Certainly Apple's latest reorganization, and the subsequent loss of 1,300 jobs, was genuine (and genuinely unfortunate) news. But Apple has been there before, and so have other companies—and in a much bigger way. IBM and Digital come to mind; both companies are currently golden on Wall Street, but it wasn't so long ago that both were considered beyond redemption by the same astute analysts. The January 23 Wall Street Journal announcement of Apple's "imminent" merger with Sun Microsystems was big news, but as of this writing (January 25) it hasn't happened. And given the paltry price apparently being offered for Apple's shares ($23, according to today's New York Times), it may not happen. Sun is but the latest in a very long list of companies thought to be targeting Apple, and already there is talk of other players becoming involved before this latest crisis is over.

Yet all of this begs the point. Whatever happens, Apple is in deep trouble, and there is no quick or easy way out.

What's wrong with Apple?

Apple Computer, Inc., is without doubt the most closely scrutinized and frequently "analyzed" of all technology companies, and with good reason: in many ways, it still sets the pace for the personal computer industry. Even today. So it has been easy for Macintosh loyalists—and we are certainly among them—to assume that things will somehow right themselves; that this is but the latest battle in computing's permanent holy war, and all decent, creative and thoughtful people will continue to believe in and follow the Mac Way.

It has been easy, but terribly destructive. This very belief has been subverted by unrelenting market forces into a kind of a willful denial. We Macintosh partisans must believe in the superiority of our platform; in the first place, it truly is superior, and in the second place, it's really all we have left to believe in these days. The fatal error is the assumption that superiority guarantees success.

This delusion, by all accounts, still afflicts Apple's management—there have been no sweeping managerial changes in response to the events of recent weeks (the massive layoff was a knee-jerk reaction, triggered by Wall Street's expectations), and no major change seems to be in the offing. Unless it's a takeover by Sun, or someone else.

But Apple's management, while responsible for many widely documented screw-ups, is not solely to blame for the company's dangerous position. In many ways, the company is caught up in forces—i.e., financial and market realities—it can no longer control, and the very dedication of Mac users to their machines is at least partially responsible. We thought we could control anything.

What's right with Apple

The long-running "war" for the hearts and minds of personal computer users is, for all intents and purposes, over. Windows won. It shouldn't have, by logical and aesthetic standards, but it did. Microsoft owns the market—the mass market—and this will not change anytime soon, if ever.

But this does not mean the end of Apple Computer and its trailblazing operating system. Apple and the Macintosh can survive, even thrive, by forgoing the mass market and directing their very real strengths toward providing creative, leading-edge solutions for the people and organizations who need them. This is a decent market in its own right, and Apple's natural arena.

What's right with Apple? From a purely technological standpoint, almost everything. The company has been a pioneer from the first, and its technology remains deeply influential and widely imitated. The Mac's superiority in terms of ease-of-use and productivity has been endlessly documented, so there's no point to going over that here. (See Apple's "Why Macintosh" pages for details and pointers to other sites that compare computer operating systems.) But Apple remains, or has recently become, the leader in many other advanced applications, including:

• The Internet—the Mac is the leading platform for Web developers, and ranks #2 (behind Sun) as an Internet server.
• Film and television—Silicon Graphics is the high-end here, but Power Macs play a major role in both industries.
• Music—the Mac is far and away the leading platform here.
• Publishing—Apple and Adobe launched desktop publishing, and still dominate.
• Education—Apple has always been first, for obvious reasons.
• Science and Engineering—the PowerPC chip has made Macintosh the preferred desktop machine for applications that require fast floating-point performance for complex mathematical operations.

A theme is clearly apparent in the above list, and it is this: Apple and the Macintosh are the best choice for people involved in creative, thoughtful work.

Next week: Apple ascendant?

(Reviewed January 22, 1996)