“Apple’s Mac turns 30 today. Apple’s Website today celebrates the platform that defined and revolutionized the PC — despite being ‘doomed’ since it began,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld. “You see, the Mac was doomed from day one: ‘The nature of the personal computer revolution is simply not fully understood by companies like Apple (or anyone else, for that matter),’ wrote John Dvorak in 1984.”
“By the end of the decade the company owned the graphics design market. The company proliferated its Macintosh range but by the early ’90’s weak management meant the company offered a confusing matrix of Mac models,” Evans writes. “The purchase of NeXT in 1996 and the return of Steve Jobs to the company saw its product range reduced and a return to focus. These glimmers of hope didn’t impress the critics. Asked what he’d do if he ran Apple, Dell’s Michael Dell said: ‘What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Michael who?
“Apple today is one of the world’s top five PC vendors and seems to have no intention of quitting the market it defined,” Evans writes. “‘There is a super-important role [for the Mac] that will always be,’ Phil Schiller tells Macworld. ‘We don’t see an end to that role. There’s a role for the Mac as far as our eye can see.’ Not such a bad promise for a product that’s been doomed since birth.”
Read more in the full article here.
Has Dvorak really been getting it wrong since 1984? What a record! He should get a medal or something.
Or something.
He couldn’t figure out what a mouse was either: command line John.
Yes he has! He used to have a column with a Mac guy and they would “argue” the benefits of each machine in a given scenario. Dvorak was a PC hack moron.
Yes, it was a precursor to the “duelling viewpoints” format that lamentably took over television, and continues to this day to erode minds and cement ideology. At least Dvorak was self-aware and wielded a comic touch along with the acid pen.
MDN: Michael who do dat? Dats who.
Well, you know, Mac OS X was going to drive away all the Mac users and make them use Windows 98 instead. Because OS X simply wasn’t “Mac-like” enough and was too much like Windows, so why not switch to the better supported platform?
Seriously, that was the argument of a loud contingent of upset Mac OS 9 fans back in 2001. To hear them back then, the Mac was already dead. Meanwhile, I just shook my head and got on with enjoying the future of computing. Still enjoying it today.
——RM
How about when they put an Intel chip inside?
You would have though SJ was the antichrist with all the moans and groans from the audience and tech writers. Haha
They’re still around, dissing iOS7 on MDN …
If I shat a footlong turd out, it’ll still be more fragrant than iOS 7.
Orly?
Yet, that turd would be infinitely more appealing than having to read another one of your comments.
You shit footlong turds every day.
iOS 7 should not be dissed.
It is the world’s greatest at being flat, uninspiring, confusing, retread icons, boring, inconsistent visual cues and holds the record for growing old the fastest.
What’s not to like?
🙂
What I would like to see is an article that would find out what the pundits that were so wrong are doing now and secondly, what they have to say about their obviously incorrect predictions. Having them have to eat crow is not a terribly bad thing.
I don’t think that would be worthy of an article. An elaborate series of novels perhaps but definitely not an article. Good luck at getting to eat crow, those guys are so full of themselves that they would not even admit to being defeated, just like Monty Python’s black knight that has been posted here so very often.
Now an article on the pundits that have got it right over the years, that would be something, nice and short.
I nominate this post as “Best Comment of the Week.”
Anyone second?
Ah gee, like will I have to make a speech or something? I’m really quite shy. And so low budget too, I know I know I should have posted the Utube link to the Monty Python/Black Knight skit but it’s been done so many times before, and yet, it’s still so funny.
Thanks for the post, made my day. Hannahjs made my week yesterday.
Second? The best part of road Warrior’s comment was the second paragraph — dead on, and funny.
Kemosahbee, that Road Warrior fellow on our trail makes a heap of sense …
And where has a lot of that DOOM-mongering been documented? Here:
Apple Death Knell Counter
I keep forgetting to visit that link once in awhile. I bet if he listed all the other idiot bloggers and iHaters it would be up to several thousand times.
Absolutely.
Quite right too. I should have remembered what they have been doing. I’ll add a link to that.
I have a tee shirt, given to me as a present, which says ‘I was a Mac user when Apple was doomed!’
As I started using one in pre-press in 1995, that’s pretty close
I want one.
John C. Dvorak?
I can’t think of a better person to represent analysts over the past 30 years.
Steve Jobs & Apple in the 1984 commercial predicted what the competition would look like.
There’s a strong resemblance of drone audience to The Balmer.
A video interview about the Mac’s birthday was done today on the BNN Network, a financial channel in Canada. The person interviewed seems very knowledgable about the Macintosh’s impact on his career and the people he worked with. At the end he reveals what he heard about Apple while in Palto Alto recently and it was very negative about Apple’s innovation and employee retention. I hope you have a look at it and maybe us MDN followers can debate the merits of that person’s comments.
http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip1065491
30 Years ago today Steve Jobs unveiled the first Mac computer. Doug Steiner joins Frances Horodelski to discuss the evolution of the Mac and Apple.
Thanks.
Ron.
Who is this guy? He says Apple is turning into a procurement analysis firm under Cook? WTF does that even mean? And if turnover was really high there (because people are unhappy) wouldn’t that be a bigger story? You’d think bloggers all over the place would be writing about it. It would be front page news every day on Yahoo and business insider.