Interview with John Scully 229
worm eater writes "CNet news has an interesting interview with John Scully, CEO of Apple back in the day. He talks about problems and potential in the computer industry, and expresses regret over the opportunities Apple missed with some key technologies -- such as HyperCard and the Newton."
...and in other news... (Score:3, Funny)
Scully VS Jobs
Only, on CNET Cable...
It'ScullEy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It'ScullEy (Score:2)
The majority of immigrants from Europe probably didn't know how to read or write. Many came from very poor conditions, where trying to survive was more important than education.
So I guess it's just as probable that Scully's ancestor didn't know the spelling themselves, as it is that they "didn't bother to explain the proper spelling".
The newton.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The newton.... (Score:2)
Key technologies? (Score:2)
Now call me ignorant, but I haven't heard very much about those two technologies recently at all.. Are/were they really that 'key'?
Re:Key technologies? (Score:4, Informative)
The Newton was the first "modern" PDA to be sold in any quantity. Yea, the first ones had pretty poor handwriting recognition, but it rapidly improved.
Hypercard was a rad tool that could have been used to build something very much like todays web - but a few years earlier.
Re:Key technologies? (Score:5, Informative)
HyperCard: here was a programming and publishing framework designed to be approachable and usable by every-day people, with the added bonus of "immediate gratification"- the act of writing code immediately produced a tangible artifact, much like writing HTML today immediately produces a web page that anybody can visit. But, HyperCard predated widespread Internet usage and the Web, and nobody could figure out what it was good for (except fancy slide shows and choose-your-own-adventure style storyboards).
Newton: to be sure, the Newton borrowed heavily from previous projects and products (including stuff from Xerox PARC and Marc Weiser's ubiquitous computing vision). But, once again, Apple innovated. The device was (almost) powerful enough to run useful software while disconnected, the UI was pen-driven, and the device was energy concious enough to be usable throughout the day without docking it for recharging. Here was a physical appliance targetted towards being a useful digital assistant, and here was a computing model radically different than desktop PCs that everybody was used to. Unfortunately, mobile processors weren't fast or energy-miserly enough yet, handwriting recognition was poor and graffiti-like techniques weren't there, the device was the wrong form factor, and a bunch of stuff was thrown in there that wasn't useful (like the "soup" programming paradigm).
Tons of innovation, tons of influence, but before their time and hence market failures.
Re:Key technologies? (Score:3, Interesting)
And with Hypercard, they didn't know what to do with that, either.
In other words, Sculley didn't understand how to make these technologies into things people would actually be able to use. And therein lie
Re:Key technologies? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Key technologies? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Too heavy. It was big, especially the MessagePad 2000. It was unwieldly where the PalmPilot was sleek and comfortably fit into the hand or a pocket.
2. Too early. Apple has a history of putting out things on the cutting edge, but early adoption wasn't as common back then. "Trendy" is much more important now than it used to be. So, the Newton came out, and it was a great tool, but it was hard to get people to buy something completely new that replaced substantially cheaper notepads and organizers.
3. Wrong market. The people who benefit most from PDAs are those with lots to remember - professionals, doctors, etc. Apple just isn't big in those markets, and, especially then, it was hard for them to separate a new product from the Macintosh platform. It wasn't until the iPod came out with a Windows version that Apple could show they made things not tied to the Macintosh.
4. It's tough being first. The PDA was a revolution. They are being replaced with/morphing into handheld computers as desires for additional functions become common. The Newton had the power years ago to be a handheld computer, and it's Soups and association capabilities were amazing. It isn't easy to convince people they need something they have always done without, and Apple just didn't manage to do it.
HyperCard (Score:2)
Re:HyperCard (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Key technologies? (Score:3, Informative)
yes and no.
the 1st version of Myst was done with Hypercard, but they hacked it up so much that if you didn't know what the transitions looked like you wouldn't know that it was hypercard. for example they added color and quicktime, which took _years_ for the shipping version of HyperCard to gain, and even then, transitions didn't work with apples color hack.
Re:Key technologies? (Score:2)
This is true and is one of the many reasons Hypercard didn't do as well as it could have. It took too long to add features everyone else was demanding. Color and more robust scripting being but a few of the features. Then Apple basically neglected it instead of doing things like adding better Applescript support. (All of this during the nadir of Apple in the mid-90's)
The Greatest Game In The World: (Score:2)
Re:Key technologies? (Score:2)
Damn! (Score:5, Funny)
John, do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugar water? Or do you want to change the world?
Better yet, a serious question... (Score:2, Interesting)
cya,
john
Re:Better yet, a serious question... (Score:2, Insightful)
HyperCard technology lives on in these products... (Score:5, Interesting)
Compile on any platform, to any platform- including a ton of *nix variants. A very nice cross-platform rapid application development tool with a very complete set of functionality (interface, database, tcp/ip ports, etc.), all coded in a HyperTalk-descended language.
X-Builder [acruxsoftware.com]
Mostly designed for multimedia, I don't know as much about this one...
X-Build came from their earlier iBuild (Score:2)
Re:HyperCard technology lives on in these products (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know how good the OS X version is, but eight years ago, you could seamlessly import most HyperCard stacks into SuperCard...
Re:HyperCard technology lives on in these products (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:HyperCard technology lives on in these products (Score:2)
VB struck me as a weird cross between BASIC, HyperCard and JavaScript.
Not tech related but... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what killed me in the mid 80s to the early 90s - the prices. I love Apple products, but at the time, I just couldn't afford them. Whereas PCs were becoming cheaper and cheaper.
Because (Score:3, Informative)
while software once created can be sold at huge volume with low fixed startup costs..
Hardware has high fixed costs to produe it it high volume..
Exactly. (Score:2, Insightful)
You are absolutely right. They were able to charge more because they worked better, offered better features than the Wintel boxen with its myriad, incompatible graphics adapters, and wer
Re:Exactly. (Score:5, Insightful)
All-in-all, the prices are pretty decent. The high-end G5 costs plenty more than the high-end Dimension XPS, but it's barely $100 more than a similarly-equipped Precision 360, but it can double the RAM, has FireWire 800, Bluetooth and 802.11g support, and a bit more processing power, depending on who you ask...
Sure, they can't compete with the Dimension 2400's $599 price tag, but the low-end eMac is $800 to the Dimension 4600's $849.
Re:Exactly. (Score:2, Insightful)
As long as they keep building stuff like the G5, iPod and 17" Powerbook, there is no commodity manufacturer that can compete with Apple.
Apple builds a premium product and charges a premium price, and there is always room in any market for such a company, because they don't compete on price and volume.
Re:Not tech related but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it wasn't in Apple's interests. Mac users are willing to pay Apple prices, so Apple has enormous profit margins.
Think about what cutting prices would actually have done. It would have placed Apple in direct competition with Dell, with Compaq, with Micron, with HP, with a host of large manufacturing companies that are very, very good at shaving down manufacturing costs and operating with tiny profits. There's so little profit in the desktop market today that companies have been exiting market for some time -- focusing on the higher-profit laptops and servers.
That would have been a difficult-to-compete arena for Apple. Apple made a decision that has kept them a successful business -- it was probably the right one from a business standpoint.
Of course, I agree with you WRT to use of Apple products. I gave up on Apple when they revoked clone makers' licenses. People that choose Apple are choosing to work within a niche market, pay significantly higher prices, and have less software and hardware choice. That makes sense for many people (you get a black-box solution that works out of box, which anyone, even the tech illiterate, can comfortably use). It was not a product that I was particularly interested in, but that doesn't make it an invalid business -- Apple's done pretty well for themselves.
Re:Not tech related but... (Score:3, Insightful)
But low volumes!
Low volume imply fewer software written for MacOS, so people won't buy Apple's computer because there are fewer software --> dwindling market share.
This is a vicious circle which has caused Apple to catter to niches where it was successfull.
But this niche strategy is fragile: it is quite easy to loose a niche (education has been lost), it is very difficult to build
Re:Not tech related but... (Score:2)
When the school districts that are Mac districts are running THAT much better than their struggling Wintel counterparts then they still have something viable to sell.
If Microsoft dropped Offic
Re:Not tech related but... (Score:2)
You're splicing hairs. Apple was *was* educational computing at one point, and is now a bit player in their own niche. Yes, there will be Macs around for years, no matter what, but they have
Re:Not tech related but... (Score:2)
While the Apple market is signifigantly smaller that the Windows market, it is still large (25 million users is the usual number bandied about).
Re:Not tech related but... (Score:2)
Calling Apple a "bit" player is wrong. Apple still has major market share. The big news was when Apple's market share in education dropped below 70%.
insightfulll??!! (Score:2)
the original post refared to the period where Scully was incharge of apple, back in the mid80 to early 90s - where Apple could have monopolised the PC market easly - by pricing thier machines to get 20% profit margins and not 50-60% as Scully priced them.
THERE WAS NO COMPETITION from the PC market to the mac os at that time. NONE. what? DOS4? windows 1.0?! there was no GUI worth talking about on the PC, untill win 3.11 (which was still years behind the mac) if apple would
Re:insightfulll??!! (Score:2)
Re:Stuff and nonsense (Score:2)
No, that isn't what I said at all.
Suppy and Demand (Score:5, Interesting)
So, they basically had more potential customers than they had computers. There's two ways they could deal with this situation:
a) Move to an 'open' architecture and bring in 3rd party manufacturing
b) Keep raising prices until the demand curve falls off.
Scully chose Plan B, which pretty much permenently doomed them to a nitch player. The upside is that their profits were so high that they built that $4 Billion bank account that people are always talking about. Apple is really more of a mutual fund now days than a computer manufacturer.
There's a history of Apple by Jim Carlton that covers the decision not to allow 'cloning' in great detail.
Re:Suppy and Demand (Score:4, Funny)
They are both French, but you Americans have managed to bastardize them into an unrecognizable mess.
Oh christ. What have you French done to the word "email" again? Do you really think cultural bias goes just one way?
Not that the grandparent poster isn't an idiot, of course, but America has no monopoly on them.
Re:Not tech related but... (Score:2, Interesting)
I believe this was where Scully and Jobs clashed. Jobs wanted the mac to be priced low enough so almost everyone could buy one. Scully wanted big profits immediately.
The board of directors listened to the one who would make their stock options go up sooner.
Well, if he did price Macs like Pepsi... (Score:5, Funny)
the iBooks would normally cost $1500, but every other week would be on sale for $799, or $699 with bonus card, limit 4
Re:Not tech related but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you trolling? Pepsi, Coke, and Dr. Pepper cost about 50 cents a can, retail Just about every other soda on earth costs about 25 cents a can.
There's about 2 cents of can,
There probably isn't less competitive market than market than soft drinks.
Re:Not tech related but... (Score:2)
The first Macs (beige toasters) shipped with no hard drives. It wasn't until 1987 that Apple offered the SE with either two 800k floppy drives or 1 800k and 1 20 MB internal hard drive. Still not $10k.
The IIfx topped out close to $11k in price but it came with an internal HD between 40 and 160 MB.
When you say no video
Re:Not tech related but... (Score:2)
Re:Not tech related but... (Score:2)
NOT the Newton -- that's Sakoman's! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:NOT the Newton -- that's Sakoman's! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:NOT the Newton -- that's Sakoman's! (Score:2)
HyperCard lives on? (Score:3, Interesting)
I haven't checked it out myself but PythonCard [sourceforge.net] is supposed to be good.
HyperCard: Its Effects On The World Today (Score:5, Insightful)
Any tool today that allows for drag-and-drop interface design is a descendent of HyperCard. Macromedia lives off it, by creating products like Flash, Director and Authorware. Even high end development tools, like Metrowerk's CodeWarrior borrows from it.
It's easy for people who only saw the technology later in the game to blow it off. But for those of us who have seen and worked with the technology since it was first released in 1987, it was a major deal. HyperCard showed us that Apple was already preparing for the multimedia-governed future we take for granted now.
This was later proven in 1993, when Cyan used HyperCard to create its smash hit game, Myst. The game showed us all the true power hidden inside the deceivingly simple-looking HyperCard, and ultimately shaped the multimedia industry we know today.
Hypercard (Score:3, Insightful)
I learned how to program on Hypercard in highschool. It was a huge thing to be able to code simple visual applications quickly because before that it required alot of work to get GUI apps working. Its too bad that Apple ditched hypercard because it could have turned into a very useful tool to teach people how to program.
Re:Hypercard (Score:2)
I'd agree -- Except that Apple never really positioned HyperCard very well, so it primarily got used as a "toy" educational language.
Meanwhile, VB was aimed directly at corporate programming and had support for DB Access, "grids" and so on. This was painfully obvious at the job I had 10 years ago where several thousand Macs were dumped because they didn't make a good "client-server" platform.
Re:Hypercard (Score:3, Insightful)
Virus potential (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, but remember that just like Word, hypercard has them crazy macroviruses... it would be a bitch to get a trust-model worked out that would protect against macrovirus and cross-site-scripting vulnerabilities. Even under OSX, where you could chroot / su it into a very small sandbox, you have to worry about CSS: if it co
Re:Virus potential (Score:2)
Then you've done your sandboxing wrong. Any program with C linkage can have a sqrt function, but it won't overwrite the libc sqrt function. Why is that so increadibly hard with hypercard?
Re:Hypercard (Score:2)
Re:Hypercard (Score:2)
If Apple had picked up on the concept of connecting stacks across the network, it would have been a major coup. Especially when you consider how easy Appletalk networking was/is.
Re:Hypercard (Score:2)
Re:Hypercard (Score:2)
Re:Hypercard (Score:5, Interesting)
Did anyone 'read the article'? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Did anyone 'read the article'? (Score:2, Funny)
Koppel: Mr. Forbes, the reference in your book to "Teve Torbes" clearly refers to you!
Forbes:I just don't know, Ted. Whoever wrote this book did a great job at concealing identities. He could have been thinking of Fleve Fnorbes.
Who cares what this tool thinks? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hypercard (Score:2, Insightful)
I miss the days of HyperCard. I spent most of my middle school years in a small little computer lab teaching myself how to you it. Then the school got read of it for that bastard program hyperstudio with its color and sound. I weep every day for those lost days.
Re:Hypercard (Score:2)
HyperCard was great. You could go as far as you wanted. Catching system events and idle loops, even creating/changing menus.
Our middle school computer lab used a customized HyperCard called StudentCard for an interface for the computers - it let you launch programs and such in Mac OS 6.0.4 on Classics a
opportunities Apple missed with some technology (Score:4, Funny)
Atleast, Newton did not miss his opportunities with an apple.
Newton... (Score:3, Funny)
Couldn't that be confused with a cookie?
Disclaimer: This product not to be eaten.
Re:Newton a cookie? (Score:2)
...with particularly finiky handwritting recognition.
Isn't he... (Score:3, Funny)
Sculley had some big shoes to fill (Score:5, Interesting)
The Newton was fine, except that it cost more than the average person was able to pay, and the handwriting recognition needed work. They fixed it later.
Sculley brought about the Color Macs, under Jobs it was still greyscale and B&W. I have a Mac IIcx under my desk which I don't use. One day I may hook it back up. Maybe run Linux on it or System 7?
Microsoft beat down Apple, Windows kept taking marketshare, and Apple did the best it could to compete. The Creative Content market was the bulk of Apple's marketshare. This helped to cotribute to Apple's Dark Ages and loss of revenue. Microsoft was to blame there, even if it did make software for the Mac, it favored Windows first.
Sculley tried to fill Jobs' shoes, but couldn't. He didn't have the reality distortion field or the creative marketing genius that Jobs had. Meanwhile Next wasn't doing so well and could barely hold it's own. Unix was the future, few people saw that at the time. Jobs knew it because he invested in Unix technology for Next. Meanwhile Linux was getting started and slowly started to gain marketshare. Apple's A/UX needed work, but was put on the back burner to favor MacOS.
Re:Sculley had some big shoes to fill (Score:2)
Re:Sculley had some big shoes to fill (Score:2)
Live Picture and Flashpix (Score:4, Interesting)
After bonehead moves with Apple, he aquired the program/company Live Picture.
Back when RAM would cost you over $6K/gig, it allowed you to do retouching and composites of really big files on a 256meg machine. They also promoted the Flashpix format, which let you zoom into pictures online.
After ignoring many suggestions of how the tech could be used to do some really innovative, useful things, and more bonehead moves, the company dies (assets bought by MGI)
a good page about this can be found at:
http://www.goingware.com/tips/resignation.ht
and
http://www.goingware.com/tips/misery.html
quote:
"The bad VC comes up with ideas about what might appeal to Wall Street or to a possible corporate purchaser and orders you to drop what you're doing and pursue his misguided goal.
A specific example of this was when John Scully directed Live Picture, the company, to abandon development of Live Picture 3.0, the program, and instead pursue development of internet technologies involving the very complex and proprietary Flashpix file format.
You could do really cool things with FlashPix, admittedly, but it's not really what users wanted. Very few people use Flashpix these days, even though Kodak, Microsoft and Live Picture went to no end of trouble to develop and promote it. Instead, people who browse the web still get JPEGs, plain and simple.
But the specific reason John Sculley felt it was important to develop and promote Flashpix - he said as much in a company meeting - was because we were preparing for an IPO, and "Wall Street is not interested in tools companies. It is interested in Internet companies".
and Zapa. (Score:3, Interesting)
It died. big surprise.
Tech booms alright... Self implosion style (Score:2)
The entire industry is pretty grim right now, and I wouldn't be fooled into thinking the economy is picking up much. You can be fooled by all the garbage such as "Bull Market" and crap like that, but if you look at stock charts, you'd see it pretty much is in the same state as things were a few years back.
There are too many uncertainties nowadays for companies to spend spend spend on R&D and other things which really sucks, so I would hold my breathe waiting for the 'next big thing'.
Latest Comprelated
What about OpenDoc and CyberDog? (Score:5, Interesting)
Where was that Scully when the technology was closed? Why wasn't it at least open-sourced?
So many stupidy-based decisions were, are and will be driving Apple.
Jobs killed OpenDoc. (Score:4, Interesting)
Adobe and several other major software houses took notice of this, realized what it could do, and essentially told Apple "Drop this shit like a ton of bricks or we drop support for your platform. Now." (this may also answer your question as to why it was never opened- though asking why older software wasn't open sourced is kind of like asking why I can't get m '57 Chevy with factory air and CD player...)
Same thing with the memory management system that had been planned for MacOS 9.3. Publishers pissing an moaning about "OOOOH WE'LL HAVE TO REWRITE OUR APPS AND YOUR A NICHE MARKET SO IT MIGHT BE BETTER TO JUST DROP IT" has kept Apple hogtied in more ways than one for some time.
Fortunately, OS X and Final Cut Pro are serious coups in this department- Adobe dropped Premiere (which sucks rocks regardless) in response to having to compete against Apple. The fact it was Apple must have pissed them off something fierce- if Macromedia had continued FCP development instead of selling it to Apple, I'm sure things would be a bit different.... and I'm sure FCP would suck.
Anyway. That's the long form. The short form: Get a clue. Talk to a few developers who've actually been to the Apple campus and have been doing work on the platform since the 80's. Get their views.
That said, OD was whacked after Jobs came back, and the OSS buzzword was barely a blip on anyone's radar back in the days of MacOS 8.
Re:Jobs killed OpenDoc. (Score:2)
Not exactly true counting the fact that Apple has even supported MkLinux those days.
Re:Jobs killed OpenDoc. (Score:2)
Even if OSS was as trendy then as it is now, it's doubtful Apple would have opened it up, in part for some of the reasons I stated.
The Sculley love/hate relationship (Score:5, Insightful)
Sculley certainly had good idea, the Newton being the chief one amongst them, but he didn't have Jobs' feel of design appeal to get that thing to a point where everyday joes would want one. Take a look at the phenomenal success of the Apple iPod and you realise what Jobs could have done with the Newton if he had been the one to introduce it. It's sad but it's the way things are and Jobs is certainly correct in not getting Apple to try and compete in the desasterous PDA market of today, which is dying due to competition from mobile phones.
I think that there were many other technologies that Apple introduced that could have made more of an impact in the market, but which, mainly due to Apple's poor marketing and market position at the time, never made. Hypercard was one, although Applescript can today do a lot of what Hypercard did then. OpenDoc/Cyberdog was another. openDoc was such a phenomenal innovation that Bill gates made it part of Microsoft's contract forbidding ex MS employess to work on OpenDoc for 3 years after leaving MS. The concept was in competition to and superior to MS' OLE and that worried Microsoft a lot at the time. It would have meant that components could be placed from one programe into another, such as being able to, say, do image editing in word processing and vice versa. Brilliant.
The strange thing today is that the services which are part of OSX are very neglected und undermarketed although they serve a similar purpose. Perhaps Jobs just doesn't get it?
Re:The Sculley love/hate relationship (Score:2)
Yep, see? Failure to promote it.
In Safari, select some text, then go up to the Safari menu and go to Services. Try Make New Sticky Note, or Mail/Send Selection, or Speech/Start Speaking Text.
This feature hasn't gotten much attention, so in addition to not being marketed it also isn't polished, but there's a lot of potential there.
Re:The Sculley love/hate relationship (Score:2)
Skully is the man who lost the schools for Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
He made the fatal assumption that all of the schools were loyal to Apple as opposed to being loyal to their local dealers.
When those local dealers couldn't sell Apple products anymore, they started to sing the praises of Compaq and HP, the schools believed them and slowly started to switch.
LK
Obligatory Simpsons reference (Score:2)
Re:Obligatory Simpsons reference (Score:2)
Jimbo Jones: "Make a note on your Newton to beat up Martin!"
Dolph: (writes "Beat up Martin")
(screen converts it to say "Eat up Martha")
(Jimbo chucks the Newton at Martin's head)
Re:Missed opportunities (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, it's been said a million times before, but Apple is a hardware company.
Mac OS X is a great product, but its sole purpose is to sell Macs. If they ported it to run on generic X86 boxen, they'd never sell enough to recoup the losses on hardware sales. Plus supporting the myriad combinations of hardware would cost a fortune, and lose them the "it just works" factor.
Re:Missed opportunities (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
hardware company (Score:2)
That would be an easier statement to support if they distributed their OS for free... but they don't, it costs $100+. Likewise if they distributed their hardware for free and only charged for their OS, it'd be entirely supportable to say they were solely a software company. They are both a hardware and a software company. Apple's purpose is not to sell macs, it
Re:hardware company (Score:3, Interesting)
Releasing Mac OS X for x86 might be the best thing that could ever happen to Linux and the worst thing that could ever happen to Microsoft, but it could easily kill Apple.
Getting people to switch to Mac OS X on x86 would be like getting people to switch to Linux on x86, except that Linux is free and r
Re:Missed opportunities (Score:2)
It has never been "obvious" that the x86 architecture would take over the world. In the beginning it was an inferior design to the 68000 series. When Apple (quite correctly) decided to change architecture, it made a lot of sense to move to a design which expanded the register capability of the 68000 and was much cleaner than the x86, which was increasingly a series of kludges held together with string. It has only recently been apparent that Intel's sheer sales volume could keep it in the le
HyperCard was WAY more than a slideshow! (Score:4, Interesting)
My Chemistry teacher and I made a test-at-your-own-leisure testing system for our science department in high school, it was network enabled, and pretty secure. It let us take short tests after we completed our lab work, or during off-hours and study halls. The test was randomized so nobody could make cheat-sheets.
Re:HyperCard was WAY more than a slideshow! (Score:2)
seriously Mr. AC, you may think you're joking, but Postcript really can do most of what you've described. And you can use Ghostscript to run the programs.
PostScript (Score:2)
Re:Hypercard could be used for programming? (Score:2)
No (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who IS the Asshole? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who IS the Asshole? (Score:3, Insightful)