What strikes me in retrospect is that, despite a hideously convoluted company chronology in which Apple's much vaunted early '80s ideals were sold out, abandoned and reinvented, the company and its products today (May 2006) bear a remarkable resemblence to the original "Dream" that Sculley is still talking about here.
Following the launch of the first Mac in 1984, Apple was on a rising curve, but trying to figure out how to extend the success of the company in the personal computer market into the corporate arena. In 1983 Steve Jobs had hired PepsiCo's John Sculley for just this reason; Sculley's response was to persuade Apple to ditch Jobs.
I manage to make the following report on Apple's 1986 Cambridge Conference for "Which Computer?" look like a personal interview with Sculley. Most probably it was just a write-up of a Sculley keynote address.
[Report on AUC][wc?][7 Apr 86][chb]
"Apple is very serious about business," John Sculley would like it to be known. The forty-eight year old chief executive was over in this country to address the Apple University Consortium (AUC) Conference at Cambridge shortly before Easter. The AUC is a select group of academic customers world-wide whose influential position as today's buyers of technology and as trainers of tomorrow's potential customers, gives them special leverage. Discounts of up to 60% on Apple Macintoshes are only part of the story; probably more important still are the channels of communication and support that Apple encourage and help finance.
The three-day AUC Conference at Cambridge University was a one example of this support. Three hundred delegates from 27 countries gathered around Queen's College at Apple's expense to exchange ideas and software, and hear about Apple's plans for the future.
Sculley, a veteran marketeer who was called in from the Pepsi-Cola corporation to help pull Apple out of the industry slump, likes to quote Bill Gates, his counterpart in MicroSoft and more than fifteen years his junior. "Bill says there are only two architectures worth considering: IBM and Apple. And there is no room for any more."
Sculley is voicing Apple's official response to the suggestion that the company needs to guard its back against Atari and Commodore, games and home computer companies that are each making a push for the low-end business market. The Atari ST range of machines, and Commodore's new Amiga are based on the same 68000 processor used in the Apple Macintosh, and draw heavily on the easy to use icon-and-mouse human interface that is the Mac's main selling point over the older generation of IBM PC-style computers.
Industry commentators agree that the Amiga's hardware is superior to the Macintosh, and that Atari's sub-$1000 ST range of machines leave the $2000-plus Macintosh standing in the value-for-money stakes -- if the cost of the box is your criterion. But Sculley justifies his confidence by pointing out that purchase based on hardware price is naive. "You have to look at availability of software, what the growth path and reliability of the company is going to be -- is the company going to be around three or five years from now?"
He doesn't like to be reminded that measured by these criteria, Apple comes a very long second to IBM. With 750,000 sold world-wide, around half of those into education, the Macintosh's penetration of the corporate scene has so far been almost insignificant, despite an enormously expensive advertising campaign in 1984. The recent redesign to the faster and smoother Macintosh Plus has now got sales moving, but it is too early to the effect.
"The question isn't whether we are as large as IBM," says Sculley, shifting ground disarmingly, "but is our technology appropriate? Are we becoming market-driven enough that we can deliver the solutions that will develop those markets?"
"Market-driven" is now a key phrase at Apple, as they try to live down the image of a gee-whizz, garage-based company more concerned with tuning the technology than finding out what the customers need. Sculley's own dedication to this principle resulted in a break with company founder Steve Jobs and a massive reorganisation of personnel and attitudes. "This time we had to demonstrate that we cannot only build remarkable computers, but that we could manage a company in the light of an industry that no longer had 50 - 60 - 70% growth per year."
The industry has changed -- and so, says Sculley, Apple had to change. "I'm very pleased that our organization was able to introduce greater discipline, more accountability... at the same time not to lose its culture and the things that made it exciting in the past. Because of these efforts I think all of us realise that if Apple wasn't successful then a lot of the Dream would never happen."
Despite the new toughness, "the Dream" remains another of Apple's key phrases -- a workstation based around the creative needs of the individual rather than the workaday uniformity of the IBM PC. But Sculley has undoubtedly given the Dream real substance -- for the first time Apple has a business strategy and the muscle to back it in the
shape of half a billion dollars in the bank.
The reserves give Apple two things. "We are financially strong enough that we have the resources to invest in product development. And cash in the bank engenders confidence in the business market place that we
will be a reliable vendor over time."
Apple's aggressive selling into the educational market has given the Macintosh a significant foothold in American universities, and many others throughout the world. As Macintosh-trained graduates leave and go into business, Apple's next goal is to become a major player in the corporations. "Apple began in the '70's by creating an emerging
market, and that's what we'll do again. We're not going head on against IBM and saying we need to take some of your market away from you in order to exist. There are things we can do with our technology that haven't been done before -- things which we think can be as pervasive in business as they have been for the enthusiasts and in
education."
Connectivity is one strategy they hope will get them into the corporations. Apple interpret the word to mean that individuals should be allowed to choose their workstation to suit themselves, as long as its output is compatible in protocol and structure with what the rest of the network is doing. Apple's own AppleTalk is a well-designed,
modern network that is easy to install and easy to convert to other non-proprietory standards like TCPIP, but fitting it in cleanly with vendor-specific networks is not a trivial task, and at the moment connectivity is more part of the Dream than the reality.
Heading Apple's list of 'things which haven't been done before' is desktop publishing. Sculley hopes to step neatly round corporate IBM-only policy by offering a package that falls outside the catagory of personal computer: one or more Macintosh workstations bundled with Apple's own LaserWriter and software like Aldus PageMaker.
"The biggest philosophical change Apple had to go through was to recognise that it takes more than making the technology exciting if we are to succeed in the business world, because frankly business doesn't care if the technology is exciting. What they care about is does it solve problems -- can I be more productive? Can I do something for less, or can I get more for the investment that I'm making."
For Sculley, desktop publishing is just such a real-world solution. "Business has said 'this has value', and it's doing exceptionally well.
You should expect to see similar solutions-driven efforts from Apple in the future. We're now saying 'Let's define what the user wants and then we'll use technology to fulfill the need', as opposed to 'Let's create the product and then figure out how to sell it!' It's a radical change in this young industry. If we are successful then we will be
able to demonstrate over the coming years that desktop publishing may be as pervasive in the last years of the nineteen eighties as xerography was in the 1960's."
As chairman of Pepsi-Cola until April of '83, Sculley achieved the considerable feat of putting Pepsi first over Coca-Cola in the the Neilsen market ratings. He has no illusions about doing the same thing for Apple against IBM. Not immediately. But in the meantime he sees his new company -- and would like you to see it too -- as the only viable alternative to Big Blue in the PC stakes.
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