boasting easy-to-use applications, it also possessed,
thanks to its whimsical icons, an endearing personal-
ity. Mac users’ loyalty became legendary.
Marketing the Mac The Mac, however, was hobbled
by its price ($2,495), initially meager software, and
co-founder Steve Jobs’s dismissive rejection of engi-
neers’ pleas for hard-drive support and more than
128 kilobytes of random-access memory (RAM). Ap-
ple counteracted these drawbacks with its legendary
Superbowl ad, which touted the new computer as an
alternative to the mindless conformity of corporate
culture, represented by IBM PCs. The ad declared
that, thanks to Apple’s product, “1984 won’t be like
Nineteen Eighty-Four” (a reference to George Orwell’s
novel portraying a nightmarish totalitarian future).
Advertising Agenamed Apple’s ad the Commercial of
the Decade, but its success in branding Macs as anti-
corporate may have cost Apple the opportunity to
sell to corporate America, which tended to perceive
the new computer as a product for home and hobby-
ists only.
The Macintosh was saved by the creation of a new
industry to take advantage of it. With Apple’s new
LaserWriter printer, Adobe’s Postscript language for
communicating between printer and computer, and
the document-creation program Aldus PageMaker,
Macs could be used to publish professional-quality
documents without the need for printing presses or
professional typesetting services. The desktop pub-
lishing industry was born, and Apple found a niche
market that it could dominate.
When the company introduced the Mac Plus in
1986, sales exploded. The Mac II (1987) sacrificed
the Mac’s iconic form for color and expansion slots.
Regular upgrades increased Macs’ power, from the
initial 8 megahertz in 1984 to the IIfx’s 140 mega-
hertz in 1990. The Mac Portable (1989) featured
an innovative active-matrix liquid crystal display,
but its lead-acid battery made it an unmanageable
15.6 pounds, belying its portable status. Beyond vi-
tal operating-system upgrades, the most interesting
new Apple software to be introduced was HyperCard
(1987), an ingenious database application whose
high-level programming language simplified appli-
cation development. With non-linear hyperlinks and
integration of text, graphics, sound, animation, and
video (“multimedia”), HyperCard followed the vi-
sion of computing pioneers Doug Engelbart and
Ted Nelson and presaged the development of the
World Wide Web.Management Judgment The failed Apple III and
Lisa and the company’s tardiness in correcting some
of the Mac’s shortcomings evoked criticism of Ap-
ple’s management. Chief Executive Officer John
Scully (who had ousted co-founder Jobs in 1985)
tightened operations, but he vacillated on the com-
pany’s most pressing strategic concern: what to do
about the dominant market share of PC-compatible
computers. Interestingly, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, rec-
ognizing the Mac GUI’s superiority over MS-DOS
and anxious to recoup his spending on Mac applica-
tions, in 1985 famously recommended licensing the
Mac to other manufacturers, allowing it to compete
head to head with PCs as another clonable platform.
He believed that the Mac’s superiority would make
it the new standard, and he even offered to help
recruit Mac clone manufacturers.The Eighties in America Apple Computer 59
Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs with the original Macintosh
computer in 1984.(Hulton Archive/Getty Images)