Newsletter Issue #532: The Waiting for Apple to Fail Report
February 7th, 2010Humans are strange beasts. I wonder what an alien race might think of us if they come to Earth to observe our society and psychology. Consider how we root for the winner, and then, in an abrupt change of face, fervently hope for their defeat.
So consider Apple’s plight over the years. Despite a loyal fan base, it hasn’t always been so easy to get the press to come along for the ride, except for those who depend on Mac users for all or most of their traffic. Indeed, The Mac Observer had an Apple “death knell” section for years, where they’d recount the latest efforts on the part of the media to declare the company an abject failure.
It’s not as if Apple didn’t help things along. Consider all the missteps they made over the years. Despite having what was undeniably a superior product, a knock-off, better known as Windows, ruled the operating system empire then and now.
This is not to say that the Mac could have achieved total dominance in the same fashion as Apple has today with the iPod. But it wouldn’t be so one-sided a battle if Apple’s executives in those years had a clear-eyed vision for the future and not the failed vision of salespeople whose only concern was this quarter and the next, while innovation took a back seat.
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