A Messy Company Can Still Work:
When Scully joined Apple, he was surprised at the disorder, and bickering between Jobs and the Lisa team over a) why Lisa was a failure, and b) why Macintosh had not been launched in 1983. Scully felt that Apple was ‘like a household where everyone were running to the beach when there was an earthquake only to discover a tsunami was approaching that forced them back into the house.’ (Isaacson Biography). Things weren’t great on the numbers side for Scully’s first year as CEO either. He had to announce at the 1984 shareholders meeting that 1983 was a bad year for Apple. It was. The competitors were entering the market with cheaper products that were not as user-friendly as Apple but still semi-useful machines. The Apple balance sheet still showed major growth but IBM had launched the PC, and there were many lower-priced clones on the market in 1981 onward which were harming Apple’s competitive advantage.
But Macintosh was marketed as “the computer for the rest of us” and would refocus Apples efforts away from their core Apple II & LISA product offerings. Apples future was bright because there were 25 million information based users in offices across America, and their work had not changed much since the industrial revolution. The only desktop product people used was the phone until the personal computer. Apple hoped that their market share would expand with the unveiling of Macintosh….1984 would prove pivotal for Apples future (to be continued). Below is the balance sheet for the January 24th, 1984 Apple Shareholders meeting. Apple was a chaotic start-up turned revolutionary full fledged company. It was a messy operation from the standpoint of senior management but generally Apple worked.
 The Apple Computer, Inc Balance Sheet In 1983 | |
|
Current Assets |
Fiscal Year 1983 |
|
Cash and Investments |
$143,000,000 |
|
Receivables – Net |
$136,000,000 |
|
Inventory |
$143,000,000 |
|
Other |
$47,000,000 |
|
Total Current Assets |
$469,000,000 |
|
Net Fixed Assets |
$67,000,000 |
|
Other Assets |
$21,000,000 |
|
Total Assets |
$557,000,000 |
|
Current Liabilities |
$129,000,000 |
|
Long-Term Liabilities |
$50,000,000 |
|
Shareholders’ Equity |
$378,000,000 |
|
Total Liabilities & Equity |
$557,000,000 |
This is an analysis based on Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson and other sources of research. Enjoy.
