Overall Apple Strategy Press Release

Apple Computer, Inc. Introduces the Macintosh Office

Steven P. Jobs, Chairman of the Board
John Sculley, President and Chief Executive Officer

One year ago, we introduced the Macintosh* personal computer.  Within 100 days it was hailed as an industry milestone.  Macintosh heralded an era of new, intuitive interactions between people and computers.  It changed forever people's expectations of what a computer should be and how it should perform.

1984--The Beginning

In 1984 we successfully established Macintosh as a stand-alone productivity tool.  Macintosh was designed to serve the needs of individual "knowledge workers," those business people who transform information and ideas into reports, plans, budgets, memos and presentations.  We concentrated on providing knowledge workers with the tools to do these tasks easily and inexpensively.  Macintosh was the first step in our larger plan to provide solutions needed by business.  We set three goals in the year following the Macintosh introduction -- 1.  to sell 250,000 Macintosh computers,   2.  to have at least 150 software applications available, and  3.  to establish Macintosh as the third industry milestone, following the Apple II and the IBM PC.  With more than 250,000 units sold and more than 300 software packages shipping, we have not only met, but exceeded our goals.

Now that we've demonstrated the strength of Macintosh, we can unfold our strategy to take the concepts of innovation and radical ease of use more deeply into the office.

1985--The Macintosh Office

In 1985, we'll concentrate on increasing the productivity of knowledge workers through improved communication.  We'll provide them with an environment--The Macintosh Office--where they can work together in the most productive ways possible.  Today we are announcing the AppleTalk* Personal Network and the LaserWriter printer.  And these two products are only the next step.  Our strategy over the next few years is to introduce a series of products to meet the needs of work groups.  Through these products we plan to achieve our long-term goal of establishing Macintosh as the second standard in a variety of business markets.  Our products must allow people to exchange information among their Macintosh computers and other products already used by business.  For this reason, The Macintosh Office products will communicate and coexist with the standards that are already established. The concept of The Macintosh Office builds on an understanding of how people in business really work.  Our research shows that knowledge workers spend about 80 percent of their time working closely with five to 25 other people.  The remaining 20 percent of the time, workers need to reach beyond this group.  The Macintosh Office provides tools to let knowledge workers communicate within the work group and tie into outside information.  These work groups exist everywhere in business.  Our target market includes the work groups in small, medium and large businesses, all of which communicate and process information.

Products to Improve Productivity in Work Groups

At the heart of The Macintosh Office, of course, is Macintosh.  The Macintosh family of products, built on the premise of power and radical ease of use, includes the entry-system Macintosh 128K; the more powerful Macintosh 512K, the Macintosh most frequently chosen by business users; and the Macintosh XL, for users who need more memory, a larger screen and a built-in hard-disk drive.  Working in combination with its hardware products, The Macintosh Office has powerful business software solutions.   More than 350 software packages already exist for Macintosh.  Soon, the recently introduced Jazz will be added, the integrated business software package from Lotus Development Corp.  Third-party software packages already available include powerful high-end word-processing programs, such as Microsoft Word, and sophisticated data bases such as Helix from Odesta.

Throughout the year we will see more specialized software that takes advantage of the distinctive features of the products in The Macintosh Office, adding to the exciting new business software programs entering the market continually. To really take advantage of the Macintosh hardware and software solutions, Macintosh users in work groups need to be able to communicate with each other. The AppleTalk Personal Network is a breakthrough in price/value that brings Macintosh radical ease of use to work groups.

Networks have been slow to catch on in business, mainly because they're too expensive, they're too complicated to install and use and there's too little software available for them.  But software won't be developed without a large installed base of networks to write for, so the network market is at a standstill.

AppleTalk will change all that.  For a suggested retail price of only $50 a connection, AppleTalk allows Macintosh  and other personal computers to share peripherals and lets up to 32 computers and peripheral devices communicate with each other within work areas of 1,000 feet.  AppleTalk can act as a tributary to other networks for communication outside AppleTalk, and multiple AppleTalk networks can be bridged together to extend beyond 32 connections.

AppleTalk will do for networks what personal computers did for computing--bring the services inexpensively to a great many individuals.  Leading companies, such as 3Com Corp., Sytek Inc. and Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc., are already working on products for AppleTalk.  We are relying on continuing strong support from third-party developers, who are taking advantage of AppleTalk's open architecture to design innovative and powerful network-based hardware and software products based on the network.

Knowledge workers need to be able to express their ideas visually in written form and for presentations.  Apple's LaserWriter is a breakthrough in visual communication that brings to workstations a productivity tool never before available.

The LaserWriter is a high-resolution laser printer that can be shared in a work group to print such documents as newsletters, overhead transparencies, business forms, memos, brochures and reports.  Through its dynamic built-in software language, PostScript, plus its built-in computer--the most powerful Apple has yet built--and a Canon LBP-CX10 engine, the LaserWriter produces text and business graphics with quality and flexibility previously restricted to printers costing several times as much.  It prints characters and graphics in virtually any size at full-page 300 dots-per-inch resolution.

The key business software available for the Macintosh will produce output from the LaserWriter without modification.  Also, a built-in program emulates the Diablo 630, a popular daisy-wheel printer, letting IBM and IBM-compatible personal computers using IBM PC software print directly on the LaserWriter with no software modifications.

The printer will change the standard for written business communication by providing near typeset-quality text and art department-quality graphics directly to business people at their desks.

Work groups sharing a network need centralized storage for files and electronic mail.  Apple's file server will be just one of many file and disk servers on the market for The Macintosh Office.

The file server, with 20-megabyte and 40-megabyte capacities, will be Apple's hard-disk electronic communication solution for work groups.  It will have a built-in computer; software that provides file transfer, electronic mail and print-spooling; and built-in file-management software that will form the basis of multiuser applications to be developed by third parties.

The file server's design encourages development of both hardware and software products.  It contains a standard SCSI peripheral interface to support hardware add-ons such as tape back-up and additional storage.   Also, it uses the Macintosh operating system and development environment, making it easy for third-party software developers already familiar with Macintosh to write applications for the file server.

The Macintosh Office will also include a variety of file server and shared disk products from third parties, ranging in price and features.  Some will be available by as soon as the second quarter of 1985.  For example, disk servers will be provided by Micro Design and Sunol Systems Inc., and a Unix service system called "Ultra Office" from Lutzky-Baird Associates will be available in the first quarter.

Apple will also provide utilities that make Macintosh an even more useful business machine.  For example, during 1985 we will enhance the Macintosh user interface and file system to significantly improve Macintosh performance, particularly with hard disks.

Coexistence with the IBM World

We realize we must connect The Macintosh Office world with the IBM world.  It is necessary for Apple to connect with the IBM world at three strategic points: mainframe corporate data bases, System 36 and the PC/PC network level.

In the mainframe world, Apple's existing data communications products promote coexistence by allowing Macintosh to communicate with other systems. MacTerminal, introduced last year, provides a single-user interface to a broad selection of computer environments, including the IBM 3270 and DEC VT 100 terminals.  The Apple Cluster Controller provides a pathway between Macintosh and IBM networks based on bisynchronous or System Network Architecture (SNA) protocols.  With either the Cluster Controller or with AppleLine, which emulates a 3278 terminal, the Macintosh family can talk directly to IBM in 3270 protocols.

We will continue our commitment to interface with IBM standards.  Apple and third-party developers will provide gateways from AppleTalk into different IBM host computing environments, giving networked Macintosh users on AppleTalk the same access to mainframe information currently available to stand-alone Macintosh computers through MacTerminal, AppleLine and the Apple Cluster Controller.  Also, Macintosh users will be able to exchange revisable documents with IBM systems through the DIA/DCA format.

To integrate the IBM PC into The Macintosh Office, we will provide an AppleTalk card for the IBM PC that puts it onto the AppleTalk network, with software to allow it to print on the LaserWriter and to use Apple's hard-disk file-server product.  Additional software will let the IBM PC also be used as a file server itself and as a communications gateway into IBM's PC Network.\

We will be giving details on these products and others as we get closer to the time of their introduction.

Reaching Work Groups with the Products

The work group is a retail concept, and The Macintosh Office products provide retail solutions.  Because one-third of our dealers sell directly to businesses, we will be using our retail channels--traditionally the heart of Apple's business--to sell to most small and medium businesses and to departments of companies for whom dealer-provided training and support are more economical.

These retailers include well-known chains such as BusinessLand, Moore Business Centers (formerly The Genra Group) and Sears Business Systems Centers.  They usually supply in-store staffs with experienced sales personnel who work outside the store calling upon businesses and coordinating customer support.

REGIS MCKENNA INC.
1800 Embarcadero Road
Palo Alto, CA 94303
Katherine Cadigan - Christopher Dorst
(415) 494-2030
 
Prepared for:
 
APPLE COMPUTER, INC.
20525 Mariani Avenue
Cupertino, CA 95014
Renee Rodrigue (408) 973-2042
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE