Return to the Little Kingdom_ Steve Jobs and the Creation of Apple - Michael Moritz [6]
Debi Coleman, the division’s financial controller, was more interested in the past than the future and, much like a child hoping for a familiar bedtime tale, asked Jobs to tell the newcomers how he had silenced the founder of Osborne Computers whose portable computer had been putting a dent in Apple’s sales. “Tell us what you told Adam Osborne,” she implored. With a reluctant shrug Jobs waited for the anticipation to build before embarking on the story. “Adam Osborne is always dumping on Apple. He was going on and on about Lisa and when we would ship Lisa and then he started joking about Mac. I was trying to keep my cool and be polite but he kept asking, ‘What’s this Mac we’re hearing about? Is it real?’ He started getting under my collar so much that I told him, ‘Adam, it’s so good that even after it puts your company out of business, you’ll still want to go out and buy it for your kids.’”
The group alternated between the indoor sessions and alfresco sessions on a bank of sun-parched grass. Some foraged in a cardboard box and donned T-shirts that had the computer’s name racing across the chest in a punky script. The retreat seemed a cross between a confessional and a group-encounter session. There was a nervous, slightly strained, jocularity but the old-timers who had attended previous retreats said the atmosphere was relaxed and low-key. A couple of the programmers muttered that they would have preferred to stay and work in Cupertino, but they lounged on the grass and listened to briefings from other members of the group.
Some picked at bowls of fruit, cracked walnuts, and crumpled soft-drink cans while Michael Murray, a dark-haired marketing man with dimples and mirrored sunglasses, rattled through industry charts and projected sales rates and market share. He showed how Mac would be introduced between the more expensive office computers made by competitors like IBM, Xerox, and Hewlett-Packard and the cheaper home computers sold by companies like Atari, Texas Instruments, and Commodore. “We’ve got a product that should be selling for five thousand dollars but we have the magic to sell for under two thousand. We’re going to redefine the expectations of a whole group of people.” He was asked how sales of Mac would affect Apple’s office computer, Lisa, which was a more elaborate computer but built around the same principles.
“There is one disaster scenario,” Murray admitted. “We could say Lisa was a great exercise for Apple. We can put it down to experience and sell ten.”
“Lisa is going to be incredibly great,” Jobs interjected firmly. “It will sell twelve thousand units in the first six months and fifty thousand in the first year.”
The marketing sorts talked of ploys to boost sales. They discussed the importance of trying to sell or donate hundreds of Macs to universities with gilded reputations.
“Why not sell Mac to secretaries?” asked Joanna Hoffman, a perky woman with a faint foreign accent.
“We don’t want companies to think the machine is a word processor,” Murray retorted.
“There’s a way to solve that problem,” Hoffman countered. “We could say to the secretaries: ‘Here’s your chance to grow into an area associate.’”
There was a discussion of improving sales overseas. “We have the kind of hi-tech magnetism that can attract the Japanese,” Hoffman mentioned. “But there’s no way they can succeed here while we’re here and we’re going to succeed there regardless.”
“We were very big in Japan until recently,” Bill Fernandez, a beanstalk-thin technician, observed in a pinched staccato.
Chris Espinosa, manager of the writers who prepared the computer’s instruction manuals, slopped in his sandals to the front of the group. He had just turned twenty-one, and as he pulled some notes from a small red backpack he announced, “You all missed a great party.”
“I heard there was free acid,” somebody piped up.