EXCLUSIVES

By Ric Getter

Author's Note: Please do not expect to find the smallest shred of objectivity in the following commentary. Great achievements almost always come with great controversy. In this case, I believe that there has been far too much of the latter, so I have chosen to freely express my appreciation for the former.

It was sometime in the early 90's and I was working for a company that had "officially" abandoned the Mac platform. A shipment of new Windows PCs was on its way to replace the aging DOS machines then in use. As the owner of the only remaining Mac outside of the graphics department, I was being pressured to let go of the little Quadra 605 "pizza box" I had cobbled together and accept one of the Windows machines. With a wry smirk, the guy in charge of the new computer systems told me that he had nothing against the Mac and that, along with the Amiga, it would be fondly remembered long after Apple was gone. I quietly fumed, but managed to hang onto my Mac.

It was a bad time for Mac lovers and an even worse one for Apple. Its stock was plummeting and the company was visibly foundering, with legions of its most talented employees leaving and a management team that had no discernable direction. Apple was in the middle of the kind of downhill slide that very few companies, computer or otherwise, had ever recovered from. Like many others, I refused to give up hope. Still, I sometimes felt like the elderly Civil War veteran waving his cane and shouting, "The South will rise again!"

The Years Before

It took a true visionary to break through the wall of mediocrity that traditionally surrounded mainstream computing. Even in the pre-PC days of the mainframe and mini, stodgy IBM hardware and software dominated a marketplace that all but strangled innovative upstarts like DEC. "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM," was the popular rubric of the day. CP/M was still the OS of choice for the few businesses that had personal computers. But nobody would even dream of using that OS in a classroom. Apple's first products, both hardware and software, were far too elegant and friendly to pass up. And (with a little help from Regis McKenna) the legend of the two Steves was too close to the American Dream to ignore. When Atari flickered out and things were getting shaky at Commodore, Apple was still a rising star. IBM teamed up with a small software company in Washington state and was beginning to sell a "gray flannel" PC whose operating system was essentially a beefed-up version of CP/M melded with a watered-down UNIX.

At the time, I was working for a small Silicon Valley startup owned by an ex-Apple exec who had been a key manager on the Lisa project. Late in 1983, I was on the verge of buying my first "real" computer, the sleek Apple IIc, My boss smiled and said "Wait." A few months later, I had a Mac 128 on my desk. The first time I laid eyes on it, I knew that the world of computing had changed forever.

Along Came Mac

It was true. Mr. Jobs's visionary dream had become a reality. He had somehow managed to transport a pipe dream of computing into an affordable reality, with even more depth and elegance than was ever imagined by the wizards of Xerox-PARC. His company would remain dwarfed by the behemoth that Microsoft had become. But the ideas and innovations he brought to market were to be repeatedly copied by the burgeoning behemoth. I firmly believe that without Mr. Jobs we would still be in a world of command-line interfaces and fragile 5 1/4" floppy disks. When Steve Jobs was quietly removed from Apple, I mourned his departure as if it were the loss of a close personal friend.

As certainly as I knew that the Mac had changed the face of computing, I knew his absence would change Apple. Sadly, once again I was right. Steve set out afresh to change the face of computing with a remarkable computer the world proved not to be ready for. And quietly, he took charge of a small graphics software company who would ultimately change the face of filmmaking. Either of these achievements would have been enough for any mortal's lifetime.

In 1996, when Gil Amelio bought out NeXT in a desperate attempt to save the Rhapsody project, Jobs returned to Cupertino. Even though he was only there as a "consultant," I began to feel the first warm rays of hope for Apple's revival. Apparently I was not alone. Every time Steve walked onto the same stage as an Apple logo, the company's stock nudged up.

The Turnaround Begins

Within months, he earned the wrath of many Mac OS enthusiasts when he pulled the plug on third-party licensing of the Mac OS. But he saw that the media had persisted in reporting the decline of Apple's market share, even though the Mac OS itself had been gaining ground. His vision of the Apple brand included insanely great hardware and not the tin boxes of the Wintel world. It was a bold and controversial move, but it obviously was the right one. Other things began coming together in Cupertino. Apple trimmed down dramatically, completely reorganizing the company's sprawling management structure and consolidating its scattered operations on the new campus at One Infinite Loop. Outrageous inventory and supply problems were quickly brought under control.

Still, at the time I felt there was one move that Apple desperately needed. The only thing I could do was write an impassioned letter to MacWEEK (still in print back then) and hope somebody was listening. The letter was never published. As it turned out, it didn't matter.

Image Was the Key

There was another key player in the 1984 launch of the Macintosh who was benched not long after Jobs's departure. That company was the Apple of advertising agencies, Chiat/Day, who had given voice to the message that Apple was boldly unique in a marketplace crowded with innumerable variations on the same theme.

Early in the post-Jobs years, Apple inexplicably abandoned the agency who created the 1984 spot (which still stands as the most memorable sixty-seconds in the history of advertising). Apple's advertising became as lifeless as other computer makers'. As a result, they became just another face in the crowd. With their return, Chiat/Day saw to it that we all started to Think Different. And we were unwittingly being prepared for the next revolution in truly personal computing.

The Soul of the New Machine

In spite of what has been said in certain biographies, I believe that the iMac is unquestionably Steve's machine. It could have not been brought to market by anyone else. Anybody who was around in 1984 would recognize his unique touch. It was just the first wave of what would be a veritable landslide of innovative products, all of which sold as fast (if not faster) than they could be produced (as I discovered while trying to buy my wife an iBook for Christmas). Thanks to Mr. Jobs, Apple is once again a growing company with a growing market share. Since his return, Apple stock has soared to record heights. And even though it's not the highest paying company in Silicon Valley, getting a job there can be a major challenge (I know, I've tried several times). There are still many people with a desire to be part of something truly meaningful. It takes an extraordinary individual to do these extraordinary things. Throughout history, numerous businessmen have built financial empires, but only a handful have had such a positive impact on an entire industry. Steve Jobs helped introduce a generation of kids to computers by bringing "the other Steve's" wonderful Apple II to us. And he is once again changing the shape of personal computing with a new breed of incredibly powerful yet extraordinarily friendly and attractive machines. For so many of us, he has succeeded in bringing new life to the excitement and the dream that is Apple.

For all of these reasons, I humbly wish to say, "Thank you, Mr. Jobs.".