Apple’s critics are out in force this holiday season with end-of-the-year pronouncements. Some say it was a mixed back, but few speak of it as notable. Some suggest Apple had a really bad year, that it couldn’t possibly get much worse. Clearly the latter rating doesn’t recognize the years when Apple was really in shaky condition. […]

Meeting customer demands for new products is an impossible task. But some companies try, with loads of products in their lineups that differ only slightly. So normally a TV maker will have several groups of products at different price ranges with various features and specs to separate the cheap, cheapest. mid-priced and the high-end, with […]

As much as Apple has added products to its lineup over the years, other products have gone away. Some of that was due to the bloodletting after Steve Jobs took over as “interim” CEO in 1997. So Apple tightened its focus on its core products, and gave up digital cameras, after being a pioneer in […]

When Walt Disney died at the “tender age” of 65 in 1966, the executives who took over his company were in a quandary. What to do next? What would Walt have done anyway? But the quest to look back also hurt the company’s direction for years. Critical decisions weren’t made, at least until they realized […]