History of Apple (1999)
The end of the century gave Apple new life, but there was one big obstacle to tackle: Clones, as clone vendors such as Power Computing. Clones were taking customers away from Apple and were cutting into Apple’s high-end market, where they traditionally made the most profit. Steve Jobs annonced Apple’s new corporat strategy on November 10, 1997. Through the years to come Appple would sell computers direct, both over the web and the phone, as Power Computing had done so well in the past. This strategy was fully implemented by 1999. In July 1999, the iBook was introduced. This computer brought style to the low-end portable market. Several months later, the PowerMac G4 was introduced, a new professional desktop machine. Apple’s stock had risen all summer, and by mid-September 1999 was trading at an all-time high, in the high 70s. In his Keynote at MacWorld Expo SF in January 2000, Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s new Internet strategy: a suite of mac-only internet-based applications called “iTools” and an exclusive partnership with Earthlink as Apple’s recommended ISP. In July 2000, Apple announced a slew of new machines, including the PowerMac G4 Cube, which added a fifth category to Apple’s four-corner product strategy. (more…)