Macintosh History: 1997

Can you say beleaguered?

The word rose from obscurity to become the word most associated with Apple Computer in 1997.

The other word was Jobs - Steve Jobs - who rejoined Apple after the NeXT acquisition, first as an advisor, and later as interim CEO. (He finally removed the word interim from his title in January 2000.)

Unbeknownst to the world at large, the day after Jobs became interim CEO (Sept. 16), he started the iMac project.

But that's a story for 1998.

Money

Apple bled red ink, losing hundreds of millions of dollars in 1997, and acquiring the title beleaguered. That remained the case until the fourth quarter.

OS 8

Steve Jobs once said that if he ran Apple, he would milk the OS for all it was worth. After a ho hum System 7.6 release in January, Mac OS 8 was released in July and became one of the best selling software packages ever.

The key to its success was abandoning support for the oldest Macs (OS 8 was especially designed for the 68040 and PowerPC, although a few have managed to get it running on older Macs) while adding enough neat features to hook millions of Mac users.

It worked. And we soon discovered that Mac OS 8.1 was very stable on both 040-based Macs and Power Macs. It became the "must own" software of the Mac community in 1997.

Send Out the Clones

The most debated decision of 1997 was ending the Maclone industry. Although Umax continued to sell their SuperMac line through mid-1998, the two year experiment ended with Motorola, Umax, and Daystar losing money and Power Computing owned by Apple.

Much as it pained us to watch both Apple and Mac OS market share decline, over time we did come to realize that for the Mac to survive, Apple Computer had to thrive. Buying Power Computing and refusing to renew license agreements with Motorola and Umax assured that Apple would sink or swim on its own merits.

The Next Wave

On November 10, 1997, Apple introduced two new models that have completely reshaped the Macintosh product line: the PowerBook G3 and the Power Mac G3.

The G3 (a.k.a. PowerPC 750) was designed as a replacement for the 603e, but benchmarks quickly demonstrated that it outperformed the 604e in most functions. Because of this, Apple would soon move its entire line to a single CPU, the G3. The entire Apple line was G3-based until the Power Mac G4 was introduced in October 1999.

Although there were some initial teething pains - and some backlash from Mac professionals about putting an IDE drive in a Power Mac - the G3 course was set and would lead Apple from one profitable quarter to another.

The Competition

Throwing confusion into the Wintel market, Intel released the Pentium II in May and the Pentium MMX in June. Which was more powerful? Well, it depended on what you wanted to do.

Personal Perspective

I'll readily admit to having disagreed with Apple on the clone decision. I appreciated the competition that Power Computing, Motorola, and Umax gave Apple, despite the fact that my one experience with a clone had not been good. (We bought a Power 120 at work during the period when they had problems with the glue holding the heatsink to the CPU.)

I think Apple acted in bad faith in arguing that it lost money on each clone sold. I think Apple abused its position as certifier of all new designs. I don't think Apple played fair - but I also realize that Apple had a gaping wound that could soon bleed the company dry.

They had to do something about the clone market, although I don't think they had to completely destroy it. (BTW, I'm writing this on a Umax SuperMac J700/180, which I bought at a close out price in June 1998. It's a great computer that's been completely abandoned by its manufacturer. But, just like a Mac, it should keep running for years without any problem.)

As for Steve Jobs, I think he has an ego to match Bill Gates - and I believe that's a very good thing. His decisions to kill cloning, build the iMac, release OS 8 instead of waiting for Rhapsody, and other decisions have turned Apple around and killed the word beleaguered.