On the other hand, some journalists complained that the fanaticism was harming Apple. Overreliance on fanatic faithfulness led to years of complacency at Apple, the business, wrote Charles Pillar in the Los Angeles Times in 1997, when Apple was in deep trouble. And its not working nowjust look at Mac sales figures.

Whatever the effect on the media, theres the widely held perception that the EvangeListas saved Apples bottom lineit has been argued that millions of little acts of Mac evangelism stopped the company from sliding into bankruptcy. During the EvangeList years, there was a lot of committed and energetic lobbying for the Mac in schools, universities, and businesses threatening to dump them. Who knows how many would have abandoned the platform if a committed friend, relative, or workmate hadnt convinced them not to? Thanks to the Macintosh loyalists, [and] people like Guy Kawasaki who are out championing the cause for the underdog, Apple, you know, still is a contender, Jim Carlton, author of Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders [out of print], told National Public Radio.

However, there were a number of high-profile institutional switches to Windows PCs at big Macintosh sites, Dartmouth College being the best known, that mobilized scores of EvangeListas to no effect. I dont think it helped a lot, Cheryl England, a former editor of MacAddict, said of the EvangeList. Its obvious to say Apples loyal customers saved the company; of course they did, it wasnt saved by its disloyal customers. But its hard to judge how much of an effect the EvangeList had, rather than Mac users generally. The return of Steve Jobs to the company in 1998 and popular products like the iMac probably had more to do with it.

While the EvangeListas tried to help Apple in retail stores, Apple eventually dumped a lot of the chain stores in favor of a store within a store at CompUSA. The company also started concentrating on specialist Apple retailers and its own Web site.

The most profound effect of the EvangeList was to energize the Mac community in its darkest days. The EvangeList unified Mac users and gave them an identity. Its championing spirit of evangelism survives today, and, in fact, has never been stronger. People are as passionate as ever about Macs and are just as committed to cheerleading them.

The one good thing it did is provide an early platform for people who love the Mac, said England. It was a club. It was their friend. It was a place they could go and not get picked on by [Microsoft] PC suits.

James Coates, a technology columnist with the Chicago Tribune, received more than 500 emails after writing a story about Apple that was posted to the EvangeList. He likened the two-week flood of abusive email to a cyberlynching, an online necktie party at the hands of virtual vigilantes. The [emails] included unkind words about the moral character of my poor late mother, suggestions that I perform mechanically impossible actions with my new IBM ThinkPad laptop computer, and sadly, a few death threats, he wrote. Come to Texas, wrote one. We havent shot a tourist in a car since 1963.

Henry Norr, a former editor at MacWeek, said he would get scores of nasty, hostile email if he wrote anything critical about the Mac. Some were polite and thoughtful, he said, but in general the experience was like being besieged by zombies, some of whom were really unbalanced.

In his defense, Kawasaki frequently urged subscribers to be on their best behavior. He forbade sabotaging Windows machines and told EvangeListas to be nice and polite. As well as pointing out negative press, Kawasaki suggested readers send love notes to journalists who wrote nice things about Apple.

Kawasaki left Apple in 1998 to start Garage.com (now Garage Technology Ventures), a boot camp for entrepreneurs. He folded the list in April 1999. The final posting, signed by Kawasaki (who is and shall remain pure Macintosh), cited Apples stunning turnaround as the main reason for discontinuing the list. The original purpose of EvangeList was to counteract the negative news about Apple and Macintosh, and I believe that EvangeList has served its purposefantastically, Kawasaki wrote. So, after discussing what we should do with EvangeList with the folks at Apple, weve decided to retire the list.

Oddly, it was mourned by some of its victims. Dan Gillmor, a columnist with the San Jose Mercury News, who had been a faithful reader for many years, was sad to see EvangeList pass. Hearing from people who want to change your mind is really useful in the business of journalism, Gillmor said. I learn more from people who disagree with me than I do from those who agree. But after hearing from several hundred, you do get weary.

James Coates, the Chicago Tribune columnist, had mixed feelings about the lists passing. I did suffer the brunt of an awful lot of abuse from Guy Kawasaki and the EvangeLists, and I am even bitter about it in some ways, he said. But I learned a tremendous amount of things Macintosh there. I also made a lot of friends and things like that, so I mourn its passing.

The education of journalists had a mixed effect. The negative stories didnt stop altogether, but a lot of journalists were more careful when reporting news about Apple. This writer will never again write about an Apple-related story without a keen gun-shy appreciation that critical hordes are judging every word, Coates wrote after getting flamed.

THE EVANGELIST

In the mid- to late 1990s, Apple might have gone out of business if it hadnt been for a crusading army of evangelists led by a charismatic marketing executive. The executiveGuy Kawasakiwas an early proponent of what has come to be known as evangelist marketingturning your customers into messianic proponents. Kawasakis primary tool was a popular Internet mailing list called the Mac EvangeList. It not only had a profound influence on Mac culture, it arguably saved Apple.

In the mid-1990s, Apple was the biggest computer maker in the U.S., but increasing competition from Microsoft, as well as a series of botched products and business blunders, led to a long string of heavy losses. Apple appeared to be in a death spiral, from which it couldnt pull out. Its hard to kill a company as big as Apple, but in 1996 and 1997, it looked doomed.

A big part of the problem was negative press. Bad news about Apple became a self-fulfilling prophecy: stories about Apples decline made customers nervous. They bought fewer computers, and the trouble deepened. Realizing this, Kawasaki launched the EvangeList in July 1996 to provide a daily stream of good news about Apple. The whole reason that EvangeList was started was because the press was so negative, said Kawasaki recently. I decided that instead of trying to convince the press, we would become the press.

The EvangeList, sent out daily, was a breezy mix of news, tips, queries, and job postings. Thanks to Kawasakis sharp wit, and often hilarious diatribes against Microsoft, the EvangeList quickly became popular. At its peak, the EvangeList boasted 44,000 daily subscribers, although Kawasaki has suggested the list actually reached about 300,000 Macintosh fans, because it was so widely passed around in email, newsgroups, bulletin boards, and Web sites. Kawasaki eventually archived the list on an affiliated Macway Web site, which is now gone.

As well as news, the EvangeList had a big activist component. Kawasaki urged subscribersknown as EvangeListasto proselytize the Mac by engaging Windows PC users in debate. EvangeListas were urged to wear Apple-logoed T-shirts and baseball caps to show the world were not crawling into holes and dying. He recommended leaving Macintosh magazines in doctors waiting rooms and seat pockets on airplanes. And he suggested asking store clerks why they werent stocking more Macs, fixing up neglected machines, and talking to potential customers about buying a Mac. Many subscribers spent their weekends as unpaid salespeople at CompUSA, steering customers to the Mac section.

But the list was most famous for marshalling a formidable force of Mac fanatics when it appeared that the platform needed defending in the press. Kawasaki urged subscribers to educate wrongheaded journalists who wrote negative stories about Apple; and he often provided the appropriate email address. Write a letter to the publications that publish stupid, insipid, inaccurate, and unfair stories, he wrote. Most journalists are insecure and perceptive: after the 300th flaming message, theyll get the picture. Kawasakis 300 flames was conservative: some journalists got hundredssometimes thousandsof angry, abusive emails. This was in the early days of the Net, before spam, when most reporters got a handful of messages a week and dutifully responded to each one.

The Cult of Mac

by Leander Kahney
No Starch Press, September 2004

13. Do you understand business mantra #1 of the 00s: DONT TRY TO COMPETE WITH WAL*MART ON PRICE OR CHINA ON COST? (And if you get this last idea, then see the 12 above!)

Clients want either the best or the least expensive; there is no in between.#65533;John
Di Julius, Secret Service

Business as usual is dead. And I, for one, say … Hurray.#65533; (See above, #12: Show up. Shut up. Or starve.#65533;) John Di Juius gets it. He is a wildly successful, wildly passionate service-experience fanatic … who runs a small chain of beauty salons. He cant compete with Regis on price. Whats left#65533;: BE BETTER! BE BEST! BE THE ONLY ONES WHO DO WHAT WE DO!#65533;

John Di Julius wakes up in the morning with the same issues (and opportunities) that confront GEs Jeff Immelt and IBMs Sam Palmisano when they roll out of bed. Its not your fathers world.#65533; (In Immelts case, Its not Jack Welchs world.#65533; See #4 above on Jeffs newfound commitment to breath-taking, mind-blowing, world-rattling#65533; innovation.)

In short: DONT TRY TO COMPETE WITH WAL*MART ON PRICE OR CHINA ON COST. Try instead to be the only ones who do what we do#65533;whether the tableau is a 1-person accountancy, a 10-chair beauty salon, a 400,000-person behemoth, or your/my career as newly minted Brand You.#65533;

My bottom line: HOW SWEET IT IS!

Cubicle slavery is on its last legs.
Commodity strategies are by and large bankrupt.
Passion and commitment matter most.
Creativity wins.
The individual reigns.
Were on our own.

(Ben Franklin would chuckle with delight!)
(Henry Ford would be horrified!)

12. Are your leaders accessible? Do they wear their passion on their sleeves? Does integrity ooze out of every pore of the enterprise? Is “We care” your implicit motto?

Maybe “We care” didn’t matter so much in the days of traditional industrial enterprise. Perhaps the old boss’s mantra was more like “Show up. Shut up. Or starve.” But now I think it’s fair to say, morality aside, “We care” is … Not Optional.

A researcher at Nomura Securities’ Nomura Research Institute said we’ve been through the Age of Agriculture and the Industrial Age. We’re in the Age of Information Intensification, but on the horizon is the next (last?) stage: the Age of Creation Intensification.

I’d agree. And … the point … an Age of Creation Intensification is as far away as one can imagine from “Show up. Shut up. Or starve.” In an Age of Creation Intensification the boss’s mantra (is he a boss?) is more like: “Help! Please help! Please commit your heart and soul and imagination to inventing clever and wonderful services-solutions-experiences-dreams come true. Join with me in inventing an Adventure, a Quest worth your time and my time and our clients’ time and money.” (“Boss-as-beggar-supplicant-before-the-alter-of-Talent” rather than “boss-as-drill-sergeant” comes to mind as an appropriate image.)

Do I paint an unrealistic picture? In a word … no! Technology and globalization in all of their manifestations put organizational models and career models and leadership models up for grabs. (Media guru Marshall McLuhan once said, “If it works, it’s obsolete.” Soooo true of organizational arrangements, circa 2004.) The current winners I described above (UPS, IBM, and Omnicom in business “services,” for instance) are forging completely new paths to an unknown and unknowable future. They will only progress if there is True Partnership among all parties to the enterprise workers (Talent!!), Best Sourcing alliances, Cool & Pushy Clients, and the remaining minimalist superstructure. And such a True Partnership demands as a price of entry (a minimal reason for Seriously Cool Talent to “sign up”): Unstinting Integrity, Total Transparency, Passion-on-our-sleeves, and Spirit to burn (remember Steve Jobs: “Let’s make a dent in the universe). Once more, I remind: I’m not suggesting the above because I think it’s “cool” or “right” or “good.” I’m “suggesting” (demanding!) such an approach because there’s not much likelihood that you can do otherwise and survive in a truly global, technology-rich, ambiguity-laden “age of creation intensification.”

Q.E.D.