January 8, 1998: Back in Black

There's no better way for a Company to stay in business than by making profits. Unfortunately profits weren't part of Apple's game plan for the middle years of the nineties. Consistent losses worried investors and the board of directors for obvious reasons. Even more troublesome, the lack of profits generated uncertainty about Apple's staying power among consumers. In an odd kind of death spiral many computer buyers opted for Windows machines instead of Mac simply because they had no faith that Apple would be around for the life of their purchase.

Realizing that profits save jobs, particularly your own, the executives at Apple began to take action in an effort to get Apple to the break even point. CompUSA and Apple began the store–within-a-store strategy. Apple opened an online store offering software and hardware and Apple further cut expenses.

Of course Apple had tried cutting costs to save money and various promotions to boost sales before, but the average Mac fan was unaware the changes had made any substantial difference. They became aware of just how much difference the new strategies had made at the end of Steve Jobs' keynote speech at Macworld Expo San Francisco 1998 when he absentmindedly mentioned "one more thing” while walking off the stage: "Oh yeah, we're profitable."