Steve Jobs on Apple's Turnaround: Rebuilding the Macintosh Franchise

Well, I'm here with Steve Jobs. And as all our team members know, we've just recently put in Apple departments in all our stores, and we're in the process of training people to sell Apple. And we've had a good relationship with Apple since Steve has taken back over Apple. And what I wanted Steve to do is talk about his vision for Apple in the future and how he sees it interacting with CompUSA. Well, we're thrilled to be working with you guys. And as you know, one of the the keywords for Apple has been, you know, simplify the business and focus on things. And focus doesn't mean saying yes. It means saying no to things so that you can focus on the remaining things that are on your plate. We've done quite a lot of that. Of the things we focused on is our our distribution partners. And we went out and, you know, did a lot of buying out in the stores and found out that the buying experience for Mac's was was really awful.

Yeah. Worse than awful. You couldn't believe this. People would walk in and wanna buy a Mac, and some of the peoples in some of the stores would say, well, you don't wanna buy one of those. That company's going out of business. So, you know, with a with a with a go to market strategy like that, you can't win no matter how good your products are. And we ask people who wants to partner with us. Who wants to turn this thing around? And Compio said, you guys were the only national reseller we had that said we do. And believe me, that's meant a lot to us. And we are putting our all behind this, and we're gonna show everybody how wrong they were. So rather than than take nine months, which Apple typically would have to get this all perfect, we said, let's just do it. And it's not gonna be perfect from day one, but we're gonna incrementally improve this as we go along. And so, yeah, I know not every salesperson is trained, not every poster's in the right place, but, you know, we went off to the races really fast in this.

And I think it certainly helped Apple last quarter, and I think it really helped CompUSA last And this quarter, it's gonna be better yet as more and more salespeople get trained. And I think it's a tremendous opportunity for both of us because the Mac community... Here's here's what our research has showed us. Our research has showed us that our customers are not defecting to Windows in very great numbers, but they're also not upgrading their computers to new computers anywhere near as frequently as their Wintel counterparts. And the reason is they've been scared. They've been scared by all these news reports that Apple's lost a billion dollars and is going out of business. I'd be scared too, so would you. And so our primary, our first primary thrust is to get our own installed base of 25,000,000 customers to be upgrading to new computers as regularly as their Wintel counterparts are.

And if we can do that, it's gonna be monumental for the success of our company, and now I think CompUSA as well. And so when we run ads and stuff, you know, of course, we wanna get some Wintel people to come over into the Mac camp. But primarily, it's to talk to our own customers and tell them how well well we're doing and to tell them why they ought to go upgrade and buy a new Mac. And, of course, the most important thing we can do is to assure them that Apple's gonna be around as a vital company in this industry. And, of course, last quarter's profitability of forty seven, forty eight million dollars, and what I hope is a sustained profitability, we'll do that louder than anything we can say. After we get our customers convinced that we have a vital ongoing business here, which we do, the next step is to deliver them great products.

And I think we've dramatically simplified the product line. Our new G3s, which we announced on November tenth of last year, are the first of the new generation of products coming out. We will introduce two very, very important products over the next six months. And I believe that that once people see these products, they will really understand where we're going. And one of them is is a consumer product. Apple has been, in many ways, you know, abdicated its position in the consumer market by not not offering really, really breakthrough products at those kind of price points. And you'll see Apple getting back into the consumer market with a vengeance later on this year. Terrific. And I think that's something we can really work at together because I think CompUSA is the place where a lot of these customers go to buy their computers.

And finally, I think we're gonna have not only our great midrange, but but something at the low end, which is gonna be really exciting. Excellent. You know, from our point of view, in the old days when CompuSA was going through a turnaround, Apple is one of few people that gave us credit. And if it wasn't for Apple giving us credit, we may not be here today. Steve, if there's one or two things you'd like to ask from our 17,000 employees, what would it be? You know, we really do make the best products in the whole world. And if you have to use a computer for hours a day, you know that using a Mac is better than using a a Wintel box. And I know it's been difficult to deal with Apple and all of its foibles and all of failings the last few years. But what I ask of you is this, together, we can rebuild the Macintosh franchise.

And we can bring people better computers, and we can both make a lot of money doing it. So we are committed to overhauling Apple, getting rid of that craziness, and most of it's already gone, and focusing on making great products for these customers. Products that are best of breed in every way, that don't break with sales policies and support policies that make a lot of sense. And so I guess the most important thing I could ask you is give us that chance. And really, you know, push us a little bit until you see the responses you need to believe again that we're gonna pull this off together. And then let's really put the energy behind this and make it happen, because together we can make it happen. And the world needs choice, and the world needs an innovator. And Apple represents both of those, and and I think together we can really bring it back.

Well, we gotta make our customers believe. Thanks a lot, Steve. Okay.