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Apple's First Flops
Sabah Arif writes "Apple began the eighties with two major flops under its belt: the Apple III and the LISA. Both machines were attempts at breaking into the business market. They were technologically advanced, but major flaws prevented their success."
Where can i get one of those babes? I want to replace my 95 cause it's beginning to be insecure and unstable... ...deja vu ...
"The press declared the machine and its software revolutionary. In a matter of months, the Macintosh had revolutionized Apple and the computer business" - they revolutionized and other company rules the market ?
Siropel
I'd say two major flops are a pretty good hit/miss ratio compared to the number of products they've had out, 2:50 or so.
What about the Apple Pippin? Few people know about Apples ill-fated console release.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
major flops under its belt
It's ok Steve... it happens to every guy! Maybe you were just nervous!
Look at you now - with your impressive... eh... Mac Mini...
I don't know if there are some Mac addicts here who can remember it, but the "AV" machines back then (660 AV and 840AV iirc) with their AT&T 3210 DSP, GeoPort, etc... were nicknamed Mac III
:)
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:)
And of course were an horrible flop
It's funny because back then, the nickname "Mac III" made a lot of people associate it with Apple III, and there was, in the Mac hackers community, a bad feeling about it
Apple: Never again use "III" in a product name
Ben.
"... Apple began the eighties with..."
If this isn't old news.. I don't know what IS.
I think this is a Slashdot record... a dupe of a story that developed over 20 years ago!
All sarcasm aside, how is this news? Yes, they were flops. Again, 20 years ago. Some site is just putting up a history now, but that still doesn't make it news. It's just blatant flamebait. Come on, editors, take "stuff that matters" to heart!
Elmo knows where you live!
I wonder what Ppple III would've been like.
On top of that, Jobs' insistence that the machine have no fan made for a very hot board. After being used for a day or two, the mainboard would get so hot it would warp and unseat some of the chips. Apple refused to install a fan to fix the problem and instructed users to drop the machine on their desk to bang the chips back into place.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Yes, they are under 50 feet of E.T. Atari cartridges...
This post will be a great opportunity for Apple fans to rave about how fantastic Apple is and that they only produced two flops in their entire history. These posts will of course be modded up as this is macrumors here after all.
This post will also be a great opportunity for Apple hater to tell us how much Apple sucks and that everything they do is a failure. These posts will of course be modded down as this is macrumors here after all.
Additionally at least one major discussion about Apple pricing will break out, with one side claiming that Apple is simply to expensive and that you can get the same specs for a lot less money from $generic_computer_vendor_of_choice. This will of course prompt angry rebuttals from Apple fans claiming that nothing could be farther from the truth.
Of course comparing specs and prices is utterly pointless and will never lead to a result, but this won't stop anyone from happily participating in the flamefest.
Oh, and before I forget, at least 5 comments will mention that Macs are only used by gays.
"On top of that, Jobs' insistence that the machine have no fan made for a very hot board."
Why on earth would he object to putting a fan in it? Did he think it'd make too much noise?
My favorite part of the article: "Apple refused to install a fan to fix the problem and instructed users to drop the machine on their desk to bang the chips back into place."
What a concept! Usually when you drop things, they break. But when you drop an Apple, well, it just works (TM).
As I recall, Apple was the first to integrate SMALL 3.5" flops (on the Macintosh)
Sorry, I need a minute. Have to run to the bathroom...something in my eye. Just thinking about it gets me all bleary-eyed.
FTFA:
>where he led a dozen engineers (including future Apple CEO Larry Tesler)
Larry Tesler was never CEO of Apple. He was Chief Scientist and VP.
Kinda makes me wonder about the veracity of the rest of the piece...
Nowadays companies count in Teraflops.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Disclaimer: I'm an Apple fan, owner, and former employee (certainly not a high-level one, though).
That said, Apple screws up a lot, particularly in first versions of a new product. As the article says, the Lisa was a flop, but it led to the original Mac, which led to the real hit, the Mac II.
The Mac Portable was a terrible product--but it led to the Powerbook, which defined the laptop computer. The Cube was overpriced and didn't have a market, but it led to the Mini, which is kicking ass.
The iPod was a hit from the jump, but the Newton was dead from its announcement date (we knew it was in trouble when they started handing them out as employee awards).
but Apple never really got any sort of hold in the business market
Visicalc nearly did that. But since IBM had yet to legitimize personal computers with their "entry level systems," PCs were still looked upon by the business community as hobbyist toys.
From article:
By April 1984, Apple had managed to sell only 65,000 units, loosing money on the model.
Geez, Slashdot's power to make people misspell words is so powerful that it's leaking into linked articles!
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Here's a nice list of real (ongoing?) flops: LEM Road Apples They include the G4 Cube which, along with the Apple /// and Lisa, I would argue the only failure was the unrealisticly high MSRP.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Apple had a sort of adolscent crisis when the compan y got to a stage when the hormones took over (this might look like a metaphor, but most companies have a childhood, youth and middle age like the people who run it). The business side started leaning on the creative side and sort of screwed each other. Apple had a bunch of cool people coding for them (I wish ... Amiga...). But the business was more concerned about sellability than the raw coolness of the app in mind (see Google right now, it's going through the same loss of innocence).
Here's my list of top apple flops :- Apple Pippin (nice name !!)
- OpenDoc
- Lisa
- copland (no, not the movie)
- eWorld (what ?)
- Dalmatian Imacs
- Mac Portable
Btw, if it hadn't been for iMac and it appearing EVERY other commercial - apple might have just gone down silently. Now Ipod is bringing back the original proprietary wizards (Apple > Sun > Microsoft in this attitudeQuidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
how do people get jobs writing anything when they don't even know the difference between 'loose' and 'lose' or 'to' and 'too' or that all sentences should end with some form of puncuation? Article's somewhat interesting as far as the information goes, but this guy can't write worth a damn.
Wasn't that a flop?
The Lisa wasn't a commercial success but it certainly was a technological success, paving the way for the Mac. (If you haven't seen a picture of one, google around... they looked a bit like an original Mac (aka 'Mac Classic') rotated through 90 degrees. It had a revolutionary WIMP interface. I remember as an awestruck almost-teenager reading a breathless review in the UK's then only PC mag, "Personal Computer World" which said "the only bad thing we could find to say about it is that some of the icons look a little whimsical. How long could you look at a whimsical icon before it becomes irritating?" It was also over eight grand sterling, four times the price of the ugly, clunky CGA IBM PCs that were the competition...
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Only one picture was ever officially published of the Giotto stylus/tablet as I remember, and I'm not sure if it was a Newton on steroids or fully functional PC, but as an artist, writer, and MAC enthusiast, I knew I wanted one. I could find no surviving references during a quick search. It is sad and wonderful seeing great ideas appear before their time even when they then die; the creative spirit is indomitable!
The Cube was overpriced and didn't have a market, but it led to the Mini, which is kicking ass.
If Apple had just priced the G4 Cube correctly it would have been a hit, because its desktop footprint is really not much bigger than the currently fashionable Mac Mini. And it would have allowed people to buy less-expensive monitors, keyboards and mouse pointers, too.
The iPod was a hit from the jump....
I have to disagree with that. It was only when the version for Windows that included USB 2.0 support came out and the unveiling of the iTunes Music Store that the iPod really took off in popularity.
Jobs, if anything, was focused and visionary. A few screwups are nothing compared to the IBM PC Jr, and assorted junk that arrived from loads of other vendors. If nothing, he's consistent and found religion when he jumped to NeXt. The Darwin kernel and other human-factor profiles, along with sheer beauty make Job's stuff like Sony's product lines used to be.
The list of other flops is miles long. Flops are good: they test engineers and the market place. Some items are ahead of their time, others behind, and still others are just really bad ideas.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Dan Bricklin's spreadsheet ran on the Apple first and was the sole reason folks went out and bought an Apple. For a period (think early 80's), Apple owned the desktop computer market, with many more business-oriented applications than creative/educational titles.
Only after they got crushed by IBM machines did they focus on thier current market. I don't think IBM did them in as much as the IBM clone market, which reduced the cost of the hardware to far below Apple's. With a lower price, more people purchased IBM-compatible machines and the demand for software followed.
Apple's biggest flop has less to do with these products and more to do with their lack of service and support of those products. This is probably the biggest reason Apple flopped on the business machine end of things. They orphaned, most especially, the Apple Lisa. While the Mac that replaced it may have been a superior product, the bad taste left in the mouths of executives who bought into the Lisa program was too much. Business people like reliability and continuity, which is why Gates and MS made hay back in the day. MS may be a bloated tanker now, but in the early 80's it was a nimble group of techies fighting the good fight against IBM. And they gave excellent service, even to Apple users for whom they made lots of software.
Apple didn't provide that service. That was the biggest difference. The cost difference between early PC's and Macs wasn't that big. When the diverse configurabilty of the PC came into play in the late 80's, that was the death knell in terms of the greater business market.
Had Apple hand-held business in the early days, the computing world really might have been different indeed.
The unwashed Windows using masses are too stupid to recognize snobbery, much less understand the experience that makes up the Apple experience. Their simple little conformist minds cannot grasp the complexity that is the Macintosh. They can't see the quality, style, and substance in front of their faces. Fools! You're a fool if you think otherwise.
I have no more time to attempt to enlighten you. I'm going to Starbucks.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
It turns out according to the Apple sales database they sold exactly 65,535. :)
The Economics of Website Security
If the X86 hardware is faster, then why doesn't it outperform the Xserve clusters using Mac OS X and standard Apple hardware? Don't mistake bad benchmarking for good data. Don't believe me, go to the Super Computer web site (http://www.top500.org/lists/plists.php?Y=2004&M=1 1) where 5 of the top nine are PowerPC hardware. Number 7 on the list is built by using stock Xserves ordered directly from the on-line Apple Store and running Macintosh OS X. And, there are even faster Apple clusters in the wild that didn't even bother to try to compete for a ranking.
These are not marketing ploys. These are very expensive machines that are optimized to go as fast as they can to get the job done. No political bias...just go fast. The only X86 cluster in the list above a ranking of 9 has nearly twice the number of processors as the Virginia Tech cluster. Maybe you should spend a little less time pounding out Visual Basic programs and do some actual research before making statements like that.
Although PCs have the edge for power/price, hardware bang for buck is becoming less of a factor except for gamers. Chip speeds and memory sizes are starting to go past consumer requirements, even if you throw in HD video, so design and software are the key factors. This may be why we see Apple recapturing some market share.
There's enough of a market within homes, particularly digital homes, to drive Apple growth without business penetration. Apple is trying to be the new Sony and the hardware is a commodity; it's the software and design that are the real added values.
The Apple IIGS was deliberately crippled. It should have run at 8 MHz, but Apple chose 2.8 MHz to make it (1) faster than other Apple II models and (2) slower than the 8 MHz Macintosh.
The IIGS had great color support but absolutely lousy resolution. If it had supported 640 x 480 instead of CGA-esque 320 x 200, that would have helped a lot.
The Ensoniq sound chip was remarkable.
But in addition to making the IIGS underpowered and giving it low-res graphics, Apple had several ROM revisions that (1) required taking the computer back to your Apple dealer and (2) broke a lot of the software you already owned.
It coulda been a contender, but Apple's decisions kept that from happening.
I was working for another micro company when the Apple /// was first shown. When I saw it, and the double-shot-molded keys with word processor commands on them, I thought, "We're screwed!"
///, good, bad, ugly. The clock problem was caused by National Semiconductor. The clock battery problem was Apple's, and was fixed in the reintroduced /// by replacing the watch batteries (mounted to the logic board, requiring disassembly to replace) with 3 AA cells under the lid. The infamous memory problem was caused by cheapskates in purchasing buying cheap connectors -- tin on tin, and tin oxide is a tenacious insulator!
/// a failure? If you measured it in terms of Apple ][ sales, yes. If you measure it in terms of what it did to other companies/competitors, it was a success. And as others have mentioned, senior management felt it necessary to have the /// on the market prior to going public to show people that Apple was more than a one-trick pony.
/// also marked the first system that was actually engineered, as opposed to one that just happened. Hardware engineers, Software engineers, development plans, test plans -- a great leap forward.
/// rings the bell. I also remember the morning we found out that our sugar-water selling chairman had just decided to keynote a presentation in about 6 weeks by showing the Newton -- about 6 months too early!
4 months later, I was working at Apple -- before the company went public. Oh, everyone already had badges. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the Apple
Was the
The Apple
And Lisa? May not have sold a lot of machines, but it was a technological milestone, introducing new ideas to the computing public. It was a stepping stone for the Macintosh -- that's where the Mac project got Bill Atkinson and the Quickdraw core.
Apple flops? They're there, but many stem from over-reaching technically -- the Twiggy disk drive for example. Many didn't have enough backing, or enough spine -- eWorld? Open Doc?
How about pushing products out the door before they're ready? Apple
Many failures at Apple were products or ideas which were ahead of their time -- part of Lisa's problem. Newton fits into that category, ahead of its time and born prematurely. So does Web TV -- it didn't "fit" with the then Apple model, so Steve P and others took it outside, made it fly, eventually selling it to Gates.
Another example of Apple's "mistakes" and "failures" -- businesses other companies find very attractive.
IMHO running OSX on "x86" doesn't necessarily imply generic beige boxes. For example, Apple could easily build its own x86 boxes and still maintain hardware control, or they could have someone else build boxes to a particular spec that would be OSX-x86 compatible. The Xbox and Xbox 360 are good examples of controlled x86 and PPC hardware from the "other guys".
What I think would be really cool would be a box that is designed specifically to run OSX-x86, but can also run XP and/or XP apps natively without emulation (dual boot, vmware, wine, ...).
BReading sites like this one, it seems pretty clear that while LISA was a flop in and of itself, the original mac would never have been a success without it. This is both in terms of personnel (several key people were involved with both) and ideas - there was a lot of cross-pollination (though it doesn't sound like the LISA people were happy about that). So as a product, LISA was a flop, but as an investment by Apple, I'd think it should be considered wildly successful.
I've now seen several comments that the Lisa led to the Macintosh. That is a mischaracterization. The two machines were being developed at the same time! Check out Revolution In The Valley by Andy Hertzfeld, one of the members of the original Mac development team. It's a fun book, but it also will show you that the Lisa and Mac teams were in fact competing with each other and hardly communicated. Steve Jobs had a great deal to do with this. It's certain that some of the same basic ideas were inspiration for both groups, but it's not like the Lisa was developed, then Apple decided to develop the Mac based on it.
I had a 660AV, and it was a nice machine- I liked it; it was an affordable 68040, and that's why I bought it (I believe- this was almost 10 years ago). Speech recognition was kind of cool, but didn't work all that well. The software modem stuff was crap, the DSP-powered fractals only exciting for about 5 minutes. It was one of the newer machines capable of loading its ROM into RAM for a very noticeable speedup, at the penalty of a couple MB of lost memory, and memory was megabucks at the time. Basically, Apple oversold the DSP capabilities, because virtually NOTHING came out that actually used the DSP, even though it was very quick. PowerPC came along, and everyone promptly forgot about the DSPs.
...but MAN oh MAN could that thing crash in spectacular ways. Why? Well, the main OS would crash, but the DSP would keep chugging along, but would get garbage from the main system...and you'd get an incredible video acid trip, along with all sorts of squeals, static, etc from the audio. One time, my soft-modem went completely bonkers, going on+off hook like crazy until I pulled the plug.
Please help metamoderate.