1997 - think (really) different

Below is a chronological timeline of the year's defining moments, featuring key quotes from Steve Jobs, followed by my own personal thoughts and reflections on experiencing this historic era firsthand. January January 7, 1997 — Macworld San Francisco 1997 CEO Gil Amelio formally outlines the future strategy to integrate NeXT technology into the Mac ecosystem. Steve Jobs makes his historic return to an Apple stage as an advisor, demoing the raw power of NeXTSTEP's object-oriented software frameworks. Apple also announces the futuristic Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM) concept piece. Hopefully what you’ve seen here today are some beginning steps that give you some confidence that we, too, are going to think differently and serve the people that have been buying our products since the beginning. Because a lot of times people think they’re crazy. But in that craziness, we see genius, and those are the people we’re making tools for. February February 7, 1997 — NeXT Acquisition Finalized Apple officially closes the $429 million transaction to buy NeXT Software Inc., structurally integrating NeXT executives and engineers into Apple’s management pipeline. February 17, 1997 — The Final Legacy Hardware Releases Apple rolls out massive multi-model performance bumps across its classic beige desktop configurations, introducing the Power Macintosh 4400, 7300, 8600, and 9600 to keep the pro market satisfied, while axing the older 7200 and 8500 legacy boards. March March 7, 1997 — The Newton eMate 300 Apple begins shipping the eMate 300, a unique, translucent green, ruggedized laptop-pda hybrid utilizing the Newton OS. It was explicitly targeted at the classroom and education sectors. March 20, 1997 — The Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM) Apple officially releases the luxury TAM for a staggering $7,499. Boasting an integrated flat-panel LCD, vertical front-loading CD drive, custom Bose sound system, and leather palm rests, it was delivered to buyers' homes via a tuxedoed concierge. While a commercial failure, it predicted the form factor of the future flat-panel iMac. May May 13–16, 1997 — WWDC 1997 (San Jose) Gil Amelio attempts to pitch developers on the dual-track operating system strategy (Mac OS 8 for the short term, Rhapsody for the long term). Steve Jobs steals the spotlight during a famous standalone fireside Q&A session where he fields intense questions from developers, notably defending the cancellation of projects like OpenDoc by stating: "Focusing is about saying no." You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it. And I’ve made this mistake probably more than anybody else in this room... And as we have tried to find a strategy for Apple, it’s been: What incredible benefits can we give to the customer? Where can we take the customer? Not starting with, Let's sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have. June June 26, 1997 — A 12-Year Stock Low Following a brutal $1.6 billion quarterly loss statement, an anonymous institutional shareholder dumps 1.5 million shares of Apple stock in a single day, driving the valuation to a 12-year bottom. It is later revealed that the anonymous seller was Steve Jobs, forcing the board to realize the company was on the brink of total bankruptcy. July July 8, 1997 — The Ouster of Gil Amelio Led by board member Mike Markkula, Apple’s Board of Directors stages a coup and forces CEO Gil Amelio to resign. CFO Fred Anderson takes over temporary administrative operations while Steve Jobs subtly expands his internal corporate control over product direction. July 26, 1997 — Mac OS 8 Shipped Apple begins selling Mac OS 8. It integrates multi-threaded finder actions, improved web integration, and a significantly cleaner "Platinum" user interface layout. It becomes an immediate consumer smash, moving 1.2 million units in two weeks and providing a critical injection of operational cash. August August 6, 1997 — Macworld Boston 1997 One of the most famous keynotes in tech history. Acting as interim leader, Jobs radically cleans house. He removes the old board members, instates new leadership (including Larry Ellison), and shocks the universe by announcing a $150 million strategic partnership with Microsoft. Bill Gates appears on a massive projection screen above Jobs to guarantee Office on Mac for 5 years, ending a decade-long ecosystem war and stabilizing Apple's stock price instantly. We’re going to be changing our marketing to focus back on the core asset of the company, which is our brand. And you’re going to see some very different marketing starting in September. It’s going to be very pure, and it’s going to be very exciting. It’s going to remind us who we are, and it’s going to remind the world who we are. September September 16, 1997 — Steve Jobs Named iCEO Apple formally announces that Steve Jobs will take the title of Interim CEO (iCEO), officially returning him to the helm of the company he co-founded for the first time since his 1985 exit. September 17, 1997 — Apple Expo Paris 1997 Jobs keeps up international marketing pushes, traveling to France to reinforce global supply and developer chains following the sweeping boardroom adjustments made in Boston. Apple has suffered from a lack of urgency. We are going to change that. You are going to see us moving much faster, making decisions in days instead of months, and focusing entirely on delivering value to our core users. If we don’t move at internet speed, we won't survive. September 23, 1997 — The "Think Different" Campaign Jobs gathers Apple employees for an iconic, closed-door internal meeting to pitch the company's new identity framework. He details how Apple had lost its soul by talking too much about processors and metrics, introducing the TBWA\Chiat\Day "Think Different" campaign. The legendary television commercial featuring historical iconoclasts debuts publicly on September 27. We believe that in this world, people can change it for the better. And that those people that are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that actually do. So what we're going to do in our first brand marketing campaign in several years is to get back to that core value. October October 20, 1997 — The Newton MessagePad 2100 In a final structural rollout for the handheld division, Apple introduces the MessagePad 2100. It brings significant memory upgrades and faster execution metrics to the PDA line. November November 10, 1997 — The G3 Architecture & The Apple Store (Special Event) Jobs hosts a focused product event to completely re-architect Apple's product deployment. He introduces the hyper-efficient Power Macintosh G3 desktop and the original PowerBook G3 laptop (codenamed "Kanga"). Most importantly, he announces the launch of the Online Apple Store, cutting out retail middle-men by utilizing a direct, build-to-order manufacturing process that completely cleans up Apple’s bloated inventory issues. We are radically simplifying our product line, but we are also radically simplifying our supply chain. We cannot carry two months of inventory when the market moves this fast. Our new build-to-order model means we build the machine after you order it, slashing our overhead and letting us pass those savings back to the consumer. 1997 was a year of profound transitions—not just for me, but for Apple as well. It was the year I graduated high school and headed off to college, a milestone perfectly timed with getting my first true Macintosh workspace: a Power Macintosh 7300/200 paired with an Apple Multiple Scan 15AV Display. Technically, it was my second Mac; I had originally started with a Macintosh Performa 6400/200 Zip from Circuit City. But the Performa always felt sluggish, a mystery solved only recently when I learned it shipped entirely missing a critical L2 cache. I spent that year eagerly testing every software update Apple pushed out, especially the blockbuster release of Mac OS 8. Somewhere in the midst of all this tech shifting, I ended up procuring an eMate 300. To this day, I’m not entirely sure what I thought I was going to do with it; it basically spent its life sitting under my bed. As a college freshman, I just wasn't confident enough to be seen out in public carrying a translucent-green, toy-like device. Ultimately, space won out over style that semester. There simply wasn't room in my dorm for a full desktop setup, so my Power Mac stayed home, and I found myself tethered to Windows once again, navigating classes on a new laptop provided by Rollins College. Looking back, Macworld Boston 1997 was the official liftoff for the wildest turnaround in corporate history. Steve Jobs laid out his survival blueprint, and it began with a total overhaul at the top. I vividly remember how electric it felt to have Oracle’s Larry Ellison join the board. He was charismatic, a close friend of Steve's, and someone I had grown to admire through his sharp interviews in PBS’s Triumph of the Nerds mini-series the previous summer. While the Boston crowd was famously divided—even booing parts of the presentation—seeing the sheer weight of that new board of directors on the big screen convinced many of us that Apple finally had the leadership to survive. When the "Think Different" campaign launched that fall, it deeply resonated with me. I had always felt like someone who viewed the world a bit differently. Apple kept that momentum alive months later, teasing mysterious updates with icons of a chocolate chip cookie, a shopping cart, and a screwdriver. That rapid-fire cadence is what I loved most about the late '90s tech era; every 90 days brought a major announcement or a system refresh. Just before the big November event, for instance, Apple changed the retail landscape overnight by introducing the dedicated "store-within-a-store" experience at CompUSA.