Man who helped pioneer Apple and 3G in South Africa said Bill Gates owed him money
Brian Seligmann, a trailblazer in South African tech and telecommunications, was a pioneer, executive, and founder who witnessed the birth of the digital age from the front lines.
From marketing Apple products to spearheading MTN’s mobile data strategy in South Africa, Seligmann’s career was defined at the leading edge of technology.
He attended Marist Brothers College, matriculating in 1979. Today, the school is known as Sacred Heart College, having reverted to its original name in the 1980s.
After completing high school, Seligmann earned a degree in electronic engineering from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, graduating in 1982.
His CV contains a three-year gap, courtesy of the Apartheid government’s conscription policy. A close acquaintance of Seligmann told MyBroadband that he was a non-commissioned officer in a signals corps.
By the time he was drafted, a degree no longer guaranteed a path to an officer role. In fact, going to university to defer enlisting because you didn’t want to go to the army was treated with some contempt.
However, in Seligmann’s words, he “managed to squirrel into being the cocky rooinek without regulation hair who didn’t get into major trouble”.
After the army, he had a short stint at Mintek, the national mineral research organisation and one of the world’s top specialists in mineral processing, extractive metallurgy, and related fields.
In 1985, he launched Apple Specific, a company he described as a developer of highly specialised hardware and software for the Macintosh, with a focus on healthcare and environmental applications.
In 1990, he joined networking company NuLogic as technical director, where he remained until 1994, when he became a marketing manager for Apple in South Africa.
MyBroadband interviewed Seligmann in July 2015 about his time at Apple, and he was full of interesting anecdotes.
“I met with Steve Jobs on several occasions, including going out to dinner with him several times,” Seligmann said.
“Interesting side note — I once had to pay for Bill Gates’ air ticket and dinner because he didn’t have any cash on him. To this day, he still owes me money.”
Footing Bill’s bill
Seligmann also maintained that he was in the audience the day that Bill Gates allegedly said, ‘640K of memory should be enough for anybody’.
Gates has repeatedly denied ever uttering the words. As early as 1997, in a column answering students’ questions, Gates said it would’ve been a dumb statement to make.
“I’ve said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time,” he said.
However, some earlier quotes from Gates suggest he said something like it, albeit probably with a specific context in mind, namely, the lifespan of the 8088 IBM PC.
“I was there when he said it at a small industry trade show held in a hotel in Seattle in 1981,” Seligmann once posted in a comment on a MyBroadband article published in 2014.
“He confirmed it to me directly when I had dinner with him in Portland, Oregon and had to cover his bill.”
Giving Mandela his first Mac
Seligmann also told the story of how Apple gave former President Nelson Mandela a Macintosh computer three years after his release from prison.
“Late in 1993, a senior Apple delegation headed by Sergio Nanni, the Senior Director of Apple Europe, came to South Africa to do the final hiring of the management team,” he said.
“He met with Mandela and gave him a Macintosh and LaserWriter.”
While the original Apple South Africa subsidiary office was open, Seligmann said he was responsible for launching Power Macintosh and iMac in the office’s territories.
“We launched iMac in South Africa by renting Sandton Square, now Nelson Mandela Square,” he said.
“We had a marquee with about 20 iMacs all connected to the Internet by a single Diginet line, one BRI channel, and a giant inflatable iMac that was about 5m tall.”
Apple put on a massive light show with lasers and skytrackers. Then, when they launched the computer in Gaborone a few weeks later, the giant iMac got caught in a storm.
“It took out a Combi and nearly went through the front window of a major casino hotel,” said Seligmann.
“We also created iMac beer, which was actually Miller Genuine Draft with ‘I Love iMac’ labelling, for the launch party in Joburg, which was American food — hamburgers and hot dogs — and American beer.”
Pushing 3G at MTN
Apple wound down its operations in South Africa in 2000, handing over most of its former functions to Core Group. Seligmann left the company and, after a two-year break, joined MTN.
As the senior manager for data bearers and services, Seligmann helped drive MTN’s 3G expansion and uptake in South Africa.
He remained at MTN until the end of 2009, when he joined Cell C as the executive head of products and innovation.
After a year at Cell C, he resigned and joined Huawei as a vice president of its carrier software and core network solutions department.
He left Huawei at the end of 2014 and launched his own consultancy. Two years later, he helped found EvoNet and Internet service provider Crystal Web.
Seligmann’s sudden passing in March 2018 following a domestic accident left a void in the industry he had spent decades building.
Paul Hjul, a co-founder of Crystal Web and EvoNet, said that Seligmann had an ambitious vision for the connectivity market that was never fully realised.
“Thinking back on Brian’s involvement in the EvoNet project invites wondering ‘what if’,” Hjul told MyBroadband.
“Fortunately, the same is not true of many of his earlier contributions to the industry, where we continue to see the tangible fruit of his vision.”
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