a new maze with each new application. With the Mac, Apple enforced a uniform user interface, which made the programmer's job harder. But it made the user's job easier, and in the long run that proved more important. As the number of applications increased and the number of interfaces to learn didn't, the Mac grew in popularity.
But IBM has not been napping.
Whatever may have motivated Apple's suit against Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft over Windows 2.03, the controversy has served to emphasize that Windows and the OS/2 Presentation Manager are an attempt to bring the benefits of the Mac user interface to IBM's turf. A question suggests itself. OS/2 Extended Edition is clearly the way to go for anyone needing transparent access to IBM mainframes, but why should others wait for something like a Mac when they can have a real Mac right now?
As IBM's personal computer strategy swings in a proprietary direction, Apple is moving toward participation in industry standards. History lesson: Digital Equipment ignored Sun Microsystems' coexist-and-conquer strategy until Sun could no longer be blocked.
Under John Sculley, Apple is making one right move after another: