I'm thinking of writing a hit song based on the Travelling Wilbury's tune "The Wilbury Twist." Instead of the contortions rasped out by Bob Dylan, though, I'd use the Apple reorganizations. On second thought, ditch that idea, I never could get anything to rhyme.

Apple has shuffled the deck one more time, just to be sure that no one's cheating. Apple claims that the new divisions will "sharpen management focus and concentrate company resources on Apple's mainstream Macintosh computer platform as well as on emerging business opportunities." Love that business-speak.

Basically, Sculley and Spindler have divided up the company to take advantage of their specialties and desires. Sculley will take charge of five groups: the Object-Based Systems division, the Advanced Technology Group, the Advanced Products Group, the Consumer division, and Claris Corporation. The first three divisions aim to define the future of computing, so I wouldn't be surprised if Sculley wants to make more of a name for himself as an advanced technology guru by heading them up directly. The new Consumer division (Can you say "Macs in department stores?" I thought you could.) and Claris to a lesser extent do fit in well with Sculley's marketing talents.

Spindler, in contrast, gets the more mundane, bread-and-butter divisions, the Macintosh Hardware division, the Macintosh Software Architecture division, and the Enterprise System division. Essentially, Spindler must deal with today's and tomorrow's realities, or at least the Macintosh edition of said reality. Overall, Spindler seems to have done well with such tasks in the past - that's the main reason he was promoted from head of Apple Europe. Speaking of Apple Europe, Apple's three geographic regions will continue to report to Spindler, which makes sense since he knows the overseas markets better than most.

As usual, only time will tell if this shuffle will produce a winning hand or if it's merely another silly card trick. I'm not putting any money on it one way or another.

Information from:
Apple propaganda

Related articles:
MacWEEK -- 09-Apr-91, Vol. 5, #14, pg. 76
PC WEEK -- 08-Apr-91, Vol. 8, #14, pg. 127