How would Steve Jobs have solved the 1985 Mac sales problem?

[yuhong]

What if Sculley instead of Steve was kicked out back in 1985?
In particular, how would Steve Jobs have solved the 1985 Mac sales problem?
http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_End_Of_An_Era.txt

 

[akm3]

That was a very interesting read, but I'm not sure how it relates to him solving the sales problem?

 

[yuhong]

One of the reasons why Steve was kicked out was that Sculley was trying to do a few things in an attempt to resolve the problem. I was wondering what if instead of that, Sculley took a step back and had Steve do a solution instead.

 

[ChrisA]

What if Sculley instead of Steve was kicked out back in 1985?
In particular, how would Steve Jobs have solved the 1985 Mac sales problem?

There really was nothing that could have been done. The Mac was a dead end product until the Unix based Mac OS X was introduced. The old design of Mac OS was horrible. OK they did introduce some nice user interface stuff but the guts inside were poorly done. OS X was a complete ground up replacement. No amount of product line streamlining would have saved Apple. It was OS X that did t.

We were lucky that Steve was force out to start Next were he was able to design a replacement for Mac OS.

 

[yuhong]

There really was nothing that could have been done. The Mac was a dead end product until the Unix based Mac OS X was introduced. The old design of Mac OS was horrible. OK they did introduce some nice user interface stuff but the guts inside were poorly done. OS X was a complete ground up replacement. No amount of product line streamlining would have saved Apple. It was OS X that did t.

We were lucky that Steve was force out to start Next were he was able to design a replacement for Mac OS.

Not back in 1985. But you are right that Apple probably would be completely different today if Steve was not forced out back in 1985. Yep, one of the interesting things about computer history is how the effect of one event can last for decades. The IBM PC is another example of this.

 

[MisterMe]

... The Mac was a dead end product until the Unix based Mac OS X was introduced. ...

1985? Do you have a clue what the world of personal computing was like in 1985? Apple's biggest seller was still the Apple ][. IBM had not yet introduced the PS/2. Windows was still a novelty a full decade before Windows 95.

I could go on, but hopefully you get the point. Please read some computer history before posting silly statements like this one.

 

[MacsRgr8]

There really was nothing that could have been done. The Mac was a dead end product until the Unix based Mac OS X was introduced.

LOL.. you're missing a decade!

From 1985 till about 1995 (intro Windows 95) the Mac was WAY ahead of anything else...!
Since Windows 2000 Mac OS "classic" really fell behind. bad memory architecture, bad SMP support, no real Multi User environment, etc.

But since Mac OS X we're back in the lead.... by FAR!