Funny how some of these are way off, while others are pretty spot on:
7. Don't disappear from the retail chains. Rent space in a computer store, flood it with Apple products (especially software), staff it with Apple salespeople, and display everything like you're a living, breathing company and not a remote, dusty concept.
I particularly love the ones that are both right and wrong:
72. Try the industry-standard serial port plug. RS-422 should be a last resort.
(They replaced RS-422 not with RS-232, but USB)
14. Do something creative with the design of the box and separate yourselves from the pack. [...] We'd all feel better about shelling out the bucks for a Power Mac 9600 if we could get a tower with leopard spots.
(Obviously Wired shouldn't be handing out design advice.)
28. Don't lose your sense of humor. Build a very large life preserver and display it in front of your Cupertino, California, headquarters.
(Their new headquarters is the life preserver.)
44. Continue your research in voice recognition. It's the only way you're going to compete in videoconferencing and remote access.
(That's totally not what Siri is for.)
76. Make damn sure that Rhapsody runs on an Intel chip. Write a Windows NT emulator for Rhapsody's Intel version.
(They switched to Intel purely for the sake of Intel, and never made that Windows emulator.)
Was it the Intel switch that enabled bootcamp though? That's clearly a better solution than maintaining a windows emulator, but does it meet the same point?
Not only did it enable Boot Camp, it also enabled third party Windows VMs like Parallels and Virtual box, and third party Windows API reimplementations (namely Wine)
Was there never any native virtualization on the PPC chips, or were there just no software written for it? I guess there was never much demand among Mac users to virtualize on PPC.
It did, but that was a really low priority for Apple: they shipped two generations of Intel Macs before releasing Bootcamp and the firmware updates that added BIOS emulation. They would have switched to Intel regardless of whether it gained them any form of Windows compatibility, because they needed more efficient processors.
1. Admit it. You're out of the hardware game. Outsource your hardware production, or scrap it entirely, to compete more directly with Microsoft without the liability of manufacturing boxes.
Very first one, lol. I agree that many are spot on, but coupling Mac software to its hardware is part of how they make such good products, not to mention the plethora of innovative hardware devices that have made them the richest company in the world.
All of Apple's hardware products are now made by outsourced contract manufacturers. They're still all designed by Apple obviously but I thought this point was spot on.
Are the entire products outsourced, or just the componenets?
Either way, I think this suggestion is implying that Apple stop selling hardware and instead just sell software that runs on other peoples' hardware (it's the "compete more directly with Microsoft" bit that leads me to believe this is what they meant).
Virtually all products are outsourced. Apple owns no factories and employs no assembly line workers.
Instead it's formed deep partnerships with certain contract manufacturers (Foxconn). When it wants to pioneer a certain manufacturing technique, it will simply make a large capital expenditure to make the tooling available to the contract manufacturer. Never however will it actually be responsible for the actual manufacturing and assembly of its devices.
This is Tim Cook's doing and it's the model for just about every OEM you see today, from Apple to Xiaomi. Samsung and LG are notable exceptions because they are component manufacturers who became OEMs afterwards.
Edit: There might be some iMac assembly done in the United States, but this is likely using a US-based contract manufacturer as well.
Yes, hardware building is largely outsourced, but it's not Dell-style outsourced, where the contract manufacturer does a considerable part of the design. Today's Apple products probably have less generic design in them than 1997 Apple products, and more control by Apple.
The one that made me laugh was the suggestion of replacing Mach (though really even then NeXT was more than *just Mach, but w/e) with the NT kernel.
Can you imagine what MacOS and iOS would look like if they were built on NT? Not so much because they are technically incompatible, but more for the political implications of MacOS being married to the heart of Windows.
Where they are really spot on is in suggesting repeatedly to pile in on newton. Fundamentally an iphone is a better newton and this is the only fundamental change that really saved the company.
I think you've got your history a little wrong. The iPod marked the turnaround of the company some 5+ years earlier than the release of the iPhone. The date of the release of the iPod is very near the low point of their stock. The glow surrounding the iPod also renewed interest in MacOS, which had recently been revamped with the release of OSX. While the iPod became its own enormous profit center, I credit it with the turnaround of their computer hardware & OS business, too.
7. Don't disappear from the retail chains. Rent space in a computer store, flood it with Apple products (especially software), staff it with Apple salespeople, and display everything like you're a living, breathing company and not a remote, dusty concept.