Apple PowerBook: Design Quality and Time to Market

In the fall of 1989, Apple was facing different challenges. The first challenge was to enter in a very short time (18 months instead of 48 months for the Mac Portable) a new market, the notebook market, which was to become a major one. If Apple wanted to be able to lead this new high potential market, it had to learn from the failure of the Mac Portable in order be really "time to market". To face this …

…often more important than the performance itself and that it was essential to focus on object appeal and to have a flexible and free design policy to meet target customers' expectations. In terms of organization, Apple learned that it was necessary to empower and support projects managers and to help them build their capability to deal with any kind of problems. Apple also understood the need for all the collaborators to be multi-disciplined and proactive.