Early Steve Jobs

Most modern culture historians see Jan. 24, 1984 as the day when
the PC revolution truly began. Steve Jobs — sporting his
trademark bow tie — walked onstage to unveil the Apple Inc.
(NASDAQ:AAPL) Macintosh and his enthusiasm immediately
infected the crowd. Anybody who has watched the video of the
event can see how much the crowd loved him and how excited
they were about the device he was talking about.
Macintosh sales started off gangbusters too, but not for long. The
company sold 70,000 Macintosh computers through April.
However, by year end, sales had dropped to only 10,000 a month.
The company discontinued the Lisa in 1985, and with Macintosh
sales falling off a cliff, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL

Steve Jobs and Scully

Jobs and Scully clashed on a number of issues. For starters, Jobs
had been removed from the Apple team developing the Lisa PC,
and he was deeply resentful. He turned that resentment into
determination that the Macintosh would be better and cheaper.
However, Jobs lost a battle with his personally picked CEO, John
Sculley, over the marketing costs of the Macintosh. Jobs wanted
to price the Macintosh at around $2000 to drive demand, but
Sculley insisted the price be set at $2,495 to include marketing
and advertising costs.
The crisis mentioned above eventually precipitated a showdown
between CEO Sculley and Jobs later in 1985, with Jobs losing out
and leaving Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in late summer. In a
2010 interview, Jobs still pointed to the cost as the main reason for
the failure of the Macintosh.
Problems with Macintosh
But a steep price tag wasn’t the only reason the early Macintosh
failed. According to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs, “The
problem was a fundamental one: It was a dazzling but woefully
slow and underpowered computer, and no amount of hoopla could
mask that.”
Isaacson also noted the the Macintosh had only 128K of memory,
compared with the 1,000K RAM in the Lisa. the PC also did not
have an internal hard drive. The Macintosh didn’t even have a
cooling fan as Jobs believed that it “distracted from the calm of
the computer.” Issacson somewhat drily points out that “This
caused many component failures and earned the Macintosh the
nickname ‘the beige toaster,’ which did not enhance its
popularity.”
Macintosh led the way
Its problems notwithstanding, the Macintosh led the way in terms
of the design of the modern PC. Steve Jobs constantly preached
the importance of tight integration between hardware and software
as critical for usability, and he has been proven correct.
Furthermore, the basic graphical user interface of the Macintosh
and, of course, the mouse, became the standards of personal
computing.
Why did the Macintosh fail?
2 Answers

Doug Garnett, Specialist advertising product innovations to drive

exceptional retail impact.
Updated 81w ago · Author has 1.6k answers and 1.4m answer views

I was involved at the time. Had built General Dynamics’ first

network of Apple II’s in 1992 and evaluated the Lisa as part
of a corporate effort.
When the Mac first came out I loved it. But the screen was
small, applications were limited & expensive, and it just
wasn't up to what I needed to do. So I bought a PC
compatible from ATT.
The choice was right for me. I worked with the early Mac
and with people who had them. It just wasn't ready for
common use.
Add to it that IBM owned data centers in the 1980s. We
used to have “IBM days” where we all wore blue suits and
white shirts - the mandatory IBM uniform. And in the
computer biz it used to be said “no one is ever been
fired for buying IBM.”
Apple never really had a chance to own data center
purchased micro-computers.
But still, I disagree that it “failed”. Rather, early Mac
success was mediocre in the market but had enough
enthusiasm for them to keep going.
So Apple kept pushing. The second generation was great and
I used it at work. Since that time, I've owned 3 or 4 more
PCs. But hated them all. (Had to buy one in my business
recently. More raw power, but pain in the ass.)
The key with innovation is that the first of something really
innovative often isn't mass market ready. And that's ok. But
you need to (like Apple did) keep the pressure on to get it
mass market ready.

Tom Foale, Working on taking disruptive innovations to market

Answered 81w ago · Author has 619 answers and 448.3k answer views

The original Macintosh was pretty, had a nice interface, but

failed in comparison to the IBM PC in the crucial area of
jobs that it helped users to do. It was short on memory and
lacked useful programs. It wasn't until the arrival of the Mac
III with more memory than the PC and Aldus Pagemaker
that the Mac found its niche and took over as the lead
product from the Apple II. For many years after that the
Mac’s market was the media/design industry and it was
rarely found as a corporate productivity tool.