Apple Fellow Guy Kawasaki, back in the islands for a conference on quality management, relaxes with his Powerbook yesterday. Apple Computer's announcement of a quarterly profit punctuated his return home.
Photo by Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin

"Baywatch is the most popular TV show. That doesn't mean it's the best," said Guy Kawasaki, magazine columnist, author, software producer and, since last year, an Apple Fellow, hired to work with software developers to promote Apple products.

"Market share as a statistical thing is meaningless," said Kawasaki, 42, an Iolani School graduate and son of former state Sen. Duke Kawasaki.

"Market share is correlated with profitability but it doesn't mean profitability comes from market share," he said. Apple's earnings report yesterday bears that out, he said. The company reported a $25 million fourth-quarter profit, confounding Wall Street analysts who had predicted a $37 million loss.

Apple has learned to concentrate on the areas where its computers do the best job - publishing, graphics and Internet services, Kawasaki said.

"One thing Apple has done is stop trying to be everything to everybody," he said.

Gilbert Amelio, who took the reins as chief executive in February, is the best chief executive officer Apple has had, Kawasaki said. "I think there is a great deal of confusion out there" about Apple, he said, with a "bandwagon effect" spreading a doom and gloom image that isn't justified.

Apple's 8 percent share of the computer market puts it about where Honda is in the automobile business and you don't hear people talking doom and gloom about Honda, he said.

"We sell roughly 4 million Macs a year. That means 25 million pieces of software at maybe $50 each." That is a huge business for Apple and its software providers, no matter what the others are doing, he said.

Kawasaki didn't start out in computers. After Iolani he went to Stanford and became good friends with a college roommate, Mike Boich. "He went to Harvard business school. I went to U.C.-Davis law school," he said. They stayed in touch after Boich went to work for Hewlett Packard and got Kawasaki interested in computers.

From 1978 to 1983, Kawasaki had been in the jewelry business in Los Angeles. But he went into the computer software business and then joined Apple. He has a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's in business administration.

"I don't have a technical background at all," he said in an interview at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel, where he is a speaker at the Hawaii Conference on Quality.

His first experience with a Mac showed him the joy of the product, that you don't need technical expertise to run it, he said.

Until this quarter, fiscal 1996 has been disastrous for Apple.

The company, based in Cupertino, Calif., lost $69 million in the first quarter, more than $700 million in the second and $32 million in the third.

Even now, financial analysts said, while the company has at least temporarily stanched the financial hemorrhaging, Apple's recovery is far from complete.

Kawasaki says Apple is now on the right track and the best thing it can do is persuade people to use its systems. Once you try one you will become what he is, a "Macintosh evangelist," he said.

A computer is a household necessity these days, like television, and is getting more so as interactive programs, the Internet and virtual reality speed up, he said.

Forty years ago, few people recognize how widespread television sets would become. That is the situation that personal computers and the Internet are in now, Kawasaki said.

"In the Year 2010 everybody will be on the Net. It will be indistinguishable from a TV," he said.

Electronic mail is becoming a very widespread means of communication, he said. It's fast and basically free, he said.

One tip from the guru: Don't think small when you buy a computer. "You need at least 16 megabytes of RAM, at least a gigabyte on the hard drive and a 28.8 modem," he said.

And getting in a last word for his company: "Nobody should mess around with less than a Mac."