Chapter 80 apple falling

For a few years after Jobs was out, Apple could comfortably enjoy high profit margins thanks to its temporary dominance of desktop publishing.John Sculley, who felt like a genius at the time, made a series of manifestos in 1987 that look embarrassing today.Jobs wanted Apple "to be a great consumer products company," Sculley wrote, "It's a stupid plan...Apple will never be a consumer products company...We can't bend reality because of our dreams of changing the world...high Technology cannot be designed and sold as a consumer product." Jobs was stunned. As Apple's market share and revenue continued to decline under Sculley in the early 1990s, his anger and contempt for Sculley grew. "Sculley ruined Apple by introducing sleazy people and sleazy values," Jobs later lamented. "They only care about how to make money—mainly for themselves, but also for Apple—and don't care how Make great products." Jobs felt that Sculley's pursuit of profits came at the expense of market share. "The Macintosh lost to Microsoft because Sculley insisted on squeezing every penny of the profit instead of trying to improve the product and lower the price."

Microsoft spent several years imitating the Macintosh's graphical user interface, and by 1990 it had launched the Windows 3.0 system, and since then it has embarked on a journey to dominate the desktop computer market. Windows 95, released in August 1995, became the most successful operating system ever, and Macintosh sales began to plummet. "Microsoft just copied other people's work and then stuck with it, using its control of the IBM compatible machine." Jobs later said, "Apple deserved it. It didn't invent anything new after I left. The Mac hardly improved. Facing Microsoft , it can only sit and wait to die.”

Jobs' frustration with Apple was palpable.Once, when he was speaking to members of the Stanford Business School club at a student's home, the student asked him to sign a Macintosh keyboard.Jobs said that if he could remove all the keys that were added to the Mac after he left Apple, he could sign it.He took out the car keys, and removed the four arrow cursor keys that he had forbidden to use, as well as the "F1, F2, F3..." and other function keys on the top row. "I'm changing the world one keyboard at a time," he deadpanned.Then he signed the incomplete keyboard.

On Christmas Day 1995, while on vacation at the Kona Resort in Hawaii, Jobs was walking on the beach with his friend Larry Ellison, the powerful chairman of Oracle.They talked about buying Apple and then putting Jobs back in charge.Ellison said he could arrange $3 billion in financing. "I'll buy Apple, and you as CEO will get 25% of the shares immediately, and we can reproduce its past glory." But Jobs objected. "I decided I wasn't the type to do a hostile takeover," he explained. "If they asked me to go back, it would be different." By 1996, Apple's market share had fallen from a high of 16 percent in the late 1980s to 4 percent. Michael Spixidler, who replaced Sculley as Apple CEO in 1993, tried to sell the company to Sun Microsystems, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard.After the defeat, Spindler was replaced by Gil Amelio in February 1996.Jill is a research and development engineer and former CEO of National Semiconductor Corporation.In his first year in office, Apple lost $1 billion and its stock price plummeted from $70 to $14 in 1991, just as the tech bubble was pushing other stocks to record highs.

Amelio wasn't a fan of Jobs.They first met in 1994, when Amelio had just been elected to Apple's board of directors.Jobs called him and said, "I want to come see you." Amelio invited him to the National Semiconductor office.Amelio later recalled watching Jobs arrive through the glass walls of his office—looking “like a boxer, aggressive and elusively graceful, or like a noble jungle cat.” , always ready to pounce on prey."Amelio later recorded.They exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes—far longer than Jobs was used to—and then Jobs suddenly announced his intentions.He wanted Amelio to help him return to Apple as CEO. "There's only one person who can turn Apple around," Jobs said. "There's only one person who can lead the company out of the woods." Jobs thought the Macintosh era was over and it was time to create something new and innovative.

"If the Mac is dead, what will replace it?" Amelio asked.Jobs' answer failed to impress him. “Steve didn’t seem to have a clear answer,” Amelio said later, “he seemed to have some scattered thoughts.” Amelio thought he was witnessing Jobs’ reality distortion field and was proud not to be affected by it .He rudely invited Jobs out of his office. By the summer of 1996, Amelio realized he had a serious problem.Apple pinned its hopes on creating a new operating system called Copland, but soon after Amelio became CEO, he discovered that this was just a paper thing, which could neither achieve the better network and memory protection that Apple needed, nor Unable to deliver on schedule in 1997.Amelio has publicly promised that he will find a replacement soon.But the problem is, he has no substitute.

So Apple needs a partner to provide a stable operating system, preferably an operating system like Unix, with object-oriented applications.At the time, there was one company that clearly could offer such software—NeXT—but it would be a while before Apple paid attention. Apple first targeted Be, a company founded by Jean-Louis Garcy.Gacy began to discuss selling Be to Apple, but at a meeting with Amelio in Hawaii in August 1996, he got too cocky.He said he wanted to bring a team of 50 people to Apple and a 15 percent stake in the company, worth about $500 million.Amelio was dumbfounded.Apple valued Be at just $50 million at the time.After several rounds of bargaining, Garcia could not accept an offer lower than $275 million.He thought Apple had no other options.Gacy said to others, "I've got their vitals, and I'm going to pinch them until they hurt." It didn't feel good to hear that in Amelio's ears.

Apple's chief technology officer, Ellen Hancock, is in favor of Sun's Unix-based Solaris operating system, even though it doesn't yet have a user-friendly interface.And Amelio actually started leaning toward Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, thinking that some cosmetic changes could be made to make it look and feel like a Mac while still being compatible with the vast array of software available to Windows users.Bill Gates was so eager for the deal that he started calling Amelio himself. Of course, there is another option.Two years ago, Macworld magazine columnist (and former Apple software evangelist) Guy Kawasaki published a mock press release joking that Apple was about to buy NeXT and make Jobs its CEO.The article imitated Mike Markkula and asked Jobs: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugar-coated Unix, or changing the world?" Jobs agreed to the acquisition and said: "I am a father now, and I need A steady source of income." The article commented that "because of his experience at NeXT, it is expected that he will bring back to Apple a sense of humility that he never had before".The article also quoted Bill Gates as saying that there will be more Jobs' innovations for Microsoft to copy.Everything in this press release at the time was a joke.But reality has a strange habit of catching up with the mockery.