The Apple Way PDF
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The Apple Way Jeffrey L. Cruikshank McGraw-Hill New York Chicago San Francisco Lisbon London Madrid Mexico City Milan New Delhi San Juan Seoul Singapore Sydney Toronto Copyright © 2006 by McGraw-Hill. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publica- tion may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. 0-07-148315-2 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: 0-07-226233-8. All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use names in an editorial fashion only, and to the bene- fit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Where such designa- tions appear in this book, they have been printed with initial caps. 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Under no circumstances shall McGraw-Hill and/or its licensors be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, punitive, consequential or similar damages that result from the use of or inability to use the work, even if any of them has been advised of the possibility of such damages. This limitation of lia- bility shall apply to any claim or cause whatsoever whether such claim or cause arises in contract, tort or otherwise. DOI: 10.1036/0072262338 Professional Want to learn more? We hope you enjoy this McGraw-Hill eBook! If you’d like more information about this book, its author, or related books and websites, please click here. To Judy Kohn,who figured out Apple way before I did. About the Author Jeffrey L. Cruikshank was the co-founder of Kohn Cruikshank, Inc., a Boston-based consulting firm that served corporate and institutional clients for more than twelve years. In September of 2001, Kohn Cruikshank moved to Milton and became The Cruikshank Company, Inc. Cruikshank is a graduate of Amherst College, and worked with a number of companies and schools in the Boston area in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1980, he became the editor of the Harvard Business School Bulletin, beginning a relationship with that school that has continued since then, and has led to many other engagements in the worlds of edu- cation and business. In addition to helping shape key communications for dozens of pub- lic and private institutions, Cruikshank is the author or co-author of numerous books of interest to managers. These include histories of the Harvard Business School, New England Electric, Cummins Engine Company, The Weather Channel, and Perdue Farms. He has also written a book on corporations and architecture for Herman Miller, Inc.; the definitive guide to art in public places (Going Public); and books on numerous other subjects, ranging from logistics in the Gulf War (Moving Mountains) to entrepreneurship (Low Risk, High Reward) to the inner workings of the commercial real estate industry (The Real Estate Game). In 2005, he published his first murder mystery (Murder at the B-School). Copyright © 2006 by McGraw-Hill. Click here for terms of use. For more information about this title, click here Contents Introduction vii Chapter 1. Marvels and Margins 1 Chapter 2. Find the Future 13 Chapter 3. Take Their Breath Away 27 Chapter 4. Guard the Family Jewels 41 Chapter 5. Keep Your Friends (Reasonably) Close to You 59 Chapter 6. Keep Your Promises 75 Chapter 7. Build the Cult 89 Chapter 8. Get It Out There 101 Chapter 9. Keep Your Cool 115 Chapter 10. Flog the Bad Guys 129 Chapter 11. Fix Your Leaders 141 Chapter 12. Fix Your Plan 161 Notes 179 Index 195 v This page intentionally left blank Introduction A Tale of Two Introductions A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,adored by little states- men and philosophers and divines. —Ralph Waldo Emerson Apple thought they had it right, this time. The date: January 19, 1983. The place: the Flint Center at De Anza College, less than a mile down the road from Apple’s headquarters on Bandley Drive in Cupertino, California. The event: the formal unveiling of Apple’s new flagship product at the company’s annual meeting. The product was a computer, of course, and it was called the “Lisa,” which—depending on who was doing the explaining—either stood for “local integrated software architecture,” or was the name of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs’s daughter, or both.1 The Lisa had been in development since the fall of 1978, when Jobs began focusing on a new computer that would replace the aging Apple II. At that time, Jobs envisioned a machine that would sell for $2,000, and be aimed primarily at the business market. The new machine would be only an evolutionary step beyond what Apple was already producing. In other words, it would be another heavy, clunky, “small” machine— “small” being only a relative term—with a built-in green-phosphor dis- play, a more or less conventional user interface, and so on. Nevertheless, Jobs had high hopes for the new machine, which he hoped would shore vii Copyright © 2006 by McGraw-Hill. Click here for terms of use. viii Introduction up Apple’s existing small-computer market, consisting mainly of educa- tors and amateur computer buffs, and also begin to expand that base into the business arena.2 So, planning began along those lines. Then, about a year later—in November 1979—fate intervened. Against his better judgment, Jobs was persuaded to visit the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The PARC laboratories have since achieved legendary status as a place of astonish- ing innovation, a place of bubbling technological ferment. But back then, it took some arm-twisting to get Jobs to stop by the sprawling, mod- ernistic complex at 3333 Coyote Hill Road in nearby Palo Alto. By all accounts, Jobs didn’t think that stodgy old Xerox had much to teach Apple Computer, which was then flying high: growing at astronomical rates, getting ready for its second private placement, and generally (pun unavoidable) the apple of Wall Street’s eye. And, there was a grain of truth in that assessment. Xerox had been a fabled innovator, in its day—more or less inventing the field of photo- copying, among other things—but its glory days seemed to be behind it. As the world headed toward the paperless office, photocopying machines were looking more and more like buggy whips. Worse, the competition from Japan was intensifying: It was getting harder to make buggy whips at a profit. So, from Xerox’s side of the table, there seemed to be good reasons to cozy up to Apple, and even to the famously irascible Steve Jobs. Maybe some of the innovations that had been languishing on PARC’s lab- oratory benches could find their way to market with Apple’s help. At the very least, assuming that the upstart Apple lived up to its growing buzz, it couldn’t hurt to get a piece of that private placement. A deal was struck: Xerox would buy 100,000 shares of Apple for $10 a share (and would agree never to buy more than 5 percent of Apple, which jealously guarded its independence). In return, Apple would get to make two reconnaissance trips to PARC, looking for bright and mar- ketable ideas. Those trips took place in the last two months of 1979, and for the for- merly disdainful Jobs, they were a revelation. Xerox’s computer scientists demonstrated an amazing machine—the Alto—that had many of the characteristics that personal computer users would later come to take for granted: things like a graphical user interface, or “GUI” (which allowed the user to interact with the computer in ways other than typing in text
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