Computers: Too Many Apples on the Shelf

In the three months leading up to Christmas, the workers at Apple Computer toiled like tireless elves. Dealers, bent on avoiding a shortage of the company's products, had ordered some 800,000 machines, nearly three times as many as they had the previous Yule season. But sales were weaker than expected, creating a springtime Apple glut of some 120,000 unsold computers. As a result, the company (1984 sales: $1.5 billion) announced last week that for the first time in its eight-year history it will temporarily shut down assembly lines because of a surplus of wares. Calling the hiatus a "spring break," Apple...