Save Apple?

Wired magazine, June 1997101 Ways to Save Apple – A Wired article from 1997 (link via Kottke), before all the cool things Apple’s done recently, including the Think Different campaign, the iPod, and both iMacs. What’s really interesting is how many of the recommendations have happened, including:

Mmm... iMac.14. Do something creative with the design of the box and separate yourselves from the pack. The original Macs stood out because of their innovative look. Repeat that. Get the folks at Porsche to design a box. Or Giorgio Giugiaro. Or Philippe Starck. We’d all feel better about shelling out the bucks for a Power Mac 9600 if we could get a tower with leopard spots.

98. Testimonials. Create commercials featuring real-life people in situations where buying a Mac (or switching to a Mac) saved the day.

The Apple Store7. Don’t disappear from the retail chains. Rent space in a computer store, flood it with Apple products (especially software), staff it with Apple salespeople, and display everything like you’re a living, breathing company and not a remote, dusty concept.

40. Cash in on millennium fever with an ad campaign that portrays Apple as a return to basics, a rediscovery of simplicity and purity, a rejection of complexity. (I don’t know if the millennium part happened, but they’ve definitely started hyping their simplicity)

Jobs with beard. Sort of.52. Return to the heady days of yore by insisting that Steve Jobs regrow his beard. (I’m not Jobs freak, so maybe that’s just scruff, but close enough.)

3 thoughts on “Save Apple?”

  1. I’d say getting their products into more stores would be key. Other than iPod’s, I never see Apple stuff at Best Buy, and CompUSA seems to be the only electronics store that carries their stuff.

  2. Actually Best Buy does sell their stuff now. So that’s done. Still, about one third of Americans live within 15 miles of an Apple store. That’s not so bad.

    I doubt that Apple got their ideas from this article, but when you write down 101 ideas, you’re bound to write down five (including the beard, mind you) that are actually going to be done. I wonder what the dumb ones on that list were…

    4. Gil Amelio should steal a page from Lee Iacocca’s book – work for one year without a salary, just to inspire the troops.

    How about “Get fired, and let Steve work for $1 per year.” OK, that happened. :-)

    15. Dump (or outsource) the Newton, eMate, digital cameras, and scanners.

    Good call there.

    27. Relocate the company to Bangalore and make it cheap, cheap, cheap.

    Holy crap, are they insane?!?

    Well, I could pick that list apart all day. I better not. Some good stuff in there though.

    Oh, and Steve’s beard has been very fully grown recently. :-)

  3. Maybe out by you, but the Best Buy’s I’ve been in here in MN don’t have Mac stuff (other than iPod’s, as I said). They hardly have enough PC stuff as it is, either.

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