Apple's bid to stay in the big time (1983) | Hacker News Reader

Apple's bid to stay in the big time (1983)

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32 pointsSomeone3 comments

Both the Apple III and Lisa were conceived as products for the business market. NeXT was intended to serve higher education. Years later Apple tried to go after the server market with Xserve. If anything speaks to the idea of a company having "DNA", it's Apple's/Jobs' results when taking their eye off the consumer market ball.

I agree. Apple /// and Lisa are overpriced for consumers and small businesses. Apple just doesn't understand that while corporate purchasing is the big money, you have to sell your soul to break into it. You need the strippers and steaks and slick salesmen to sell the product like IBM does.

That's why mainframes and the PC XT, as long as they're good enough and carry the IBM label, will dominate the business market. And they are good enough; Apple can't depend on being the only one with a reliable quality product in the market anymore. Being the best tool for employees isn't going to impress purchasing managers.

Apple's products have always appealed to the people that are going to use them. Corporate purchasing doesn't work that way. The people making the decision about what to buy aren't the people that will use the tools.

Apple would be better off setting its sights lower, on academia and consumers. Maybe someday they'll figure that out. I, for one, am excited about the new "Macintosh;" that may be the future of personal computing.

Macintosh and Lisa are going nowhere. I'm with Dvorak, there's no evidence anyone wants to use this 'mouse' thing. The company has lost it. Just look at their demo video [1]. How are they ever going to fit a useable computer into a portable book-like format? Where's the keyboard? We're supposed to do computing by touching and gesturing on a screen and talking to some digital assistant? Ridiculous! They need to get back to basics and release an Apple IV that's competitive with the PC, or sell the company's assets and give the money back to the shareholders.

[1] http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QRH8eimU_20

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