She became head of Mac manufacturing in 1984 and was one of the highest-ranking women in the tech industry. She took over the role of Apple chief financial officer in 1986. At a November reunion of some women on the Mac team, Coleman attributed a big part of Apple's success to Jobs, saying he made people at Apple believe they could change the world. As he was getting ready to launch the Mac, Jobs wanted the computer "to look and feel like The Beatles. Not the late Beatles, but the early Beatles," remembered Mok, a designer hired by Apple to work on branding for the Mac launch. "Tom Hughes [the creative director on the Mac team] and myself scratched our heads. What the hell is that?"They decided it meant there was a certain rawness to the Mac, but with a sense of passion and artistry. "It's an artistic expression of technology," said Mok, who joined Apple in 1982. "This product has been crafted."The branding for the first Mac featured a squiggly line drawing of the computer, later dubbed the "Picasso logo."(They were so successful in giving Apple a Beatles feel that Apple Corps, the company that owned the rights to the Beatles music, sued the Cupertino, California, company for trademark infringement. The two sides had a long-running legal tussle, but ultimately reached a settlement in 2007 and in 2012 sorted out ownership of the logo.).
Mok became co-manager of Apple Creative Services in 1985 and served as creative director for corporate and the education market, He's one of the people responsible for the iconic imagery of Apple in its marketing and packaging, including the squiggly line drawings gracing early Mac promotional materials, But one aspect of the Mac, that squiggly line design, didn't feel as much like The Beatles to Mok as it felt like Joni Mitchell, Jobs wanted to mimic the logo for the now-defunct Ciao Restaurant presidio clear + print case for apple iphone 8 - white/pink/clear in San Francisco's Financial District..
"I tried but couldn't for the life of me put it together," Mok recalled. Apple ended up hiring the man who created the Ciao logo in the first place, John Casado. What came from the team is what's known as the Macintosh Picasso logo. Some branding elements from the first Mac live on today, including the minimalist white packaging used for Apple's devices. Early Apple employees, most in their 20s and 30s, were given big responsibilities. "Steve used to have a saying, 'We hire smart people to tell us what to do, not hire them to tell them what to do,'" said Susan Barnes, who joined Apple in 1981 as financial controller of the Mac division.
She worked closely with Coleman in her early days at Apple and ended up reporting directly to Jobs for a decade, Barnes co-founded NeXT Computer with Jobs in 1985 and became its CFO, At one point in early 1985 while still at presidio clear + print case for apple iphone 8 - white/pink/clear Apple, Jobs called Coleman and Barnes on a Friday night and said he wanted to buy a chunk of Adobe Systems, Apple and Adobe were closely linked in their early history, with the two working together to develop desktop publishing technology, "It's something we really needed in the Mac days," Barnes said of Adobe's software and fonts, "Laser printing is something that really made the Mac take off."Barnes and Coleman went to the law library late at night, trying to figure out how to buy a stake of another company, "How do we do this?" Barnes said, "This is usually what you ask senior management, And we were like, 'Oh, we are senior management.' It sort of hit you."Apple ended up investing $2.5 million for a 19.99 percent stake in Adobe in early 1985, In 1989, it sold the stake, which had been diluted to about 16 percent, for $84 million..
"When you're in corporations later, it's so easy to hide behind, 'Let me check with that person,'" Barnes said. At Apple, it was "No, it's you. Let's just do it. Find a way and don't be afraid of the consequences."Jobs recruited John Sculley in the early 1980s to help him grow Apple as a company. Sculley was CEO of Pepsi and helped it overtake Coca-Cola as the top beverage maker. Jobs famously convinced Sculley to take the CEO role at Apple in 1983 by asking if he wanted to "sell sugar water for the rest of his life" or if he wanted to "come with me and change the world." Sculley, who was close with Jobs before ousting him in 1985, served as Apple's CEO for a decade until being forced out himself.