{"id":582148,"date":"2010-05-27T15:43:32","date_gmt":"2010-05-27T19:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"tag:theatlantic.com,2010-05-27:mt-57370"},"modified":"2010-05-27T15:43:32","modified_gmt":"2010-05-27T19:43:32","slug":"apples-great-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/582148","title":{"rendered":"Apple's Great Mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is Apple (or some other tech company) about to repeat Apple’s great mistake? This is a question that keeps coming up. See Henry Blodget<\/a> in January, for example. Just yesterday the idea had another outing in Apple’s Second Date with History<\/a> in the WSJ.<\/p>\n

\n

Apple
\nalmost went out of business 14 years ago, and many would have blamed
\nwhat seemed one of the seminal business blunders in history.<\/p>\n

Bill
\nGates was chatting with students at Stanford at the time and recalled
\nletters he’d written to Steve Jobs begging him to allow cloning of
\nApple hardware. Had Mr. Jobs complied, Apple’s operating system might
\nhave become the de facto universal standard, the one everybody wrote
\nsoftware for–a role that fell to Windows instead… If you think
\nmissing out on the riches that Microsoft created for its shareholders
\nwas an error, Mr. Jobs erred.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Did he, though? In the spirit of Zhou Enlai, it might be too early to say. The WSJ published its piece yesterday, just as Apple’s market value surpassed Microsoft’s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Microsoft
\nis a hugely powerful and profitable company in the tech world. Its
\nWindows software runs 9 out of every 10 computers, while more than 500
\nmillion people use its Office software to perform their daily tasks,
\nlike writing letters or sending e-mail messages. These two franchises
\naccount for the bulk of Microsoft’s annual revenue.<\/p>\n

But Apple has the momentum. “Steve saw way early on, and way before
\nMicrosoft, that hardware and software needed to be married into
\nsomething that did not require effort from the user,” said Scott G.
\nMcNealy, the co-founder and longtime chief executive of Sun
\nMicrosystems.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Apple looks expensive at its current price, and Microsoft cheap…but still.<\/p>\n

A
\ncouple of months ago I speculated that Apple had got the iPad wrong and
\nsaid it wasn’t for me. It arrived about a week ago and I’ll share my
\nimpressions shortly.  <\/p>\n



\n

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\nApple<\/a> – Microsoft<\/a> – Steve Jobs<\/a> – Bill Gates<\/a> – IPad<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is Apple (or some other tech company) about to repeat Apple’s great mistake? This is a question that keeps coming up. See Henry Blodget in January, for example. Just yesterday the idea had another outing in Apple’s Second Date with History in the WSJ. Apple almost went out of business 14 years ago, and many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5958,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-582148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5958"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}