Michael Spindler, Apple's president and chief  executive officer, is out. Dr. Gilbert F. Amelio,  
formerly chairman, president and CEO of National 
Semiconductor Corp., is in. 

White Knight Amelio, 52, joined National Semi-
conductor Corp. in 1991 and is credited with 
bringing it back from the brink. He joined Apple's 
board in November 1994. In taking over as chair-
man and CEO of Apple, he has resigned his manage-
ment roles at  National Semiconductor.

Amelio said, “As an avid Apple user since the days of 
the Apple II, I  am delighted to be joining the manage-
ment team of Apple, a company with an outstanding 
reputation for superior technology and customer 
loyalty.” 

A.C. Markkula Jr., founding member of Apple Computer Inc. and former chairman of the board, will continue to serve Apple as  vice  chairman.

Those are not the only changes at Apple. 

In mid-January, during Macworld Expo, Apple vice presidents of corporate communications, education marketing, Internet services; home division and business and government sales resigned. 
  
One high profile new posting at Apple is that of senior vice president, corporate marketing. On January 23,  Apple announced that Satjiv Chahil had been given the responsibility for Apple's worldwide corporate communications, worldwide marketing  services, Internet marketing, and New Media and entertainment marketing.  In 1993, he founded the New Media division.  

In  a move to build and maintain better relations between Apple and its developers, Heidi Roizen, co-founder and former CEO of T/Maker Co.,  an international publisher of consumer software, has been named vice president of Apple Developer Relations. 

Named to new Apple Americas posts were:

  Mike Dionne, 46, head of the business division. Dionne previously was in charge 
     of global advertising and communications.
 
  Terry Crane, 45, head of the new education division. Crane previously was head 
      of Apple's K 12 education sales in the United States.

  Mike Lorion, 40, acting head of the consumer division. Lorion previously was 
      vice president of marketing for the Apple USA division.

Dionne,  Crane  and  Lorion report  to James J. Buckley, president of Apple Americas. Their appointments are part of Apple's efforts to fine tune operations in the wake of a $69 million loss for the fiscal first quarter which ended in December. The company has also divested its investments in Kaleida and Taligent, refocused its online services strategy, announced plans to streamline its product line, and began previously announced layoffs of 1,300 full-time, temporary and contract employees. 

 

 

Despite Apple's valiant assurances that the company is not for 
sale, industry speculation has run high over the past month that 
Sun Microsystems has been earnestly negotiating to purchase the 
beleaguered Cupertino, California-based company. Reuters most 
recently reported that the negotiations had fallen apart; Apple was 
rumored to have been demanding up to $33 per share; Sun, conversely, 
had been unwilling to offer more than $25 or $28 a share due to Apple's current financial situation. The Wall Street Journal, however, remains optimistic that a merger is still very possible.

 

Dataquest, a market research firm that tracks shipments 
of personal computers, is reporting that Apple Computer's 
volume shipments dropped below that of IBM for the calendar 
year 1995. With a still impressive 7.8% of worldwide 
personal computer sales, Apple slipped from second to third 
place, falling short of IBM's 8.0% and Compaq's 10%. In 1994, 
Apple claimed the #2 position, with 8.3% of total computer sales. Apple's declined has been attributed to a weak fourth quarter, in which is reported a loss of $68 million. 

 

 pple gave the first public demonstration of the Mac 
OS ported to run on a PowerPC platform computer on 
January 31, 1996, at the Demo 96 trade show. (The 
PowerPC Platform [PPCP], formerly Common Hard-
ware Reference Platform [CHRP], is a set of specifi-
cations jointly developed by Apple, IBM and Motorola. 
The platform defines a unified personal computer archi-
tecture and brings the combined advantages of the Power 
Macintosh platform and the standard PC environment to both 
system vendors and users.) The demonstration included booting the Mac OS from a small “bootstrap ROM” in an IBM prototype computer with third party peripherals, and running mainstream applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Excel. 
 
Lamar Potts, Apple vice president of licensing, called the event a milestone. “Many of our potential licensees have stressed the importance of an industry standard platform as the basis for their investment in the Mac OS platform, and we are proving today that we are fully committed to providing a common platform.”

The version of the Mac OS shown at Demo 96 is the first Development Build of the Mac OS for the PowerPC Platform. The final release of the Mac OS for the PowerPC Platform is expected to be available in the second half of 1996. Apple's PowerPC Platform web site can be found at http://chrp.apple.com.