Apple and Steve Jobs' Biggest Mistakes Ep 1 - The Macintosh

The first episode in a miniseries about Steve Jobs' and Apple Computer's mistakes. I take a look at their two leading products in 1986.

[MrWaterbugdesign]

I'm Dan Oliver and was on the IIGS team. I don't think Jobs had anything to do with cancelling the IIGS. As you said he wasn't at Apple at the time, but it's more than that. Upper management was maybe a little insecure about filling the role of Jobs. My guess is they would have loved to have cancelled the Mac just to kill Jobs's legacy. What I do know is I was at the meeting when management told the team the IIGS was going to be phased out. The reason was Apple didn't have enough resources for both and the profit margin was much higher on the Mac. And, it wasn't just an either or deal, they didn't really seem to want to extend the Mac line either. They figured to just sell the current Macs. Very short sighted and they later figured out the company did actually need to create new models.

I think Jean-Louis Gassée would have been much more influential in the Mac winning than Jobs who's only influence was in creating the Mac team and a such a loved machine. If Jobs had stayed at Apple he would have killed the IIGS the moment he heard about it. I don't think he liked the idea very much that Woz had created the Apple II. Ego.

I hated they killed the IIGS of course, but, looking back, I think it was the right choice. Everything about the IIGS was looking backward toward staying compatible and true to the Apple II legacy. Sure, the 65816 could have kept being extended like Intel but that's such an ugly path. It's a low margin path and Apple could never be Apple without high margins. It cost money to produce good products. The Mac was looking forward, many possibilities. The 68000 was like working in an open field instead of inside a closet.

I do thank you for showing the power of IIGS. We were very proud of that machine.

Side story on just how intense the battle was between the Mac and IIGS teams...When I was creating the Menu Manager I made a the Apple logo in full color, the old 6 horizontal stripes. The Mac team found out and went insane. I'm talking about screaming and crying. THE MAC UI IS BLACK AND WHITE!!! At that time Apple considered the Mac UI to be like the Coca-Cola recipe. Harvey Lehtman and others won that battle and we were allowed to make a color UI. I assume Gassée was probably key in allowing it too, he had a good business mind imo, I think it really pissed off the Mac team that we created the first color UI. Proportional scroll bars were also a battle, Mac team hated them. But today...still proportional...hehehehehe.

[Lucas_andos]

I’ve been waiting almost 4 YEARS FOR EP 2

[NoName-mgyj]

I’ve been waiting 8 years for episode 2

[oaktadopbok]

I have never regretted going with an IBM clone running DOS for my 1st machine.

[KagusakiUrufu]

I remember when my dad bought our first computer. It was the Apple IIGS and he paid a bit over $2000 for the whole setup plus ram/hdd upgrade. Then we found out about a year later that they were going to dump the IIGS for the Mac and my dad said he will never buy a computer from them again. We've been on the PC ever since XD

[BaxzXD]

"Overpriced and Underpowered" same slogan they use today.

[jeffreywhite]

The IIgs was an amazing system. When I was a kid, that computer provided me the ability to learn to program, play games, and work on school work. An added benefit was that it would run older IIe/IIc software as well. My parents purchased (and still have) the Woz Limited Edition IIgs. My wife's grandmother gave me her old IIgs (both still work). The game Hacker II provided many sleepness nights for me as I tried to figure it out.

[Xanduur]

I kept my IIe and IIgs for years. I SO regret selling them. I would loved to see a world where the Apple II series evolved instead of the Mac (writing this on a 2012 Mac Mini - sigh). I have entertained the idea of buying a nice IIe and doing so hobby computing. Right now I am using the Vintage II emulator to play Wizardry I.

[noidexe]

Was that the start of "overpriced and underpowered but cool and simple" as a business strategy?

[IanTester]

Interesting video, but the M68K is really a 32-bit architecture. Even though its external data bus is 16 bits wide and its address bus is 24 bits wide, the registers and ALU inside is a full 32 bits wide. Thus it had a future. The 8 bit 6502 (IIe) and 16 bit 65C816 (IIGS) had much less of a future. Apple would have had to move to a 32-bit CPU (and a more advanced OS) sooner or later anyway. But considering it was several years before Intel released the 32-bit 80386, and many more years before Microsoft released even a partially 32-bit OS, it's probably fair to say they moved a little too soon, pushing expensive hardware that wasn't quite needed yet.

[edr]

Great video. When I was in HS in the early 90s we played so many games on the IIGs...they just looked and sounded amazing. The Mac classics were used but they were lousy for gaming. A few years later when I had my first tech job as an assistant Mac tech they had my take inventory of a huge room of Macs they had phased out (large college). There were stacks and stacks of IIGs systems as high as the ceiling and took me forever to get through them all. It was a sad thing to see that they were now just junk waiting to be recycled, while some Mac classics were still in use here and there.

[jascoolo]

"Macintosh was a mistake" ~ Hayao Miyazaki

[GameplayandTalk]

I didn't realize the IIGS was as strong as it was. With your examples, it definitely seems like the Mac was a step backwards.

[Windsorsillest]

I could watch your videos all day! I absolutely love your attitude and the way you conduct yourself in videos. Keep up the amazing work love all the topics as well. 👋🖥️💾

[scottall]

I love videos like this that discuss the history, and why certain products made it and others didn't. Those years were a confusing blur, but looking at it in hindsight. WOW. It makes us appreciate today's market. Great video!

[anotheraltaccofhaywireele]

"I'll create a mini series. "3 years later

[KuraIthys]

The Macintosh vs the 2GS sort of seems to feel like Jobs VS Wozniak.
I was never that fond of any Macintosh I've ever used, but the 2GS impresses me in hindsight. (I was way too young to think too critically about such a thing if I had even known it existed when it was new).
All these companies with weird decisions huh.

Amiga could've been much bigger than they were, but Commodore just messed everything up.

The 2GS was impressive, but apple had other ideas. Ideas which really forced them into a niche market for a really long time.
You can consider it to their credit that they survived at all, given the number of those 80's computer companies that are just plain gone now...
But still...

[wardrich]

"Overpriced and underpowered" might as well be Apple's slogan

[adampoll]

Apple deliberately throttling a product for a newer one to compete? OUTRAGEOUS!

[rancosteel]

The Macintosh was a great marketing ploy with portability. Don't forget, when Steve Jobs introduced it he took it out of a travel bag. It was really the introduction to the laptop. It was successful in the sense that it proved that all the other CEO's and John Sculley were lost in business bs instead of inventing something new.