Apple Computer Inc. Announces Marketing Plans

CUPERTINO, Calif., April 29, 1985 -- PRNewswire -- Apple Computer Inc. today further outlined the company's direction for the Macintosh Office by announcing plans to market one modular Macintosh product line, enabling business to add components to their Macintosh personal computer to create an expandable system to meet their current and future needs.

Apple said it would offer one mainstream Macintosh computer that can be expanded with a variety of peripheral products, instead of continuing to produce two business computers, the Macintosh and the Macintosh XL. The Macintosh XL, which includes 10 megabytes of internal hard disk storage, will be replaced with a more powerful modular system, consisting of a high performance 20 megabyte external hard drive added to a 512K Macintosh personal computer.

"As businesses plan their information handling systems, it's important that Apple's long-range direction for the Macintosh Office is articulated and understood," said John Sculley, Apple's president and chief executive officer. "Our plans call for us to market the Macintosh Office as a modular product line, allowing businesses to choose from many different components to obtain the system that meets their changing needs. This strategy provides flexibility and growth paths for customers, minimized inventory costs and higher-value systems for dealers to sell, and streamlined manufacturing and distribution operations for Apple."

According to Apple, the 20 megabyte external hard disk drive announced today is a significant new modular option for business customers with large power and information handling needs. Available during the fall of l985, the personal hard disk is designed for individual workstations, and will take full advantage of business software from companies such as Lotus Development Corp. and Microsoft Corp. Apple said the personal hard disk will greatly increase the speed of the Macintosh and will store 50 times the information that can be stored on a 400K floppy disk drive.

The personal hard disk drive is the second high performance, mass storage peripheral Apple has announced for business users with large information storing needs. The company previously announced that it will offer a file server this fall intended for use by work groups, for such services as information sharing, electronic mail and other multiuser applications.

Other Macintosh Office components currently available include the LaserWriter printer, the AppleTalk Personal Network, the ImageWriter printer, modems, external disk drives and over 500 software packages from Apple and third-party developers. Additional business software will be available from top software companies in the near future.

Apple will continue to service and support the Macintosh XL and reaffirmed its earlier plans to provide opportunities to Macintosh XL owners to run Macintosh software on their computers. In May, customers can purchase the MacWorks XL operating system for the Macintosh XL, which provides support for the AppleTalk Personal Network and the LaserWriter printer.

In addition, a kit providing hardware materials to modify screen resolution of the Macintosh XL, making it identical to the resolution of the Macintosh, will be available this summer. Finally, owners using Lisa 7/7 software will be able to convert most of their data files so they can be used with Macintosh applications from other companies.

/CONTACT: Barbara Krause, 408-973-3719, or Renee Rodrigue, 408-973-4409, both of Apple, or Andrea Cunningham of Regis McKenna Inc., 415-494-2030, for Apple/