
Google vs. iPhone: Is Steve Jobs Reliving His Past Mistakes?  - makimaki
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1843813,00.html
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mechanical_fish
_The key to the PC's success and Apple's downfall was that the open-standards-
based IBM-compatible PC created a platform for third-party hardware and
software makers to ply their stuff._

This is just false. The Apple II didn't fail in the business market because it
was a closed platform. It was one of the most open platforms in the history of
personal computing -- it shipped with a ROM listing and a _schematic_. It was
possible to clone the Apple II hardware -- check out this huge list of Apple
cloners:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apple_II_clones>

The Apple II's rise in the business market was halted because IBM had
unbelievable corporate marketing clout and, at the time, better operational
management. During the Apple II boom Apple was not the best managed company in
the world. It famously ran _without a budget_ for a long period. Apple's
problem was that the Mac didn't arrive until well after IBM had established
their hold on the market, and in the meantime all the company had was the
Apple III and the Lisa.

The IBM PC "smashed" the Apple II first. [1] _Then_ the cloners appeared. We
remember the PC cloners and not the Apple cloners because the PC cloners were
just more successful. Indeed, they were successful enough to essentially drive
IBM out of its own business -- partly because IBM quickly caught up to Apple
in the "corporate sluggishness" metric, but mostly because IBM didn't realize
until too late that their core asset was the operating system, which _they
didn't own_.

[1] I find it hard to say with a straight face that the IBM PC "smashed" the
Apple II, a platform which lived on for another decade and which was
ultimately "smashed" by _another Apple product_ , the Mac. All the PC did was
drive Apple out of the sweet spot of the business market, which was admittedly
a big loss but obviously didn't destroy the company. Indeed, while IBM's PC
_platform_ has been a big success, Apple is the _company_ that's still in the
PC industry.

