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Q1. Elaborate your opinion on the initial challenges encounter with Apple?

Q2. Elaborate your views on the process Apple followed during implementation of its Product?

Q3. Elaborate your views on the kind of Success Apple enjoyed with its Product?

A1.
Finding a display supplier with a reliable manufacturing process delayed introduction by twelve months.

Initial back log of orders collapsed before Christmas.

Product weighted nearly 17 pounds while Compaq’s full function LTE, introduced just six weeks later,
weighed seven.

Huge inventory of unsold portables.

“Major changes were needed in the way it was organized and how it operated.”

Apple was challenged to gain entry into the notebook market in 18 rather than 48 months.

A2.
Apple’s basic strategy was to develop user friendly, differentiated products based on its proprietary
knowledge. These products commanded a price premium, which gave Apple the high gross margins that
allowed it to reinvest in R&D, and continue to develop very attractive products. Successful
implementation also required growth. But growth and high margins had become more difficult to
achieve as the desktop industry matured, the number of competitors proliferated, competition became
more price based, and differentiation harder to achieve.

Apple’s activities were organized as functions and departments. No resources were dedicated to
particular project; each department supported all projects.

In the months following the Portable’s introduction, senior managers became committed to the idea of
reorganizing the company by product divisions and business units.

A3.
Bentley believed that design – what he described as look and feel of the product was responsible for –
95% of ‘’people essence’’ of the Powerbook.

Battat shared his view of the importance of design to PowerBook’s success. Curves are what help
generate emotions among the consumers.

The idea of empowering and supporting project managers was increasingly in the air during and after
the 1990’s reorganization.

Industrial design was driving the notion of, “object value”, and got definite support from product
marketing. Most manufacturers were treating their portables as extension of their desktop
environment, as business equipment, rather than a personal object. A lot of our focus on the product
detailing came from our sense of its object appeal.” This experience with portability had also affected
how Apple thought about design language.