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Making The Macintosh 1.0
beekman1 writes: "Stanford has up their first edition of Making the Macintosh. Where many articles deal with the political aspects of this period (Steve Jobs taking over, etc.) this one has the technical details like the evolution of the mouse from lab testing to production device. Link aquired from ArsTechnica"
(Normally I am quite critical of Apple, the Mac and Steve Jobs himself. This is one situation where I feel I need to make an exception....)
Steve Jobs may have a reputation as a control freak, but even he didn't always get his way , especially when it came to the Mac.
Many of us know about his demand for 3 mouse buttons, but few know about his instistance that the first Mac be priced at $1,299. For what they were selling at the time, it would have truly been a computer for the rest of us, and would have lived up to all the hype.
However Scully decided he wanted to make a lot of money. His idea was "forget about things like userbase, and pay attention to stock prices!"
The introductory price of $2,499 was an insult to everything the Mac was supposed to be about.
Jobs complained to Scully, who along with Jean Louis Gasse (yep, THAT one) raved about how wonderful it would be when Apple was charging $10,000 for Macs . Which they did.
It only went downhill from there.....
The marketshare rose slowly, then fell dramatically. Gasse fought licensing of the Mac for years, then bitched endlessly when Apple refused to give Be their specs.
Then, 2 years ago, Jobs finally got his chance to ship a $1,299 All-In-One Mac. Finally laying to rest the demons from when he first started to lose control.....