I recently saw John Dvorak's post, My Son Bought a Mac. The story brought back memories of what I consider to be one of the most memorable Apple purchases that I helped along in my nearly twenty years with the company.
To set the stage, I took over the Virginia Tech account in the late eighties. Most of the limited success in the account had been achieved by almost giving away Mac II computers running A/UX to 150 Computer Science students. Of course these special deals were unavailable to the other over 4,000 students per year that entered Va. Tech.
In particular, Apple and the previous rep had pretty well ignored and even snubbed the largest required computer program on campus and in fact the country. That program, the Engineering PC initiative, resulted in 1,200 entering freshmen buying an IBM PC of some sort.
At the time IBM was a huge presence on campus with over forty people helping with Va. Tech's mainframes.
One of the first commitments that I made to Bob Heterick, then Va. Tech's VP of Information Systems, was that there would be no more exclusivity on pricing from Apple. Any price negotiated from Apple would be available to any Va. Tech student.
Bob, who died several years ago, was a great supporter of computing on campus. He also was a source of some great witticisms. One of my favorites was his saying that trying to get the faculty to focus on one thing was like trying to herd cats over a wall with a pitchfork.
With my new open pricing, I immediately picked up a number of enemies in the CS Department. The value of their positions seemed to be directly tied to Apple's willingness to give them an exclusive sweetheart deal.
However, the door to the Engineering Computer Program also immediately opened to me. My whole life I had sold solutions so I immediately started working with Dr. Charles Nunnally, the program head, to provide the same solutions on the Mac that were available on the PC. It was a real challenge, but we went after the programs one by one. I was also helped by the leverage of having Dr. Nunnally working with me. In those days, the potential of either having or losing part of 1,200 pieces of software was a very big stick.
Up until this time, the Engineering PC Program was known as the bluest of the computer programs with only IBM PCs of some sort being sold each year. Most people thought that I was wasting my time at Engineering, but Dr. Nunnally and I became great friends. I had put a Mac on his desk and made sure that he had the tools and software to completely evaluate it. We debated the relative merits of Macs and PCs over a lot of Chinese buffet food over the years.
To make a long story short, sometime in the early nineties, we managed to get Macs on the acceptable list for Engineering students. I believe the first system that made it was the Mac LC with a math co-processor card added and Virtual PC. I suspect that the most Macs ever sold to Engineering students in one year was something on the order of 250, but it changed the attitude about Macs on campus. Virginia Tech went on to become a great supporter of Macs.
About the time Dr. Nunnally was leaving his position to go back to teaching and I was being promoted to Higher Education manager for Virginia, Maryland, and NC, he came to me and asked me about getting a system for one of his daughters who was planning to be a teacher. We talked about it, and he ended up ordering a Mac system for his daughter who was heading to Longwood College. At the time Macs were very strong in K-12 in Virginia.
The decision to buy a Mac for his daughter was very logical and no real surprise to me, but I doubt that it would have been possible back in 1989 when Va. Tech was a very blue campus.
If I had to pick a time when personal computing was going through its golden years, I suspect the early nineties might have been it.
It was a time when universities and vendors often worked together while chasing mutually beneficial goals. These days margins on computer hardware have dropped to the point that there is little room for support of university initiatives.
Wait what am I saying? Apple has a huge pot of gold and great margins. The problem is that their only goal has become making lots of money which is okay for a public corporation but not so good for potential partners.
Of course on the university side, vendors are often treated just as vendors with the cheapest price being the most important factor. Reasonable program heads like Dr. Nunnally are in short supply these days from what I hear.
I guess giving up the golden years is not too much of a price to pay for having the reasonably priced computers that we have these days.
The Crystal Coast has seen a run of near perfect weather for beach lovers. I have enjoyed my share of time on the water, and I am looking forward to being back there this afternoon.
