West of Eden: The End of Innocence at Apple Computer by Frank Rose

Author:Frank Rose [Rose, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: vl-nfcompvg
ISBN: 9780615278841
Amazon: 0615278841
Publisher: Stuyvesant Street Press
Published: 2009-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

The next test of Apple’s consumer-marketing abilities would come in April, when they introduced the sleek new book-sized version of the II—the II reinvented as an appliance. Though smaller and less versatile than the IIe, the new IIb was both more powerful and far simpler to set up. It had twice the memory. It lacked the expandability that made the IIe so versatile, but it came with all the most popular options built in. If you wanted your IIe to display the standard eighty columns of text instead of forty, you had to open it up and plug in a special eighty-column card—a little circuit board that went into a slot on the main board. To connect it to a printer, you had to plug in a printer interface card. And if you wanted to equip it with a second disk drive, you had to plug in a disk-drive interface card. All you had to do with the new model was take it out of the box, flip the switch to select the forty-column or the eighty-column display, and plug a printer or a disk drive into the back. And it was slim and attractive, with a clean, white look that underscored its hoped-for appeal to the novice computer user.

The II was Del Yocam’s division now. He took over from Cavalier at the beginning of February, and life in the Triangle Building started to change almost immediately. Del was not without vanity, but he was never visibly concerned about things like what kind of desk chair he sat in. He was concerned about keeping all the papers on top of his desk in their proper piles. He’d come to the Valley from Ford, and though many of the free-and-easy accoutrements of Valley life—the sporty European cars, the casual clothes—had somehow insinuated themselves into his existence, the values they reflected had not. When it came to business, Del was still in Detroit. Risk and passion were his watchwords, but what mattered was keeping things neat and tidy—his desktop, his division. What he lacked in charisma he made up in fastidiousness.

Del had come to Apple in 1979 as director of materials—purchasing, in other words—and quickly demonstrated a way with the balance sheet. Stable, reliable, and almost frighteningly efficient, he held his footing in Apple’s earthquake-prone terrain. Steadfastness comes in handy in any company, but at Camp Runamok it made him invaluable. He always did his homework, which was what it took to keep Steve from savaging you in meetings, and he was politically astute as well. Unlike Cavalier, he could see that with a new II about to come out and Steve and John both excited about it, he should be enthusiastic too. By that time, of course, it was far too late for him to have any say in the product itself; and because his experience was in manufacturing and finance, he didn’t have much to say about the marketing or advertising or promotional strategies for it either. So the posture he maintained was one of watchful waiting.

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