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By Root 559 0

when it came to thinking about new computers had less salutary results when it spilled over into the way Apple treated the outside world. It was an excruciating balancing act for Apple’s managers to dally with the impossible inside the company and simultaneously cope with mortals on the outside. They were also confronted with the conflicting need to guard corporate secrets and maintain congenial relationships. Yet at times the corporate arrogance seemed to teeter on the brink of what amounted to a willful effort at self-destruction, and much of the goodwill that had been so carefully and laboriously built up between Apple and outsiders started to evaporate.

“Apple was uniquely aggressive,” said Daniel Fylstra, chairman of Visicorp, once known as Personal Software, “about pursuing its self-interest.” Fylstra had good reason to know, since the Visicalc program was instrumental in helping push Apples into offices. When Visicorp started to mimic Apple by retaining the same law firm, public-relations agency, accountants, and investors the amiable relationship began to sour. It deteriorated further when Visicorp decided to adapt versions of Visicalc for computers made by Apple’s competitors and further still when it tried to increase the price of the program when it was made available for the Apple III. To keep Visicorp in its place, Apple’s programmers were ordered to develop a spread-sheet program. The project kept slipping and was never officially released, but the relationship between the two companies became still sorrier.

The same was true of other software companies. The decision to develop in Cupertino most of the programs for the Apple III antagonized the smaller software companies. Apple wanted to maintain a tighter control over some of the programs—like word-processing and spread-sheet packages—that were becoming as important as the computer. But there was, as the Apple II had demonstrated, so many things that the computer could be used for that Apple had nowhere near enough programmers and nowhere near enough expertise to exploit all the opportunities. When Apple failed to provide the technical information and languages necessary to write programs, more feelings were hurt. Thanks to the premature introduction, the manuals explaining the software weren’t even written. And when Apple then charged hefty admission prices to seminars explaining the innards of the Apple III, things took another turn for the worse. All the problems with the Apple III were certainly aggravated by the small amount of software that was available. When work started on Lisa, a similar attitude prevailed and outside companies weren’t invited to contribute.

A tightening proprietary attitude was also displayed toward Apple engineers who wanted to pursue their own ideas. When Chuck Mauro decided to leave Apple in 1980 to start a company to make a peripheral that would convert the display of the Apple II from forty columns to eighty columns, Jobs wrote him a formal letter and wished him the best. Days later, as the possible consequences of the decision began to sink in, he changed his mind and argued vigorously with Mauro that the board had been developed on Apple’s time and was therefore company property. “He invited me to lunch,” said Mauro, “and as we were walking over to the restaurant he looked at me and said, ‘You know, if we wanted to we could squash you like a bug.’” However, with the legal position murky, Jobs lifted the corporate heel and didn’t provide any further obstruction and Mauro founded his own company.

The same sort of antagonism began to come between Apple and its dealers. To grow quickly Apple relied on a two-step system of distribution. Apple sold products to distributors who in turn resold the machines to dealers. After a time, the distributors weren’t growing as quickly as orders and were restraining Apple’s growth. Most of the distributors were small companies started by inexperienced businessmen who couldn’t raise the local bank manager on the telephone and arrange for an increase in credit. As soon as any distributor