from the the-tide-goes-in-and-the-tide-goes-out dept.
The New York Times published a story that states the obvious for anyone who has studied economics, that Apple's dominant position today is not permanent. They may be very clever and innovative thanks to the spirit (and curse) of Steve Jobs lingering around 1 Infinite Loop, but all fame is fleeting.
In a few short years, Apple has become the biggest company on the planet by market value—so big that it dwarfs every other one on the stock market. It dominates the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index as no other company has in 30 years.
Apple’s market capitalization—the value of all of the shares of its stock—is more than $758 billion, greater than any other company’s. Yet the Wall Street consensus is that Apple is still having a growth spurt. In fact, if Apple’s watches, phones, laptops and other gadgets and services keep generating favorable publicity—and if its quarterly earnings report on Monday is as strong as the market expects it to be—there’s a reasonable chance that Apple’s value will keep swelling. Not far down the road, it might even reach the $1 trillion level that some hedge funds predict.
Yet, IBM was once a huge computer company, the one to beat, not unlike what Microsoft became.
IBM thrived for years afterward, but just as [Steve] Jobs had predicted, it turned out to be vulnerable to disruptive change, as all big companies are. For decades now, IBM has engaged in a sometimes painful transition, and as it revealed in its quarterly earnings report last week, it is still hurting: Its revenues have declined and it has endured wrenching business shifts.
My take on this is pretty straightforward. I own IBM stock; I don't own Apple except in the form of an S&P mutual fund. While I use Apple computers and like them, I have little faith in Apple's long-term future, whereas I think IBM will be around and relevant for much longer once they get their business properly reoriented.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Monday April 27 2015, @02:41AM
If you want to compare to IBM, really it should be Amazon. They are into all sorts of market segment. Apple is really just an above average retail brand targeting the middle class. They aren't even dominant in the lower middle class and below, the cheaper Android platforms eat up that segment.
Amazon may have originally focused on the retail space, but they have expanded their focus in the enterprise level for quite sometime now (9 years?) along the "cloud" arena. The seeds they've planted around this space is slow and surely coming to fruition and it is at a scale none of the competitors even come close to. That and they continue to branch out to all sorts of retail segment, broadcasting, manufacturing, etc.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 27 2015, @02:55AM
Actually, no tech company can be compared to IBM, simply due to longevity. All the big names today are upstarts in comparison to IBM. All of our grandparents - even mine - knew IBM long before any of us were born. No other major tech company can make such a claim.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @09:18AM
So you think Siemens is not a major tech company?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @10:35AM
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 27 2015, @02:52AM
They won't always rule, but with all their accumulated wealth, they are going to stay on top for a long time to come. When they do begin slipping, any semi-intelligent manager will keep the company afloat and at least somewhat relevant for generations to come. IBM hasn't faded into the sunset yet, and Apple is going to have a similar long run of relevancy.
And, I don't even LIKE Apple!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @10:39AM
try an Orange, then. Yeah, I know they don't suffer comparison, but if you don't like Apple...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @01:21PM
When they do begin slipping, any semi-intelligent manager will keep the company afloat and at least somewhat relevant for generations to come.
That's what they said about Micro$oft and then along came Ballmer...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 27 2015, @03:21PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @10:13PM
Well ... Apple's earnings came out this afternoon. Net income rose 33% to $13.6 billion, or $2.33 per share, in the three months ending in March. Revenue rose 27%, to $58 billion.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Aichon on Monday April 27 2015, @03:14AM
If you're going to compare Apple to other companies, pick other companies that have occupied similar niches in the culture.
Sony back in the early '80s would be a prime example. They were in music and electronics. They made THE device to own. Their stuff was highly regarded as working well and being well designed. And then they lost their edge and had a few decades of mediocrity. It's only recently that they've really started to reestablish themselves and their identity.
Apple most certainly will not stay on top forever, but with its cash pile and cultural cachet, it'll continue being relevant for decades to come, even if it makes the first of its eventual monumental missteps tomorrow. And, like Sony, it's entirely likely it'll reinvent itself in some other way that will keep it relevant beyond even that. But Apple's greatest strength since Steve Jobs' return in the '90s has been its ability to have laser-like focus on a small set of products. The more they spread themselves thin, the less they can focus, and the more likely they are to stumble. That's (part of) what killed them in the '80s and '90s after the Macintosh, and there's a reason the first thing Jobs did when he got back was kill a load of product lines.
As for IBM, I'm not sure that I'd bet on it. Today's IBM is a shadow of its former self, mired down in a bureaucracy that's incapable of being nimble enough to fend off the multitude of nameless startups that are nipping away at it like a pack of piranhas. The niche in which they find themselves is constantly shrinking, and it's just a matter of time before they reinvent themselves into irrelevancy. Apple inadvertently democratized decisions that were previously left to IT when they helped jumpstart the nascent smartphone market and people started doing BYOD to work. The end result is that IBM no longer commands things the way they did. Nor does Apple sit in control either, for that matter, though they've stood to gain more. IBM is beginning to recognize their irrelevance in this new corporate culture that's sweeping the world. There's a reason why IBM and Apple made a big deal about their partnership recently, with IBM more or less conceding the battle is already lost by promising to bring a flurry of 100 apps to iOS.
(Score: 3, Funny) by mhajicek on Monday April 27 2015, @04:48AM
Maybe it's time to launch Orange Technologies.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 27 2015, @07:20AM
Care to explain what you mean?
(Score: 3, Funny) by jimshatt on Monday April 27 2015, @08:35AM
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday April 27 2015, @10:40AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday April 27 2015, @01:44PM
I prefer bananas. The go down easy and come back up easy.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday April 27 2015, @11:50AM
Who was the most important phone company pre-iPhone? Nokia? Where are they now? Pimping MSphone? Oh thats a real winner. I bet the world's two MSphone users are really happy.
Solve this equation (apple - iphone) = ? May as well shut down and give the cash back to the shareholders (there was a semi serious call to do that to apple, pre-iPhone)
My point being phones are a form of fashion/fad, and sadly 2010 stuff like see-thru yoga pants are sadly not going to be around forever. The "cool phone" of 2010 is unlikely to be the cool phone of 2020 just like 2000 or 1990 or 1980.
Ten years from now the general public are going to be all "remember that i-whatever... iphone company... what was that name ... Apple? Whatever happened to them? They were pretty cool back in the day."
Also IBM always was a consulting juggernaut. They just happened to sell some hardware their consultants were good at pushing. Also they've got a patent trove big enough to make almost any company a violator, and enough dough to buy any and all of those startups. Finally they've fired/downsized practically every American in their non-direct-sales workforce so they've internationalized and are no longer an American company in practice. They're a Chinese/Indian company with some sales offices remaining in the USA. Pivot pivot pivot they're really good at it. They sell to businesses so the permanent and growing income inequality doesn't matter, if anything it helps their sales because they sell to the rich guys.
What can Apple possibly pivot into, as a cell phone designer/seller? They could pivot into manufacturing by buying foxconn or whatever. yeah good luck there. Or maybe pivot into network providing to become a telephone utility provider for all those android phones. Look at macroeconomic trends, what will permanent declines in energy and permanent increase in income inequality do very long term to a company that basically harvests cash from upper middle class americans by selling them shiny Chinese made phones? Apple is simply doomed long term, no matter how shiny and cool their designs are.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Aichon on Monday April 27 2015, @02:47PM
What can Apple possibly pivot into, as a computer designer/seller?
Said the crowd in 2000.
What can Apple possibly pivot into, as a music player designer/seller?
Said the crowd in 2006.
What can Apple possibly pivot into, as a smartphone designer/seller?
Said the crowd today.
What can Apple possibly pivot into, as a fashion designer/seller?
Says the crowd tomorrow.
Suggesting Apple can't pivot into something else is a failure to look back at all the successful pivots they've made in just the last 20 years. They went from being a computer company to now making inroads as a fashion brand. Nokia bet the company on Windows Phone and lost. Apple is betting big on their future being someplace where they aren't now, but even if this current foray doesn't work out, they aren't betting the company on it. They'll have time to readjust and try a different angle. I do agree that they'll eventually become irrelevant, but suggesting it'll be within 10 years strikes me as ludicrously soon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @08:15PM
but suggesting it'll be within 10 years strikes me as ludicrously soon
Your same timeline shows the decline of the previous behemoth, Microsoft. They went from everyone wants a copy of windows/office to meh.
Pretty much all of those pivots they did was Steve Jobs. It has yet to be seen if the current guy can do the same.
In your time frame if you go back 2 years they were getting loan money from MS to stay alive.
I remember the first time I saw a motorola razr. I said to my current gf at the time "they are going to make a LOT of money". They did then watched it all melt away.
A lot of what Apple did was because Steve Jobs was a massive cunt of a businessman. It remains to be seen if Mr. Cook can do the same.
To put it in perspective. Their current wave is because the Galaxy phone line is getting rather crappy and they put a bigger screen on their product. Thats it. They are 1-2 product moves from a competitor to being #1 to being #5. The next iPhone will be a little better than the last. That is how it will go from now on with the iPhone. The watch may be doing OK. Because the margin must be huge on that. Will it last? Probably not. Because the reason people gave up watches was because they already had a phone that told the time. It will be a toy that people stop messing with in less than a year (with a small group of diehards). Because people gave up their watches organically. You can not un-organic that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @03:16PM
Apple? On top? In WHAT market? Their usage is under 20% in any arena they compete in. Profitability? Okay, sure, they're really good at getting their cultists to overpay for stuff... I'd love to see how anyone is justifying the idea that they're on top in the first place.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Aichon on Monday April 27 2015, @03:24PM
Take what I said in context, please. I was responding to the summary, in which it was pointed out that they're currently at the top in terms of market capitalization.
Apple’s market capitalization—the value of all of the shares of its stock—is more than $758 billion, greater than any other company’s.
And in general I don't disagree with your premise, though their share is well over 20% globally for tablets, and in certain markets their share for particular products is well over 20% (e.g. iPhones are around 40-50% in the US, depending on the quarter).
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday April 27 2015, @03:33AM
Apple has 2 things going for it, where IBM had (and still has, to a degree) only one. Both IBM and Apple have legions of people that will buy anything they make without a thought. Everyone has heard the expression "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". Both companies have the same sort of followers, although they're very disparate groups. When the IBM followers die off (most are older) they'll be in a lot of trouble. This is too bad, as although IBM makes very poor software and overpriced, underpowered hardware, they do a lot of *exceptional* research and are one of the few companies that still do it.
In addition to the cult of buyers, Apple also has the advantage of getting free advertising from every news and tech organization on the planet. How many articles did you see on the news about any of the Android Wear watches? Now how many about the Apple watch? The media people were Apple fans long before the iPhone. They used Apple for scripts, etc, they used Apple for video editing, and the used Apple for sound. They were the original fanboys. It's hard to compete with that, even with superior products.
What Apple has going against them is a lot of people that don't like they way they do business (lawsuits, arrogance, etc), don't like the platform lock-in attempts (hey, did we mention IBM earlier?), lack of choice, and just general annoyance with hearing about them all the time.
It'll be interesting to see how all of these factors play out in the long run ... it's way too complex for me to even wager a guess at when it will end.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday April 27 2015, @06:10AM
One thing IBM has going for them is a huge quiver of patents.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Monday April 27 2015, @09:51AM
Many of which are actually worthy of being patents.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 27 2015, @12:02PM
When the IBM followers die off (most are older) they'll be in a lot of trouble.
They've already pivoted out of the USA and fired almost everyone in the USA and are doing fantastic in China and India, virtually all employees of IBM at this time are Chinese or Indian outside the international sales offices which are usually staffed with locals (The only Americans still working for IBM, aside from a handful of remaining rounding errors, are local salespeople). They'll be OK.
Also follow the money. Long term economic effects are to take all the money from everyone and give it to a couple rich old white men in FIRE sector jobs, for a couple generations now. If the entire city of Peoria hates IBM, that really doesn't matter because none of them have any real money or jobs anymore, or if they somehow do, that'll soon be fixed by gov policy and corporate mergers. On the other hand, if one old white guy at Citibank (for example) in a VP office likes IBM, thats all they really need, because he's going to be the only person in the country with any money soon enough. Follow the money. Again they'll be OK.
Something IBM does lose out on, is the macro-economic effect of abandoning the concept of an economy as being productive and converting over to a bubble oriented economy over the past couple decades, that means all "activity" is compressed into the peaks of the bubble, and nothing moves slower than a giant bureaucracy right when they need to move fast at bubble peaks. So a century or so of bubble economy will slowly eventually kill IBM. But they're good for awhile.
(Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Monday April 27 2015, @06:17PM
Based on how often we have on-site support techs from IBM around here, I'd have to say that's complete BS. They've clearly still got a number of technical folks here in the US.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday April 27 2015, @06:25PM
Yep, the IBM blind buyers are corporations. This allows their blind buy culture to outlive the employees pushing it. This is why the sold off most if not all of their consumer goods divisions. They realized their biggest business is to act as a consulting leech on other big companies.
Hopefully those companies will die off, though.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @03:54AM
It was Wang Labs. If you would like to read a very interesting piece of modern history, read 'Riding the Runaway Horse: The Rise and Decline of Wang Laboratories'.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @04:05AM
I will not google, let alone look at anything that has in the title the words Riding, Horse, Runaway, Decline, and Wang thank you very much.
(Score: 3, Touché) by davester666 on Monday April 27 2015, @08:27AM
It works better if you press the "I feel lucky" button
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @05:28AM
Sorry, not so. IBM was founded in 1911 actually taking the name International Business Machines in 1924. Wang Labs was after WWII. Now get off my lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @08:53AM
I meant before as in the context of the article, as in 'another company that suffered from disruptive change /before/ IBM did' - that should be clear from the context, but nevertheless hope this helps.
(Score: 4, Informative) by AnonTechie on Monday April 27 2015, @10:35AM
There were so many other examples such as: Data General, Control Data Corporation, Sperry Univac, Perkin Elmer, Amdahl Corporation, Apollo Computer, Burroughs, Digital Equipment Corporation, International Computers Limited (ICL), Tandon Corporation, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_system_manufacturers [wikipedia.org]
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by wisnoskij on Monday April 27 2015, @04:13AM
In the cutthroat world of the tech industry.
You either die a hero or live to become a heartless bureaucratic institution.
(Score: 5, Touché) by M. Baranczak on Monday April 27 2015, @05:14AM
Steve managed to do both.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Monday April 27 2015, @06:52AM
Steve Jobs was only a "hero" to people that either:
1) bought the inaccurate marketing-oriented narrative that Apple spun around him (giving him credit for all sorts of shit he didn't do)
2) are either unaware as to his persistently awful behavior (not just berating engineers or taking up handicapped parking spaces, but also things like telling Wozniak "project X must be done by day N or we won't get our $5k" when 'N' was really the deadline for a $30k bonus Jobs kept for himself) — or excusing the behavior for who-knows what reason.
Besides that, a "hero" by any definition I've been aware of involved personal sacrifice or substantial risk of some kind — or otherwise saving somebody, in which case it's a personal hero, not "a hero" in the objective sense (e.g. a doctor could be someone's *personal* hero for saving his/her life, or a teacher might be a personal hero for steering the kid away from a life of crime/drugs).
Even if we used the metric of "heroic" talent, Steve Jobs' were, objectively speaking, in salesmanship and persuasion. Those aren't exactly things we normally give people "hero" status for. Hopefully he thanked Apple's marketing department for their "brilliant founder returns to save the company" figurehead scheme, as that's what ultimately led people to believe he'd done far more than he really did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @10:08AM
“Sex–induced heart attack would be the best way to die: first you come, then you go.” —Alice Cooper
Oh Lord, when I die i want to be in bed, making love to a beautiful woman, on top, on the upstroke so I get one more go one the way back down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @01:58PM
The grand parent is 1/3 right because Steve
*Wozniak became a hero (but still lives)
*Jobs become a heartless bureaucratic institution and died.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @04:00PM
"Yup, I guess I took the right one." - Cancer
(Score: 1, Informative) by Balderdash on Monday April 27 2015, @04:46AM
Apple sucks the big hairy meatball.
Mod this to 0.
I browse at -1. Free and open discourse requires consideration and review of all attempts at participation.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @09:16AM
You don't need to study economics to see that. Just apply common sense. Nothing lasts forever. Apple's dominant position will not last forever. The USA's dominant position will not last forever. Even humanity's dominant position will not last forever.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday April 27 2015, @10:54AM
My common sense tells that some things last longer than others... sometimes this matters, sometimes it doesn't.
For example, the (Egyptian) pyramids are larger, stiffer and last longer than my erection (not saying that this matters, but I reckon it is as relevant as the parent post)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Monday April 27 2015, @11:10AM
Apple has mastered the Product Launch Format for new products. The main difference between them and Double Your Dating and other nonsense (stock market advice, etc) is Apple has a good product for the money. They deliver something with value. Other than my iPad Mini and my toilet, are there that many products I use multiple times every single day? But Apple knows how to do it. They have the press on their side, reporting on every leak and rumor. Apple manipulates the press to build excitement for their launch, and then launch a new product. They have supplier leaks, lost prototypes, rumors, journalists speculating, slips of the tongue, and so on leading up to their events. Then they have an event, with their main guy on stage telling people to buy the product. I don't know how much Steve Jobs contributed to Apple using the Product Launch Format, but it's why Apple is so successful.
What separates Apple from everyone else is their Product Launch Format. No one cares about Android watches. They were mostly ignored when they came out. But Apple has carefully built up hype for their watch over several years, let Android take the early hits, improved their watch from seeing what Android did wrong, and then built up to a frenzy hype launch recently. I still don't know if you can actually buy one or not. It's all hype. But hype works. Apple not only has a core group of media outlets that do nothing but echo its hype, but they have the mainstream media on their side.
Apple's hype is brilliant. Solid gold. Apple is worth billions on the stock market because they're able to talk people into buying their products, and right now in today's commodity world (did you see the weekend WSJ article about how the world has too many commodities and not enough buyers?) that's worth more than any true value anyone could create by shipping a real product. Having a product doesn't really matter. What matters is being able to convince people to buy your product.
Apple has differentiated itself in a commodity market. You can buy a MacBookPro, or some boring old Windows laptop. You can buy an iPad, or some boring old tablet. The ability to take a commodity item and make people want it is the most valuable thing in the world right now. Apple may be more expensive, but they deliver quality. I had a Creative Zen MP3 player that bricked itself after about a year. I've had an iPod Touch since like 2009 or something, still going strong. My MBP is so old I have year after year of tax software on it like an archaeological record or something. I don't have any other computer that old at all. So Apple does deliver quality, but that's not enough. They have to make people want to buy their stuff, and they are able to do that in a world that sells mostly cheap junk at commodity prices.
IBM was boring, is boring, and will always be boring. They did their business by overcharging big corporations for boring back-end mainframes. No comparison.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday April 27 2015, @12:13PM
Could you have the cart before the horse? If you have hundreds of billions because of temporarily leading a hyper-profitable emerging market (which is no longer hyper profitable or emerging) then you can afford some staggering payola and any main stream media manager who isn't an idiot is going to court Apple for all their worth to get a cut of the ad sales budget.
Gadget oriented techies have common cause with the media execs, so a natural blindness sets in where people think the general public gives a F about apples new products, when of course they don't, its right down their with baseball box scores and water cooler talk about last night's sitcom episode, and forgotten just as quickly if its ever noticed at all.
I think your correlation analysis is pretty good, but the causation is unfortunately probably backwards.
The commodity vs buyer thing is just the old income inequality story. People would buy stuff if they had money, which they don't. A lot of anecdotal observations boil down to we no longer have a functioning economic system for almost all of the worlds population. Eventually that's going to be a huge problem. Hopefully the conversion will be orderly and peaceful (LOL as if humans ever do that)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday April 27 2015, @06:19PM
While that is true, prima facie, Nerdfest's point is correct:
That is, the people who are tastemakers in our world are Apple fanboys. They are constantly telling people through advertising, media, etc what is cool to wear, to do, to be, and Apple fills the computer/tech niche nicely for them. No, most average people don't obsess about the shoes the cool guy in the office is wearing, but they notice. Most people don't obsess about the car they drive, but when they see something cool looking pass them on the highway, they notice. Likewise most people don't obsess about what brand phone they have, but iPhones are considered far more cool than androids and people notice when you have one. And, if my wife is any indication, the people who do have an iPhone get a secret thrill out of being in that club.
Me, I'd sooner be dead than own a device that I don't "own," and that I can't hack and develop apps for without paying Caesar. And you'll have to pry my QWERTY slide-out keyboard from my cold dead fingers. But then I'm a function-over-form kind of guy, which it sounds like you are too, and different things are cool to me than are to most people.
That cool factor, that understanding of what average, non-technical people want from technology, is centrally responsible for propelling Apple's shares to such a high valuation. It gives them tremendous wiggle room when it comes to customer satisfaction; because most people buying the Apple Watch are already stalwart fans, they're going to do the hard work for Apple of figuring out why in the hell anyone would want one. They'll invent enough reasons and blog/vlog/evangelize about them until the plods around them say, "huh, maybe I should get one, too."
I'm waiting for Apple to meaningfully conquer entertainment proper. They certainly have the cash to do it. And their fan base, being so solid in the entertainment industry, would probably be happy to be conquered. That's a path to an even greater climb in their market valuation.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by ghost on Monday April 27 2015, @12:47PM
So why'd you bother with a comeback?
Which brings us to IBM -- why bother? They were an important company for nearly a century. Now they're an outsourced Indian consultant shop.
Ginni Rometty: If you have any respect for the employees who came before you, please change the name.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday April 27 2015, @01:11PM
I've been bleeding in six colors since 1986, but I'm at the point of giving up on it. I'm not even certain I want to ship the iOS App I've been working on; I expect I'll Free the source, but if I release a binary it may be through Cydia.
AppleTalk, Apple Desktop Bus, dual-forked files with the Resource Manager, the relocatable memory manager, AppleLink, 800 kB floppy disks all in many respects were far superior to their nonproprietary alternatives. But they were proprietary; if you had a shop with some windows or unix boxen, if someone had a mac it was a huge PITA for everyone, and expensive too.
Apple's success today is due in large part to its being rescued by the adoption of open standards - NFS instead of AppleShare, TCP/IP instead of AppleTalk, USB instead of ADB, vast quantities of Open Source and Free Software.
But increasingly - especially since the advent of the iPhone - the Mac is a locked-down system. For example I recently learned that one can no longer load a kernel extension - a device driver module - unless it is signed by Apple, at a cost of $99.00/year. They won't sign any driver, it has to be approved. Similarly with Safari plugins.
I have all kinds of reasons to want to edit the /etc/hosts file on my phone, but I can only do so if I jailbreak it.
IBM was this way, back in the day.
Apple is going to make a lot of money in the short term but unless it gets back to participating enthusiastically with open standards it is bound to lose in the end.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Monday April 27 2015, @11:47PM
not to be a wet blanket but apple hasn't cornered to market in anything they make. yes they sell plenty of computers and smartphones but they aren't dominant in any product market. if they went out of business, no market would collapse, people would just buy the same thing from another company.