excerpts from @Gassee memories on its years at Apple<\/p>\n
Starting Apple France<\/a><\/p>\n After two rounds of interviews, I sign my employment agreement<\/b> over dinner at the (now defunct) Le Duc restaurant in Geneva on December 12th, 1980\u2026 the very day of Apple\u2019s IPO<\/b>. Nothing of the sort.<\/p>\n Well, how about an Apple ][ I can take to the hotel so I can learn on my own at night?<\/b> I had pored through the Apple ][ technical documentation on the plane, was struck by the elegant simplicity of Steve Wozniak\u2019s design, and wanted to get moving. \u2026 After much hemming and hawing a kind staffer lends me her machine.<\/p>\n \u2026seeing my three-piece pinstripe suite and befuddled mien, the officer took pity on me\u2026 <\/p><\/div>\n I had made the right decision. Different Apple Distribution Game<\/a><\/p>\n The Apple ][ was a fantastic machine<\/b>; the always-clever marketing campaigns were becoming more insouciant and (in retrospect) \u201cApple-like\u201d; the distribution logistics hummed along\u2026 but there was one thing that bothered me: Sales. Not the sales numbers, but Sales\u2019 attitude towards retailers<\/b>. \u2026 Almost Illicit Fun<\/a><\/p>\n \u2026 I need to add this worked in a French culture that didn\u2019t particularly like IBM, and where Apple\u2019s California Chic, helped by Steve Jobs\u2019 already mythicized charisma, made us the People\u2019s Liberation Army From Computing Oppression. From then on, we made giving t-shirts to complainants an unofficial practice. Mac Hopes And Troubles<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s November, 1983; I\u2019m sitting in the auditorium at Apple\u2019s worldwide sales meeting in Honolulu. The house lights dim and \u201c1984\u201d<\/a> begins. Conceived by ad agency Chiat\/Day, directed by Ridley Scott of Blade Runner fame, and destined to be aired nationally only once (during the 1984 Super Bowl)\u2026<\/div>\n Apple\u2019s assembled sales organization was delighted by the Mac\u2019s enchanting presentation, its (almost) never-seen-before user interface. But there was a nervous energy under the surface: Would the Macintosh save Apple from the IBM PC and its clones?<\/b><\/p>\n Born in 1981<\/b>, almost three years before the repeatedly delayed Mac, the 16-bit IBM PC<\/b> had made mincemeat of the 8-bit Apple ][<\/b> (and of the troubled Apple \/\/\/). With the introduction of the PC XT and advent of Lotus 1\u20132\u20133 in 1983, the competitive situation had become even more severe. <\/b>The XT sported an integrated hard disk, something Apple machines lacked. \u2026 Apple replied with cheeky \u201cWelcome IBM\u201d ads. At the time, I felt this was twice mistaken. Not only did it make us sound presumptuous, but why were we spending money advertising the opposition\u2019s ware? (I realized, later, that I was wrong about the former count: It was a good idea to position Apple as an equal \u2014 and precursor \u2014 of IBM.)<\/b> By early 1985, Mac sales still weren\u2019t taking off and sinking sales of the Apple ][ were to lead to the shutdown of the company\u2019s Texas manufacturing plant and the company\u2019s first-ever layoff. Something had to be done.<\/p>\n Having gained something of a foothold in the \u201ccreative space\u201d and education applications, Jobs thought we could sell the French government on having a large local company such as Thomson take a license to build Macs and sell them to the education market, thus creating a success story and fatter numbers.<\/p><\/div>\n My memos were not universally well-received, to say the least, but neither was the 1985 Mac Office. (However, the LaserWriter and the AppleTalk LAN were later to become key components of Apple\u2019s Desktop Publishing push.)<\/b> Hard Landing In Cupertino. Steve Jobs Fired<\/a><\/p>\n Initially, I was to work on a putative \u201cSoftware Division\u201d\u2026 The idea was to encourage third-party developers to write software for the Mac<\/b>, and to help them make a living doing it.<\/p>\n I was to report directly to CEO John Sculley<\/b>\u2026 Caught between the two, I was adamant: I couldn\u2019t work for Apple\u2019s mercurial and controlling co-founder<\/b>. Previous trips to Cupertino and Jobs\u2019 visits to Europe had convinced me that I didn\u2019t (yet) have the temperament or the inner sense of security to \u201ccollaborate\u201d with him.<\/p>\n In the spring of 1985, Jobs brought things to a head by approaching members of Apple\u2019s exec team, asking them to side with him and run Sculley out of town. It backfired; the coup failed and Jobs was deposed. In the reorganization that followed, I became VP of Product Development.<\/b> Back to 1985, I found myself in a dangerous, paradoxical position. I, too, lacked experience.<\/b> I had never run an engineering organization, my knowledge of computer technology was largely acquired on the job and on weekends torturing hardware and software. And yet, I was given the reins to Apple\u2019s engineering organization<\/b>\u2026<\/div>\n My mission<\/b> was simple \u2014 or simple to state, at least: Get the Mac out of the ditch and create a cohesive organization that unites the engineers.<\/b><\/p>\n As we\u2019ll see in the next two parts of this series, culture (not technology) and my own emotions were to be the most difficult challenges.<\/b><\/p>\n Getting The Mac Out Of The Ditch<\/a><\/p>\n When I landed in Cupertino in May 1985, I had a few simple ideas for short and medium improvements that would help sales, and was happily surprised by the support that most of these ideas got inside the engineering community.<\/p>\n I count 30 faces around the conference table. That\u2019s one too many. As Apple\u2019s newly-appointed VP of Product Development, according to a temporary org chart, I start with 29 direct reports\u2026<\/b> \u2026Also noteworthy: The AT&T Microelectronics relationship led to the Newton project<\/b>, and then on to another company\u2019s hardware\u2026 but that\u2019s a later chapter.<\/p>\n
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Undeterred, I land at SFO in February, 1981, and immediately drive down to Apple\u2019s Silicon Valley mothership in Cupertino, CA. When and where is the training course?<\/b> You know, like at Data General where they run a tight induction curriculum with eliminations along the way?<\/p>\n
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Pre-EU Common Market regulations simplified the movement of goods across borders, so we used procedures originally designed for vegetables and fruits (pun unintended) to move computers from The Netherlands, a friendlier trading nation, into France.<\/b> A company called Seedrin<\/b> (last three letters of my name plus last four of my street) was set up in my name as sole proprietor, with a total capital of 20,000 Francs (about $3K), and given an exclusive contract to take orders and deliver goods from an Apple warehouse<\/b> situated in an ex-US Military camp in Zeist, Netherlands.\u2026 All we needed were offices and a buffer warehouse. We soon located a building that Pharma company Choay no longer needed. Luckily, it was close to my old HP France, a target for recruitment efforts<\/b>. I soon met Choay\u2019s CEO who demanded to know how a $3K-capital company was going to make rent. I explained that this was just a disguise to go around government hurdles. This, as he thoroughly disliked regulators, pleased him greatly and led him to give us the furniture for free<\/b>.<\/div>\n
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With a long and friendly history with their current distributor Sonotec, a family business run by the avuncular and flexible Georges Zimmeray, they had mixed feelings about Apple taking over its own distribution.
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our sales people didn\u2019t work on commission. To add a bit of \u201ccompetitive encouragement\u201d, I set up a small PFS:File program that tallied daily, weekly, and monthly sales-per-person.<\/b> Every morning, I printed the latest and passed it out to the entire team
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And it was more than just Apple products. In my first Cupertino visit, I chanced upon a demo by French hardware developers Mssrs. Chaillat and Chalign\u00e9. They had designed an Apple ][ extension card that bypassed the mediocre native NTSC and, instead, provided a clean RGB display using the French mandated Peritel connector that was available for a number of display devices, included the ubiquitous Trinitron monitor. \u2026 This sort of impulse buy wasn\u2019t exactly standard company policy, but the product looked very good, so did the numbers, and Apple management was otherwise preoccupied\u2026 a perfect illustration of the freedom and benign neglect that I found so compelling during my years at Apple \u2014 in France<\/b>.<\/p>\n
I fondly (and nostalgically) recall how the company published an Apple Magazine with, if my recollection is correct, a story by Johnathan Livingston Seagull\u2019s<\/a> author Richard Bach in one issue, and a Ray Bradbury<\/a> poem titled Ode To The Quick Computer in another. I only recall the poem\u2019s last verse: So cowards, what are you afraid of<\/i>\u2026<\/b>
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We got along nicely and he smilingly approved of my simplified view of his trade: Marketing\u2019s primary task is positioning, defining identity.<\/b> Put another way, if you don\u2019t have a clean, clear, resonant identity, there no story to tell <\/b>\u2014 and your efforts and budgets are wasted.<\/div>\n
We zeroed on the raison d\u2019\u00eatre of Personal Computers, and on what Apple PCs did for humans<\/b>.
Symbols, the alphabet and Hindu-Arabic numerals were humankind\u2019s one of, if not the, most important inventions. With symbol strings, one could write Elizabethan poetry, religious scriptures, math, physics, Wall Street greed\u2026
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Steve Jobs, who would later position Apple at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, called his machines bicycles for the mind.<\/b> In France, at the time, we used ULMs (Ultralight Motorized planes) as a metaphor.
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So, we endeavored to put more specifics on the mind-body extension virtues of our PCs. Because we all need simple, sharp taxonomies<\/b>, we decided our personal computers helped with five activities: Think, Organize, Communicate, Learn and Play<\/b>. And we pointed to software products as examples.<\/p>\n
Lionel\u2019s most notable creation for us was La Fondation Apple pour le Cin\u00e9ma<\/b>. When he began outlining the project, I told him we couldn\u2019t possibly afford the cost of such an operation. In fact, he told me, he knew of a need we could inexpensively fulfill: helping young and always cash-strapped movie directors promote their movies. For 30,000 francs (say $20K today) the Foundation could pay for posters on downtown columns advertising movies and theater shows. He\u2019d assemble an unpaid jury of actors and scriptwriters<\/b> friends, take everyone to Martinique, expenses paid, for a few days of relaxation and movie reviewing, and of naming a winner to be drummed up.
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at the Cannes Film Festival<\/a>, a French radio reporter put a microphone in my face and demanded to know what a computer company had to do with the movie business<\/b>. This was a golden opportunity to explain how Apple was different, how we stood for tools for creative pursuits, as opposed to instruments of oppression mechanizing office tasks. <\/b>The gent chuckled, everyone understood what\/whom I meant.
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While, in the US, Apple marketeers were struggling to promote the company as a worthy opponent to Big Blue and its clones, at Apple France, we decided a frontal attack was the road to perdition. Early in our existence, we had decided to position Apple as providing tools for creative pursuits<\/b>, only occasionally getting our machines in the forbidden office fortress through the side door\u2026<\/p>\n
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I inserted myself in the heated exchange and asked the unhappy customer if he wanted us to buy his system back because \u201cwe couldn\u2019t afford a single unhappy Apple patron\u2026\u201d<\/b>. The answer was a resounding NO, he wanted to keep his Apple ][. Next, I arranged for the customer to bring the dead system to our service department. As a special favor, we\u2019d recycle a board <\/b>from an otherwise dead machine and bring his machine back to life. Lastly, I asked for his child\u2019s age. Why? For the t-shirt, of course (Apple t-shirts were items then)<\/b>; I want to thank you for the opportunity to make things right.<\/p>\n
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Because she had an extremely seductive, clear radio voice, my dream was to have her read stories to callers as they waited.<\/b> She immediately accepted, told me she\u2019d do it for free as a thank you, and that she\u2019d write the stories herself. These were sweet little tales that markedly changed the mood of callers. Some even asked to be put back on hold because they wanted to hear the end of the tale<\/b>\u2026
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Mac trouble was to become my opportunity, and an occasion to make a series of cultural mistakes when landing in Cupertino in the Spring of 1985<\/b>\u2026<\/p>\n
To this day I remember the electrifying effect on the audience, and troubled thoughts regarding mass persuasion \u2014criticized on screen and, without irony, performed right in the room<\/b>.<\/p>\n
For a supposedly stodgy company, IBM\u2019s PC marketing was surprisingly clever. They <\/b>appropriated Charlie Chaplin as a mascot and ran a very successful TV ad campaign that positioned their machine as the personal computer<\/b>. I was stunned: They\u2019re stealing our song!<\/p>\n
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\u2026sales of the original 128k Macintosh were hobbled <\/b>by its relatively high price ($2,495) and the same lack of features that hurt the Apple ][ \u2014 no hard disk, no office productivity software, no Lotus 1\u20132\u20133<\/b>.\u2026<\/p>\n
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\u2026A talk that Sculley gave to our staff describing Apple\u2019s future was the best business talk I had ever heard<\/b>, and I told him so. I wasn\u2019t flattering him, it was my honest feeling and my hope for the company\u2019s coming years.
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To counter the Mac\u2019s perceived and real weakness in business productivity apps, Jobs came up with the concept of a Macintosh Office including a Local Area Network (LAN), a File Server (essentially a networked hard drive), and a networked laser printer. This was vintage Jobs: A grand vision supported by a spectacular demo.<\/b> Unfortunately, it was only a demo.
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I addressed a pair of notes to Sculley in which I dissected Jobs\u2019 story. The Mac Office concept was never going to become a reality (I wrote)<\/b>, and even if the fantasy could be true, it wouldn\u2019t solve our Corporate America market problem.<\/p>\n
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Also, strange as it may seem, I was a rarity compared to most Cupertino senior execs: I had actual, repeated computer technology experience. All of the above led to an invitation to move to Cupertino in the Spring of 1985. Or, to put it another way: \u201cEnough criticizing. If you\u2019re so sure, why don\u2019t you come over and help us fix things?\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
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The Jobs I knew in 1985 had no experience outside of Apple. As Bill Gates once felicitously said, \u201csuccess is a terrible teacher\u201d.<\/b> \u2026 The success of the Apple ][ might have seduced Jobs into believing that he knew\u2026
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\u2026May, 1985: Apple ][ sales are falling; the Mac has yet to take off. We need to make some changes, pronto, that will attract new customers and keep the old ones coming back.<\/b>
\u2026the proposed Apple IIGS<\/b> (\u201cG\u201d for graphics, \u201cS\u201d for sound) was undeniably superior to earlier Apple ][s and the current Mac, but it used a virtually unknown processor with a doubtful future<\/a> and offered so-so compatibility with earlier Apple ][ <\/b>models\u2026
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On the Mac side, I suggested we needed to do three things: Implement a few quick improvements that will make the Mac feel more muscular, design an \u201copen\u201d Mac with interface card slots and color display capabilities, and slide a robust operating system kernel under the existing Mac OS.
\u2026made their way into the next Mac offering, the Macintosh Plus, announced in January, 1986. The most important new feature was the incorporation of a SCSI connector that let you plug in an external hard drive. Less conspicuous were double-sided floppies, a larger ROM, and a doubling of internal memory (RAM) to 1MB<\/b> \u2026
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Unfortunately, the suggestion that we introduce a kernel into the Mac OS was completely unsuccessful.
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\u2026I\u2019ll venture that Jobs\u2019 decision to \u201cgo light\u201d with the Mac was a result of the Lisa<\/a>. The Lisa had a proper, home-grown multitasking OS that was far ahead of its time<\/b>\u2026
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\u2026We didn\u2019t have time to write such a complex piece of code, so we looked at companies such as Hunter & Ready who would license a kernel. <\/b>Problem almost solved.
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But then we realized that the task of delicately lifting the existing Mac software base, disconnecting and reconnecting blood vessels and nerves \u2014that, too, would take time that was beyond our budget\u2026
As we got busy with the short and medium term fixes for the Mac product line, Apple engineer Sam Holland came up with another, longer term idea: Let\u2019s develop a quad processor of our own for future Apple personal computers<\/b>
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