After the first Mac came out in 1984, some believe that Apple, by dint of a series of blatant blunders, failed to take advantage of its opportunity to own the personal computing landscape for a generation and beyond. To some extent, I agree, particularly during the dark days of the 1990s, before Steve Jobs returned. Then, it seemed as if the company couldn’t do anything right when it came to properly marketing their products.

I still recall all those unsold Performas getting dust at the local Circuit City store.

At the same time, Microsoft gained dominance not as a result of having superior products, but simply because they know how to play the spin game big time and make people believe they they could do no wrong. Of course, when Windows 95 arrived, it wasn’t all that bad, and a growing number of tech pundits claimed that Microsoft had actually reached parity with the Mac.

Regardless of the truth of such assertions, and I thoroughly disagreed after working with both, Apple fast became the beleaguered company, the one doomed to fail eventually. Indeed, things were so bad in 1996, you could almost believe that the doomsayers were spot on, and that Apple was indeed on life support.

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

This article was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 7:30 PM and is filed under News and tagged with: Circuit City, Circuit City Store, Dark Days, Dominance, Doomsayers, Golden Opportunity, Night Owl, Owl, Parity, Personal Computing, Pundits, Steve Jobs, Time Microsoft.