How the tech world changes: Apple in 1993 and 2009

Sifting through some junk, I came across a Newsweek from July 26, 1993. Just 15 years ago, but that's a long time where a magazine's technology notes are concerned.

There was a blurb on a programmable gadget that mounts on telephone wall jacks, to limit teens' talking time on the household phone. (Would a teen even go near a landline now?) An article on US carmakers' charge into a bright new future of productivity by using Cray supercomputers to design parts. (A correct step, though it didn't solve bigger problems.) An introduction to a high-tech, $364 million year-round indoor ski structure near Tokyo. (That closed down some years back.)

Change. It happens everywhere, and then happens more, and sometimes un-happens, all at triple speed where technology is concerned. So it was especially interesting to see a bigger tech story in that old Newsweek: "From a Champ to a Chump?", the latest on the then-departing CEO of Apple, John Sculley. You'll recall him as the Pepsi-Cola marketing whiz that Steve Jobs lured in Apple in 1983, leading to the power struggle that led to Jobs' departure in 1985. Sculley was seen as a visionary. He oversaw the Mac's fabled introduction in 1984, published a best-selling autobiography in 1987, ushered in low-cost ($999) Macs in 1990, and even became a Washington DC insider, seen by some as bound for the Cabinet. 

So what was wrong at Apple in 1993? Lots. It was the beginning of the company's mid-90s Dark Ages. Microsoft's Windows was eating into sales, even before the explosion of Windows 95; Mac shipments slumped despite Apple's slashing prices again and again. The result: a $188 million 3Q loss at Apple. Its stock price was down over 50% from the start of the year. One in six employees faced a layoff plan.

Even as he gave way to new CEO Michael Spindler, Sculley gamely pointed to new hope on the horizon. The top-secret Apple-IBM "Pink" operating system "will blow people away", Sculley said. The upcoming PowerPC processor offered more promise. And a whole new product line, the Newton PDA, was just months from launch.

Not surprisingly, not much of that went down as planned. "Pink" fizzled completely. The PowerPC had its run, but eventually yielded to Intel. The Newton took its best shot and played a huge role in creating the PDA and smart phone markets of today. But it itself is gone.

Fortunately for Apple, there was much more change coming. Steve Jobs famously returned in 1997; the mid-80s change of management was thoroughly undone. So was the "beleaguered" Apple of 1993. Against one of the worst global economic backgrounds in decades, Apple in January 2009 announced the best quarterly results in its history. It was a $7 billion company in 1993; it now generates over $10 billion in revenue each quarter. Mac sales continue to boom, to over 2.5 million per quarter. While Mac market share rises, the iPod and iPhone continue to dominate their markets with millions of units sold per quarter.

Apple's "closed" ecosystem, lambasted in 1993 as one of the mistakes killing the company, is now seen as a stroke of genius that allows product integration and healthy margins that competitors can't match. Even as Microsoft struggles with troubles both old (security woes, unprofitable side businesses) and new (the Vista debacle, layoffs, competitors like Google, Linux and Apple eating into its core businesses), a debt-free Apple sits on tens of billions of dollars in cash, rakes in accolades for its technology, design, and customer service, and is increasingly seen as the standard-bearer for both product and management excellence.

Change. Some sticks, some gets reversed, some takes off in crazy directions. 15 years after that gloomy Newsweek article foreshadowing the bad years for Apple, here on the Mac's 25th anniversary, Apple sits on top of the tech world. Who could have seen that coming?

Change is good. Elsewhere in that old Newsweek was an unrelated article on a Japan election, with a curious parallel to our time. A 1993 campaign banner in Tokyo, underneath its main slogan, carried a single English word: "Change".

May all your change be good this year.