Apple Mac (was: !Re: Nuke Redmond!)

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Mon Apr 10 18:13:42 2000

David Vohs <netsurfer_x1_at_hotmail.com> wrote:
> But the management team headed by John Sculley
> felt that this would amount to giving away the company, because Apple was
> making most of its profits on hardware sales.

Good observation, that's exactly what they thought. Many of us inside
Apple at the time thought they were completely wrong. If you did a
rational evaluation of where Apple's products' customer value was, it
was clear that Apple was a *software* company that happened to give away
computers with the software. (Admittedly it was expensive software.)

They were so concerned about losing the hardware business that they made
many very stupid decisions.

If you compared Apple and Microsoft at that time, it was apparent that
selling software (with perhaps some hardware business as a sideline) was
a much more lucrative proposition. Microsoft had similar revenues but
much higher profits. We all wondered why management didn't get it.
Received on Mon Apr 10 2000 - 18:13:42 BST