Today is the birthday of Joanna Hoffman, Mac marketing guru.

July 27, 1955: Joanna Hoffman, Apple’s lead marketer who worked closely with Steve Jobs on the Macintosh and NeXT team, was born.

Hoffman and her parents lived at one time in the Soviet Union, then in Warsaw, Poland. The family later moved to Buffalo, New York. She received her bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the humanities and then her PhD from the University of Chicago in archaeology. At a lecture at Xerox PARC, Joanna Hoffman meets Jeff Raskin, who was working at Apple DOS at the time. He attracted her to the marketing promotion of the Mac project.

Jobs later took over the leadership of the Macintosh project, and Hoffman was actively involved during its initial launch.

Joanna Hoffman’s career after Apple

Joanna Hoffman was considered a marketing genius for her ability to anticipate future product promotions and realistically assess the situation. In addition, she was one of the few who could afford to contradict Steve Jobs himself, defending her point of view.

After Jobs left Apple in 1985, Hoffman also moved to NeXT. It was she who gave a realistic forecast, pointing out to Jobs that one should not count on the rapid success of the NeXT computer, which had high hopes.

After leaving NeXT, she worked at the promising startup General Magic, where many employees from Apple moved. In 1995, Hoffman made the decision to stop working and focus more on her family.