February 2, 1996: From Corporate Hero to Corporate Zero

When an up and coming company appears on the cover of a magazine it is generally a good thing. When an established company wildly outperforms market expectations and shows up on a magazine cover there is a feeling that the company is doing a very nice job of managing its success. On the other hand, when a company shows up on the cover of BusinessWeek and the story is titled "The Fall of an American Icon," many people start questioning the old adage "All press is good press."

The BusinessWeek story covered many of Apple's worst and most obvious mistakes of the mid-nineties. Sales forecasts that wildly missed the mark, a failure to capitalize on the delay of Windows '95, botched merger plans, and a corporate culture mired in indecision. The story also hinted at something that was rapidly become inevitable: the ouster of then President Michael Spindler.

Apple's continuing problems were laid bare for BusinessWeek investors to scoff at (and sell short because of) in a February issue of BusinessWeek in 1996.