It was billed as the start of a revolution. And it was.
Twenty years ago this month, with the shadowy “1984” Super Bowl commercial that would become an advertising legend, Apple Computer introduced the world to the Macintosh.
Marketed as “a computer for the rest of us,” the Macintosh promised to forever change the IBM-dominated world of computing that was just starting to take shape. Undoubtedly, the stylish machine did change computing for everyone who now uses a mouse or a point-and-click graphical interface, not to mention an iPod.
These days, many Macintosh die-hards are just as disdainful of the conventional Windows-based computing world of today as they were about IBM in 1984. But while Apple still distances itself from the mainstream computing world with both its philosophy and its award-winning designs, the company also is starting to join it.
“Twenty years is a long time,” said Mike Murray, who was the 29-year-old chief of marketing at Apple when it launched its signature product. “People mature, gain in wisdom and smooth off the rough edges in that amount of time.”
Apple, he said, is no different.
Nine months after it introduced its groundbreaking iPod portable music player, Apple rolled out a Windows version of the device for the 96 percent of computer users who don’t use the Macintosh operating system. Sales soared among PC users who otherwise wouldn’t touch an Apple product, helping turn iPod into the best-selling MP3 music player.
In October, joking that “hell froze over,” Apple co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs went a step further, introducing a Windows version of Apple’s highly successful iTunes online music store software. Today, iTunes is the market leader in legal music downloads, with an estimated 70 percent of the market.
This month, Apple made another surprising foray into the Windows world. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it announced a first-of-its-kind agreement with Hewlett-Packard Co., a company that Apple unsuccessfully sued, along with Microsoft, for alleged patent infringement back in 1988.
Under the agreement, HP will sell its own version of the iPod. All of HP’s consumer computers also will come pre-installed with iTunes software, winning Apple a coveted spot on the desktop screens produced by the world’s second-biggest PC company and giving it a major entry point into the Windows computing world.
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“Jobs has become much more pragmatic with age,” said Tim Bajarin, president of technology research firm Creative Strategies Inc. “Even though he still has a very strong personality, I think he’s learned a lot. He has learned that what it takes to make a company successful sometimes means making concessions.” Apple also is learning that winning converts today isn’t as easy as it was back during its computer revolution of 1984.
Two years ago, Apple launched an aggressive advertising campaign it called “Switch,” which was supposed to persuade legions of Windows users to move to Macintosh. The campaign, which cost an estimated $75 million, didn’t work well.
According to technology research firm Gartner Inc., Apple’s U.S. market share actually declined slightly last year, to about 2.9 percent from 3.3 percent a year earlier.
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale ([email protected]) and Victoria Rodriguez ([email protected])