Apple III Computer Information • Doc # 230 • Apple III Industrial Design History
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AppleDesign: The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group
By Paul Kunkel
Copyright © 1997 Paul Kunkel
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main Entry under title:
AppleDesign: The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group
1. Design— United States— History— 20th Century.
2. Apple Computer — Design.
I. Kunkel, Paul. II. Apple Computer, Inc.
97-71233
ISBN 1-888001-25-9
Copyright © 1997
10 9-876543
Publisher: Graphis Inc., New York, NY
Design: B. Martin Pedersen
John Jeheber, Jenny Francis
Editor: Clare Hayden, Kirsten Keppel
Associate Editor: Peggy Chapman
Photographs: Rick English
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AppleDesign: The work of the Apple industrial
design group. As the first personal computer
maker to incorporate world-class industrial
design in its products, Apple Computer spearheaded the
design of every key feature found on the modern computer.
The first to introduce a mass-market PC with a plastic case,
the first to popularize the graphical user interface and adopt a
consistent industrial design language, Apple s designers creat-
ed signature products such as the Macintosh, PowerBook and
Newton, which transformed the way we think about and use
personal computers. □ This comprehensive twenty-year his-
tory details the role that great design has played in the rise of
Apple from a suburban garage to a billion-dollar international
enterprise. With more than 400 full-color photographs, the
book analyzes the design of every significant Apple product,
uncovers concepts that were designed but never released
and reveals the passion, the turmoil and the triumph of a
small group of designers who shaped and gave meaning to the
most important technology of our time. The effort and sacri-
fice expended to keep the Apple dream alive has
been enormous. This is the story of that dream.
By Paul Kunkel □ Photographs by Rick English
2-1
ISBN 1-888001-25-9
■
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Apple III Computer Information • Doc # 230 • Apple III Industrial Design History
SARA Apple III Plate 8
Industrial Design: Apple Computer: Jerry Manock, Bill Dresselhaus;
Hovey-Kelley Design (Palo Alto, CA): Dean Hovey
Dates of Design: October 1978-July 1979
Introduced: September 1980
Intended as a follow up to the Apple II, the Apple III was the com-
pany's third major product and could have been its third major suc-
cess. Having more memory than the II, a faster processor, a built-in
floppy disk drive, four internal expansion slots, and a monitor capa-
ble of displaying 80 characters across, its features should have given
Apple a toehold in the fast-growing business market for personal
computers. But instead of being Apple's third runaway success, the
Apple III was something less, the result of an often fatal combina-
tion: over-confidence and inexperience.
One of Apple's early engineers, Richard Jordan, recalls the scene:
"At the time, the Apple II wasn't merely a success, it was a phe-
nomenon. It was cheap to produce and selling so fast that design-
ers and engineers in the Valley were falling over each other to work
for Apple ... many of them taking pay cuts in order to receive stock
options." One of them was Jordan, who quit Hewlett-Packard to join
Apple during the summer of 1978, just before the Apple III devel-
opment began. "As Apple's stock price took off, we all felt like
geniuses, even though most of us had nothing to do with the Apple
II." Every time Apple's stock split two- or three-for-one, "it made us
feel like supermen," says Jordan. "Pretty soon, we figured that it was
impossible for us to fail, no matter what we did. When the time came
to do the Apple III, we were convinced that every decision we made
would be right." This atmosphere made the Apple III very different
from the Apple II.
Long before the circuitboard had been laid out and components
such as the floppy drive and power supply selected, the Apple Ill's
industrial designers Jerry Manock and Dean Hovey had already
designed the internal chassis and case without being certain that the
components would fit inside. The engineers had already given
Manock the maximum board size they thought they would need,
and Manock designed accordingly. But as the project evolved, the
engineers needed more space than Manock could give them.
For months, the whole PC industry had been waiting for the
Federal Communications Commission to issue guidelines for shield-
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ing electromagnetic and radio frequency interference (EMI and RFI)
to prevent home-based personal computers from interfering with
local TV and radio reception. Yet rather than wait for the guidelines,
which could take months to finalize, Manock decided to make the
III "bulletproof —designing a cast aluminum chassis that was so
massive, it would pass the most stringent standards. In addition to
shielding the computer, the aluminum would also act as a heat sink
to keep the internal components cool. Since everyone expected the
Apple III to ship in huge volume, Manock then contracted Doher-
Jarvis, a Toledo-based auto parts manufacturer, to supply the cast
aluminum chassis.
On the outside, the Apple Ill's blocky design, 45-degree chamfers,
keyboard wedge on the front and brown color were intended to
establish a "house style" that would inspire the look of future Apple
products. But inside the case there was trouble. As the project
evolved, a phenomenon known as "feature creep" took hold— in
which every member of the team (marketing, engineering, industrial
design, manufacturing) suggested some new feature, forcing the prod-
uct to grow beyond its original size.
Unlike the Apple II, which had an efficient interior layout, "the
Apple III was designed by committee," says Randy Wigginton, who
joined Apple in 1977 to write software for the Apple II. "Everybody
had certain ideas about what the III should do ... and all of them were
included." Ordinarily, that would not be a problem. But since Manock
had already designed his cast aluminum chassis, there was little inte-
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rior space in which to expand Rather than cut back on the hardware,
the engineers designed a circuitboard with pathways that were only
seven-tenths of a millimeter apart, packed the heat-producing com-
ponents together very tightly, yet did not install a fan for ventilation.
(Since fans made noise, Jobs considered them "inelegant" and would-
n't allow the Apple III to have one, even though it was needed.).
For months, the Apple m team had heard rumors of another per-
sonal computer of similar size and price being developed in Boca
Raton, Florida by the three most formidable initials in the history of
American business: IBM. Known throughout the world for its size
(more than 300,000 employees), strict dress code (white shirts, dark
suits and ties) and immense revenues (larger than the GNP of many
countries), IBM was the model of success through ordered bureau-
cracy. Because of its size, IBM was often slow to react but always
delivered on schedule. Therefore, when the Apple in team learned
that IBM's first PC would come out at the same time as Sara, "we all
decided to work flat out and make sure that the Apple III shipped
first," says Richard Jordan
For Steve Jobs, the prospect of IBM entering the PC market was
both frightening and invigorating. "Big Blue epitomized everything
Jobs hated ... faceless corporations selling computers that only
experts could understand," says Manock. IBM promised stability by
using its size to create a de facto standard. Yet Jobs viewed that as
a way to stifle innovation and extend its control from mainframes to
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the desktop. "Steve figured the only way to beat IBM at its own
game was to build a computer for people who didn't understand
computers, a computer for the rest of us," says Manock.
But the one essential ingredient missing from the Apple m was Jobs
himself. When the program began, says Richard Jordan, "he
Qobslwould sit on your desk and talk to you ... sometimes all day." Yet
once the general outlines of the project were set, Jobs moved on,
assuming that the managers would handle the handle the details. By
the time Jobs returned, with IBM now breathing down Apple's man-
agers' their necks, "all the major decisions had been made, and it was
too late for Steve to do anything." Even so, Jobs spent as much time
as he could on the Apple HI, adopting a technique that colleagues later
called MBWA ("Management By Walking Around"), in which he would
show up unannounced and walk from cubicle to cubicle, inspecting
each person's work, praising those who were doing a good job and
challenging those who weren't, even if he didn't fully understand what
the person was trying to do.
"In his quest for perfection, Steve liked to put others on the defen-
sive," says Manock. "He'd fix his eyes on you in an intimidating stare,
then bear down in a way that would make you break out in a sweat
... then praise you later in the day to make you work harder still."
After a few weeks of MBWA, Jobs realized that the Apple III was
in trouble. Yet because it had been mentioned in Apple's initial pub-
lic offering, the company had no choice but to ship it on schedule.
As the date approached, the project entered 'crash and burn' mode,
forcing Jerry Manock to bring in another designer— Bill Dresselhaus,
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who had just been hired to begin work on Apple's next project, the
Lisa— to help finish the case. Dresselhaus's assignment was simple:
give the Apple III an angled front bezel and appropriate detailing
around the floppy disk slot using the same 45-degree chamfers and
brown color that Manock had used on the Apple II. Yet Dresselhaus
suggested a sleeker case with tighter corners and no chamfers.
When Dresselhaus showed his sketch to Jobs, "he [Jobs] seemed to
like it ... then changed his mind, saying that it looked too much like
Olivetti, which I considered a strange comment, since Olivetti's
design was at that time considered the best the world." Rather than
experiment with the design at the last minute, Jobs fell back on the
tried-and-true style that had worked so well on the Apple II, which
Dresselhaus implemented, then moved on to the Lisa.
As the engineers warned of trouble, they were told "any prob-
lems that hadn't been fixed by the ship date could be ironed out
during the first month of production," says Jordan. "But that
proved a fatal mistake."
Another problem was software. Because of the rushed schedule,
Apple's programmers didn't even see the computer until nine weeks
before it was supposed to be shipped. As a result, programming and
operational manuals had to be reviewed on the same day that
mechanicals shipped to the printer, allowing so many errors to slip
through that an addendum had to be published. To make matters
7-1
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worse, Jobs was so obsessed by secrecy that he revealed as little as
possible about the Apple III to outside hardware and software devel-
opers. Thus, no add-on products or "killer applications" appeared
when the product was introduced
After a fitful ramp-up, production went forward in May 1980, even
though half the units coming off the line wouldn't function. Those
that did work were shipped to dealers, functioned for a short time,
then displayed the words: "System Failure." Whenever technicians
removed the circuitboard from the case, the computer would come
back to life. Yet once the circuitboard was put back, it went dead
again. Initially, the engineers blamed the problem on manufactur-
ing, then on Manock's aluminum chassis. Yet further analysis
showed a range of problems: connectors that wouldn't connect;
screws in the case that pierced cables inside the machine; and a cir-
cuitboard that was so densely packed, it tended to short out. The
real problem, however, was not the machine. It was the culture of
invincibility that had grown up inside Apple.
"When Jobs realized what had happened, he was dumbstruck,"
says Jordan. "After the Apple II, he never imagined we could fail."
Eventually, the assembly line was stopped, the problem corrected,
and the product relaunched— leaving a gap in the market that IBM
filled with its first PC computer in August 1981, giving Big Blue a
toehold in the desktop computer market at a critical moment.
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Despite the Apple III debacle, Apple's initial public stock offering on
December 12, 1980—4.6 million shares priced at $22 per share-
quickly rose to $29 and sold out within minutes. By the end of that
first day of trading, Apple had a combined market value of $1,778
billion, which made it the largest IPO since the day Ford Motor went
public in the 1950s. Going public not gave Apple the funds it need-
ed to pursue future projects, it earned Jobs, Wozniak, Markkula, and
a handful of Apple employees and insiders a huge windfall. Jobs' fif-
teen percent share would soon be worth more than $250 million.
Meanwhile, in a bid to end the confusion that had attended the
Apple III, president Mike Scott conducted Apple's first reorganiza-
tion (known as a "reorg") in January, splitting product development
into three groups— Personal Office Systems (Apple n/ni), Acces-
sory Products (disk drives, printers, modems) and Professional Office
Systems (the Lisa division)— while increasing product R&D spend-
ing to $21 million, three times the amount spent in 1980. By March,
however, the reorg had created such a backlash among employees
that Mike Markkula— the stabilizing force in every crisis during
Apple's early years— replaced Scott as president, causing Jobs to
replace Markkula as chairman, and Scott to become vice-chairman, a
ceremonial role that he eventually quit
Ironically, Scott's reorg came at the perfect time. After two years
of uncontrolled growth, when tiny one-product companies sprung
up like mushrooms across Silicon Valley profiting from the boom in
personal computers, the first industry shakeout was under way. Like
most downturns, it was brutal. But Apple's reorg, plus news that the
company had shipped $1 million worth of products on a single day
in March 1981, persuaded Wall Street that the company would turn
itself around, which it soon did Paradoxically, the arrival of the IBM-
PC in 1980 was good for Apple, since it brought the legitimacy of the
world's largest computer firm to a market that needed some stabili-
ty. To thank Big Blue, Apple ran a full page advertisement in The
Wall Street Journal with tongue firmly planted in cheek, proclaim-
ing: "Welcome IBM, seriously." By May 1981, the shakeout was over,
by which time Apple was already into its next major development.
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Apple III Computer Information
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