Apple's Jobs brushes aside backdating concerns

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Apple / Jobs irrelevant?

If Apple and Jobs are unimportant and irrelevant (as suggested by some ZDNet posters), why are so many of the people who post here so cross about them?

Somebody said DARPA invented the WWW. Wrong: it was Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. DARPA 'invented' the internet (though it wasn't meant for us peasants). The Mac was the first platform on which hyperlinking was used successfully in a commercial product (HyperCard), and that pre-dated the WWW by about three years.

For reference, both PowerPoint and Excel started life on the Macintosh platform (Windows did not exist). Mac users also had plug-and-play networking (and peripherals) as standard, access to laser printing (even networked laser printing) and a whole host of other useful things in the late 1980s. At the time, none of these things were available to users of PCs, and Apple's market share was much larger than it is now. This is not 'fanboy' stuff, it's just a set of factually accurate statements.

Apple's decline in the late 1990s had little to do with its technology (which was generally superior to that available under the Wintel banner): it was almost all about poor business and marketing decisions. The board threw out Steve Jobs (who is clearly just as difficult to work with as Gates or Ballmer, and no more of a crook than either of them), and the company lost its direction.

Apple threw away an enormous technological and marketing lead, and very nearly went under, and all because of a lack of business acumen (high prices, no O/S licensing, et cetera). This would have been bad for Microsoft, because it would have been subject to even greater anti-trust scrutiny had the MacOS disappeared as a viable alternative to Windows, and the company might well have been broken up as a result. This was the main reason for the MS investment and the commitment to continue Office development for the Mac. So maybe MS and MS-fanboys have more to thank Apple for than the other way around?

Jobs has come back, Apple is flourishing again, and for some bizarre reason this winds up a small (but vocal) group of individuals who seem to want the whole world to use the same computers that they use. Why should we all use the same? If you are happy with your Windows PC why do you need to make such a fuss about the fact that somebody else is happy with their Mac? Get a life.

Posted by: Steve4Fluff   Posted on: 05/13/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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