Apple makes huge job cuts, Newton spared again

Apple made its much-dreaded job cuts Friday, saying it planned to reduce its head count by 2,700 employees plus 1,400 part-time and temporary staff. The cuts equated to nearly a quarter of full-time staff and half part-time staff but analysts said they had expected yet more blood.

The restructuring means that Apple will decelerate development of OpenDoc component technology, Cyberdog Web browsing, and a speech recognition project. However, the Newton PDA division, marked out by many pundits as a likely candiate for the drop, goes ahead. The Performa name will die in favour of entry-level products.

55 per cent of the redundancies affect the US and 80 per cent apply to manufacturing, marketing, and research and development areas of the company. Last April, Apple reduced staff by a total of 2,800.