Today we flipped back through an old highschool year book and came upone a blast of nostalgia... remember when Apple (NSDQ:AAPL) was a loser?
We found a June 1997 article from Wired Magazine called 101
Ways to Save Apple via the blog Mini-Microsoft. In hindsight, many of the recommendations turned out to be true, but its not hard to get a few calls right when
you're making 101 of them. Some of Wired's calls were also way, way off... such as the first one. All in all its a nice trip through memory lane.
1. Admit it. You're out of the hardware game. Outsource your hardware production, or scrap it entirely, to compete more directly with Microsoft without the liability of manufacturing boxes.
...
13. Exploit every Wintel user's secret fear that some day they're going to be thrown into a black screen with a blinking C-prompt. Advertise the fact that Mac users never have to rewrite autoexec.bat or sys.ini files.
14. Do something creative with the design of the box and separate yourselves from the pack. The original Macs stood out because of their innovative look. Repeat that. Get the folks at Porsche to design a box. Or Giorgio Giugiaro. Or Philippe Starck. We'd all feel better about shelling out the bucks for a Power Mac 9600 if we could get a tower with leopard spots.
Despite the best-forgotten red and blue Mac boxes from five yore, recent designs from Apple have
certainly separated the company’s products from the pack. While not a PC, iPod was obviously a design coup.
34. Port the OS to the Intel platform, with its huge amount of investment in hardware, software, training, and experience. Don't ignore it; co-opt it. Operating systems are dependent on installed base; that is your biggest hurdle now. It is not the head-to-head, feature-set comparison between Windows and Mac OS.
Now Apple is using Intel chips.
52. Return to the heady days of yore by insisting that Steve Jobs regrow his beard.
Steve Jobs does indeed sport a hip beard. He also wears black turtlenecks.
59. Invest heavily in Newton technology, which is one area where Microsoft can't touch you. Build voice recognition and better gesture recognition into Newton, making a new environment for desktop, laptop, and palmtop Macs. Newton can also be the basis of a new generation of embedded systems, from cash registers to kiosks.
Newton-what?
75. Speed sells. Push your advantage on the speed of the processor. This summer, you'll release Macs using 450- and 533-MHz processors. Your lead over Intel will be remarkable. Brag about this. Once the operating system shifts toward the end of this year, the PowerPC will really kick some ass (the OS is a major drag on the processor). Intel is forever marketing the speed of its chips. Make it clear that yours are much faster.
Power-who?
Many more, with some just cheeky. Reading them all makes you realize how little we can guess about a business's future out more than a few years. Meanwhile of course sell side analysts pitch you precise valuations based on 10-20 year forecasts.
Comments