Hello Again

The remaining gap was the consumer market. ""This was our soul,'' Jobs says, and in early August he began developing what would become the iMac. The ""i,'' of course, means Internet, a natural area for Apple to exploit: information in cyberspace is by and large equally accessible to users no matter what computer they use. In a sense, though, the name of the computer is misleading: aside from an easier setup process, the iMac offers nothing in the way of Internet usage that Microsoft-powered machines don't already have. Another possible flaw is the lack of a floppy-disk drive; although Jobs is correct when he says that it's more common to move information over a network, most iMac users will probably have to spring for an external drive to back up files.

The eye-catching iMac's biggest problem, though, is that many consumer software programs do not run on Macintoshes. If your desire is playing the latest computer-baseball game, for instance, having an ultrafast iMac won't help you--those games run only on Windows. Just days before the Apple event, there was a scare that Intuit, maker of the best-selling financial software Quicken, might abandon the Mac. Fortunately, Intuit CEO Bill Campbell--who sits on Apple's board--announced last week that Intuit will continue updating its Macintosh products. And this week the makers of the PalmPilot will announce new support for Macintosh. Optimists like John Landforce, a retailer who heads the Apple Reseller Advisory Board, predict further improvement: ""If you can sustain price-performance leadership over time, the software comes to you and the customers come to you,'' he says.

But even with the current software base, observers who see the iMac think it will sell, especially at its competitive $1,299 price tag. ""It's definitely going to our audience,'' says AOL president and CEO Bob Pittman. In Steve Jobs's view, ""Apple has already come back,'' and now that his days are not so intently involved in crisis management, and he is able to spend more time with his family, he appears to be having a wonderful time. He runs Apple in a mode that can only be described as post-CEO. Sometimes he will greet visitors in shorts, sandals and a two-day beard growth. His office is a surprisingly compact rectangle cluttered with books, videos and advertising awards. On the phone, sitting at a desk that sports both Mac and Windows laptops, he schmoozes and deals with everyone from Pixar executives to Jerry Seinfeld, concerning Apple's ad on the Final Episode. Last week he spent an extraordinary amount of time monitoring every last detail of the iMac intro; a typical executive decision was the elimination of a clarinet on a video soundtrack because it sounded ""too synthetic.''

Yes, his demeanor can be alarmingly frank--he can sometimes glance at an employee's hard-won accomplishment and sneer, ""This is a "D'.'' But critics who focus on the brutality of his assessments miss the point: Jobs's verbal boot camp can catalyze previously untapped greatness. ""There's too much emphasis on this style issue,'' says Larry Ellison. ""Steve is obsessed with quality, and that can make him uncompromising, but he gets results.'' Fifteen years after the fact, the members of the original Mac team still recall the sting of Jobs's criticism but look back on the experience as the peak of their careers. Those who produced the iMac seem to feel the same way. Would it not be reasonable to assume that those hard at work on the missing piece in Apple's product puzzle--a low-cost laptop due for delivery in the first half of 1999--might now be undergoing that same agony and ecstasy?

Of course, it would be a true distortion of reality to declare Apple totally out of the woods today. It is, after all, a company struggling to secure a sweet spot in an industry dominated by Microsoft. The key to Apple's long-term success is to maintain viability and profitability, hold on to its key markets and hope that whoever is running the company when the next big technological breakthrough arrives will be smarter than those Apple leaders who missed out on the Internet in the mid-1990s. Only then, when the ground shifts and Microsoft conceivably blinks (or is blinkered by the government), can the company truly regain its full former glory.

Meanwhile, Apple is a born-again business whose CEO is still a temporary employee. ""Over the next 12 months, it's very important for Steve to remain in a leadership role,'' says Fred Anderson. Meanwhile, the board of directors, utterly convinced that Steve Jobs is Apple's perfect leader now and forever (even Gil Amelio now says, ""He's doing a fine job''), has tried every imaginable ploy to get Jobs to commit. ""We tried to bear-hug him, to explain to him that his staying was vital,'' says Ed Woolard. But Jobs continues to resist. One day, in the midst of the pressure to stay, he woke up and figured however long ""interim'' meant simply wasn't his problem. He'd stay only as long as it felt good. ""I work hard and don't collect a salary,'' he says. ""I'm not costing the shareholders anything. That's the only commitment I can make.'' Considering the alternative, that's OK with the board. ""Every day we have him is a better day than it would be without him,'' says Bill Campbell.