Ways to save Apple (1997)
archive.wired.com
Ways to save Apple (1997)
1–10 of 82 posts
Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)
#2Kinda weird how much of this is the opposite of what worked.
Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)
#3I love reading posts from the past like this, ironic how things actually played out for Apple. Interestingly a few of the points actually happened, specifically; point #7, point #12, point #14 and more interestingly "39. Build a laptop that weighs 2 pounds." - kind of fitting that this played out for Apple focusing on thinner and lighter products than competitor offerings.
This takes me back to the days leading up the new release of the first iPhone. Everyone was predicting that an Apple phone would fail, that Apple should stick to what they know and in a short amount of time they proved everyone wrong and became the largest smartphone manufacturer in the world.
Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)
#4Kinda weird how much of this is the opposite of what worked.
I felt reading this is what life for a CEO must be like. To be continually bombarded with 101 ways to do the job. 80%+ are wrong, from people who absolutely believe at the time they are correct.
Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)
#5Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)
#6tl;dr "101. Don't worry. You'll survive. It's Netscape we should really worry about."
Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)
#7Kinda weird how much of this is the opposite of what worked.
Plenty of items on the list are involved with what happened. Like 'keep a retail presence', 'distinguish your looks' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac#/media/File:Nafija55.jpg came out the next year), 'focus on customer support', 'break new ground, don't CYA', 'improve your marketing', 'simplify product names', even 'buy a song' (hello U2).
Notable exceptions are 'apologise', 'build software the business community cares about', and, of course, #1 'abandon hardware'.
These are all items on the first page, because I haven't clicked the second one yet.
Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)
#8If you'd bought $10,000 of AAPL stock when this article was published (June 1997), it would be worth about $523,000 today, excluding dividends.
Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)
#9this has made Hacker News many, many times
Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)
#10> 24. Pay cartoonist Scott Adams $10 million to have Dilbert fall in love with a Performa repairwoman.
I can bet this was submitted by Scott Adams himself. It's sounds completely like him.
And that gives you the idea of the worth of these "101 ways" even at the moment they were published.