My Classic Setup
There is a kinship between Stories of Apple and Riccardo Mori‘s System Folder blog.
We both share a mix of love and curiosity for the history of Apple and see it worthwile to delve and discover interesting tidbits of information and trivia to better understand the past, the present and even the future of the company at Infinite Loop.
This is why I answered Riccardo’s call to “vintage Mac geeks out there” to share their “corner, small desk, or other secondary space with their vintage setup”, i.e. nothing newer than Mac OS 9.
The questions he asks are the following:
What does your desk look like? [Photos here]
What is your vintage Mac setup?
Why are you using this setup?
What software do you use, and for what do you use it?
If you are using older Macs and feel like sharing a small piece of your Mac world please do write him at: rick [at] compunabula [dot] com
In the meantime I’d like to point out the first installment of “My Classic Setup”. It features the answers of yours truly, describing the two PowerBook G3s still actively in use in the house.
Jerry York and Apple
Jerome B. York became part of Apple’s board of directors in August of 1997 and remained in this role for almost thirteen years until his death, in March of 2010.
York’s addition to the board was briefly introduced at Macworld Boston ’97 by Steve Jobs with the following words:
Jerry did a lot of the turnaround work at Chrysler and IBM and is extremely well-known and respected in the financial community for his work.
For the occasion there was a video put together with sound bytes from all of the new members, among which were also Gareth Chang from Hughes International, Bill Campbell from Intuit, Larry Ellison from Oracle and Ed Woolard from DuPont.
This is what Jerry York said about Apple and about the concepts of Reality, Experience, Focus and Passion:
- Companies have to look at everything they’re doing and determine [...] what are core componencies, what are the core parts of the business.
- At Chrysler we had to take nearly 4 billion dollars out of the cost (?) structure to get Chrysler fully competitive, particularly with the japanese.
- Apple has very strong positions in two market segments: first education and secondly creative content.
- Whenever you have a strong position in a market segment you can capitalize on that.
- And companies can spend billions of dollars to build their brand. Apple does not have to do that: it’s already been done.
There’s more to Apple than that
At the end of February Pete Warden tweeted about Apple letting go forty people from the Final Cut Pro teams in LA and Austin.
Although the news was actually followed by an encomiable plea to help some of those people find good jobs elsewhere, it was widely reported with the effect of putting Apple in a bad light and casting dark clouds on Final Cut Pro’s future.
Laying off so many people had to mean that the product wasn’t doing particulary well, right?
Well, not necessarily. AE Portal news remarked that the FC teams seemed to have been cut confidently before the NAB, which is a major Pro media event, and also reminded us that Adobe had laid off much more people: “about 600 workers in 2008 and another 680 in 2009 (about 9% of its workforce each time)”.
It’s also important to take into account how big the developer teams at Apple really are and then try to put the numbers in perspective. Some interesting hints come from Mike Evangelist who was a director of product marketing at Infinite Loop from April 2000 to July 2002.
In 2006, in a comment section of his blog, Evangelist answered that the Final Cut team “was above a hundred” when he was there and that he was wstrong>”sure it’s much larger now”. So, no need to fear.
Image from www.roughlydrafted.com