When Steven P. Jobs returned to Apple 1997, he returned to a slew of ill-conceived product lines. Some were excessive, and some were downright silly, but many were ultimately killed off for their poor alignment with consumer needs and wants. Still, even with Jobs’ discerning eye, he wasn’t immune to having to deal with a few bad product decisions. Here are four products Jobs rightfully discontinued, and one misstep of his own.
The Pippin
Apple developed Pippin as a multimedia platform based on PowerPC Macs, running a pared-down version of the Mac OS. Though it looked like a gaming console, complete with boomerang-style controllers, the system was intended for more "general purpose" media use. Titles for the Pippin ran off of CD-ROMs, each of which included the operating system, since the Pippin platform had no onboard storage to speak of.
The only company that licensed the platform was Bandai in 1994, resulting in the Bandai Pippin @World player, available in white or black. But there was no room for a fourth console in a market dominated by the Nintendo 64, Sony Playstation, and Sega Saturn, systems that were both more powerful and already well integrated into the market. The only Pippin was discontinued in 1997, and fewer than 12,000 of the $599 systems were sold in the US between 1996 and 1998.
The Newton
The Newton predated Jobs’s return to Apple by some years, with the first MessagePad released in 1993. The PDA was developed under then-CEO John Sculley, who insisted in a keynote speech at the 1992 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that such devices would one day be commonplace.
The Newton platform was initially conceived as a range of tablets, including a 9” x 12” model priced at $5,000, but eventually leadership feared competition with Macs and launched only the smallest version, a 4.5” x 7” handheld model.
The first Message Pad was derided for its poor handwriting recognition and short AAA-fueled battery life, but the initial set of 5,000 units at MacWorld Boston in August 1993 sold out within hours at $800 apiece. The Newton was never exactly a failure, nor was it a runaway success over its five years on the market. When Jobs returned as CEO, he killed the Newton project rather than try to keep propping up a legacy that wasn't his own, planning to make a splash with his own line of mobile devices later on.
Twentieth Anniversary Mac
A favorite adjective of Apple critics is “overpriced,” one that Apple fully embraced with the release of a $9,995 desktop celebrating the company’s 20th anniversary in March 1997. From the limo delivery to the white-gloved home setup by a man in a tuxedo to the custom Bose sound system, the TAM was an exercise in excess. There was even a wrist rest on the keyboard, because carpal tunnel syndrome is for poor people.
But even with the wrist rest, there wasn’t enough excess to justify the price—the PowerMac 6500 introduced a month earlier had a nearly identical configuration for a fifth of the price. Around the same time Jobs ended the Newton program, he also ended the TAM’s run—the model was discontinued in March 1998, and the remaining computers were priced at $1,995 to get the stock moving.
Mac clones
In 1994, Apple decided the best way to expand its seven percent market share would be to start licensing its operating system to other manufacturers. Contracts were drawn up with licensing fees and royalties for each “clone” computer sold by OEMs such as DayStar, Motorola, Power Computing, and UMAX.
When the clones arrived on the market, Apple saw that the licensed OS wasn’t expanding the company's share at all—it was just eating into the company’s already modest hardware sales. The licensing agreements covered only Apple’s System 7, so when Jobs returned, he openly criticized the program and let the contracts expire, offering no new licenses for Mac OS 8.
Control of Macs returned to Apple, whose computer has since flourished thanks in part to the business' vertical integration. But the company had trouble stopping some manufacturers, such as Psystar, from making their own illicit Mac clones.
… And a Jobsian mistake: The Cube
The Power Mac G4 Cube, a computer suspended in a clear plastic box, was designed by Jonathan Ive and released in July 2000. The Cube sported a 450MHz G4 processor, 20GB hard drive, and 64MB of RAM for $1,799, but no PCI slots or conventional audio outputs or inputs, favoring instead a USB amplifier and a set of Harman Kardon speakers. The machine was known in certain circles as Jobs' baby.
While Apple hoped the computer would be a smash hit, few customers could see their way to buying the monitor-less Cube when the all-in-one iMac could be purchased for less, and a full-sized PowerMac G4 introduced a month later with the same specs could be had for $1,599. Apple attempted to re-price and re-spec the Cube in the following months, but Jobs ended up murdering one of his own darlings, suspending production of the model exactly one year after its release. While the Cube's design is still revered (it's part of the MoMA's collection), it proved consumers won't buy a product for its design alone.
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