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George Crow talks Apple, then and now
March 24, 2004 - 10:18 PST
by Dennis Sellers - George Crow is one of a rare breed. He was on the original Mac design team and is back at Apple today. Though many things have changed, he finds the current atmosphere "remarkably similar to what it was like in the early 80's."
"There is much optimism, but also hard work," Crow told MacMinute. "The slow economy of the last few years has required a tight headcount, but rapid product development."
Before working at Apple, Crow worked at Hewlett-Packard in their Terminal Division where he designed the power supply and display electronics for several projects. One of his managers recommended him to Steve Jobs, who recruited Crow to work on the Macintosh at Apple. He designed the power supply/display board, worked with Sony on the floppy disk, and took care of most miscellaneous analog work the project required.
Crow left Apple in 1985 and was one of the co-founders of NeXT, where he served as a co-vice president of hardware engineering. Rich Page, the other hardware VP, handled digital, and Crow was responsible for everything else, including analog design, documentation, product/mechanical design and component engineering.
After NeXT got out of the hardware business, he worked for SuperMac, then Truevision (both are now defunct), did some consulting, then returned to Apple about five years ago after Apple bought NeXT and his compatriots returned.
"I spent most of the time after I returned to Apple working in the analog/power area, and now have a technical director position looking for analog technology to apply to future projects," Crow told MacMinute.
Though Apple continues to innovate more than any other technology company, he believes the Windows dominance of the computer world will be hard to overcome.
"I'm not a software expert, but I doubt anything is going to unseat Windows because of the huge installed base and application investment," he says. "Surely Mac OS and Linux can (and I believe will) thrive and grow, but I don't think either will become dominant."
Crow himself owns both a 17-inch PowerBook and a Power Mac G5. He uses the latter when he needs real speed, but finds the laptop "fits most of my needs."
You can read more about Crow, and other members of the original Mac team, at Folklore, a Web site devoted to collective historical storytelling.
(This is another in our series of interviews with people influential in the development of the Mac over the past 20 years. Other stories with some of the original Mac team include:
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