The Apple Way

226 Pages·2005·1.55 MB·English

by  Jeffrey L. Cruikshank

The Apple Way
Jeffrey L. Cruikshank

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DOI: 10.1036/0072262338
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To Judy Kohn,who figured out Apple way before I did.
About the Author
Jeffrey L. Cruikshank was the co-founder of Kohn Cruikshank, Inc., a
Boston-based consulting firm that served corporate and institutional
clients for more than twelve years. In September of 2001, Kohn
Cruikshank moved to Milton and became The Cruikshank Company, Inc.
Cruikshank is a graduate of Amherst College, and worked with a
number of companies and schools in the Boston area in the 1970s and
1980s. In 1980, he became the editor of the Harvard Business School
Bulletin, beginning a relationship with that school that has continued
since then, and has led to many other engagements in the worlds of edu-
cation and business.
In addition to helping shape key communications for dozens of pub-
lic and private institutions, Cruikshank is the author or co-author of
numerous books of interest to managers. These include histories of the
Harvard Business School, New England Electric, Cummins Engine
Company, The Weather Channel, and Perdue Farms. He has also written
a book on corporations and architecture for Herman Miller, Inc.; the
definitive guide to art in public places (Going Public); and books on
numerous other subjects, ranging from logistics in the Gulf War (Moving
Mountains) to entrepreneurship (Low Risk, High Reward) to the inner
workings of the commercial real estate industry (The Real Estate Game).

In 2005, he published his first murder mystery (Murder at the B-School).
Copyright © 2006 by McGraw-Hill. Click here for terms of use.
For more information about this title, click here
Contents
Introduction vii
Chapter 1. Marvels and Margins 1
Chapter 2. Find the Future 13
Chapter 3. Take Their Breath Away 27
Chapter 4. Guard the Family Jewels 41
Chapter 5. Keep Your Friends (Reasonably) Close to You 59
Chapter 6. Keep Your Promises 75
Chapter 7. Build the Cult 89

Chapter 8. Get It Out There 101
Chapter 9. Keep Your Cool 115
Chapter 10. Flog the Bad Guys 129
Chapter 11. Fix Your Leaders 141
Chapter 12. Fix Your Plan 161
Notes 179
Index 195
v
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Introduction
A Tale of Two Introductions
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,adored by little states-
men and philosophers and divines.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Apple thought they had it right, this time.
The date: January 19, 1983. The place: the Flint Center at De Anza
College, less than a mile down the road from Apple’s headquarters on
Bandley Drive in Cupertino, California. The event: the formal unveiling of
Apple’s new flagship product at the company’s annual meeting.
The product was a computer, of course, and it was called the “Lisa,”
which—depending on who was doing the explaining—either stood for

“local integrated software architecture,” or was the name of Apple
cofounder Steve Jobs’s daughter, or both.1
The Lisa had been in development since the fall of 1978, when Jobs
began focusing on a new computer that would replace the aging Apple
II. At that time, Jobs envisioned a machine that would sell for $2,000, and
be aimed primarily at the business market. The new machine would be
only an evolutionary step beyond what Apple was already producing. In
other words, it would be another heavy, clunky, “small” machine—
“small” being only a relative term—with a built-in green-phosphor dis-
play, a more or less conventional user interface, and so on. Nevertheless,
Jobs had high hopes for the new machine, which he hoped would shore
vii
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viii Introduction
up Apple’s existing small-computer market, consisting mainly of educa-
tors and amateur computer buffs, and also begin to expand that base into
the business arena.2
So, planning began along those lines. Then, about a year later—in
November 1979—fate intervened. Against his better judgment, Jobs was
persuaded to visit the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The PARC
laboratories have since achieved legendary status as a place of astonish-
ing innovation, a place of bubbling technological ferment. But back then,
it took some arm-twisting to get Jobs to stop by the sprawling, mod-
ernistic complex at 3333 Coyote Hill Road in nearby Palo Alto. By all
accounts, Jobs didn’t think that stodgy old Xerox had much to teach
Apple Computer, which was then flying high: growing at astronomical
rates, getting ready for its second private placement, and generally (pun
unavoidable) the apple of Wall Street’s eye.
And, there was a grain of truth in that assessment. Xerox had been a
fabled innovator, in its day—more or less inventing the field of photo-
copying, among other things—but its glory days seemed to be behind it.
As the world headed toward the paperless office, photocopying machines
were looking more and more like buggy whips. Worse, the competition
from Japan was intensifying: It was getting harder to make buggy whips
at a profit.
So, from Xerox’s side of the table, there seemed to be good reasons
to cozy up to Apple, and even to the famously irascible Steve Jobs.
Maybe some of the innovations that had been languishing on PARC’s lab-
oratory benches could find their way to market with Apple’s help. At the
very least, assuming that the upstart Apple lived up to its growing buzz,
it couldn’t hurt to get a piece of that private placement.

A deal was struck: Xerox would buy 100,000 shares of Apple for $10
a share (and would agree never to buy more than 5 percent of Apple,
which jealously guarded its independence). In return, Apple would get
to make two reconnaissance trips to PARC, looking for bright and mar-
ketable ideas.
Those trips took place in the last two months of 1979, and for the for-
merly disdainful Jobs, they were a revelation. Xerox’s computer scientists
demonstrated an amazing machine—the Alto—that had many of the
characteristics that personal computer users would later come to take for
granted: things like a graphical user interface, or “GUI” (which allowed
the user to interact with the computer in ways other than typing in text