IBM never gained control of that market sector though. What happened is that they lost control of the technical standards they created, accidentaly launching an open platform they never intended to be open. If IBM had retained control of the PC and had as a result dominated the desktop computer industry, history would be very different.

I don't think Jobs ever really intended to win the dsktop wars in that way though. He never even tried to compete in every market segment and control every standard. I think his conception of Apple was always (since the lanuch of the Mac anyway) as a premium brand capturing the top end of the market, where the profits are. There would always be a mass market and enthusiast community in a world in which Apple was the dominant desktop brand, because Apple had no interest in competing with it. Conversely Microsoft has always ben about market share first, with an MS computer on every desk running MS software. That's not a Jobsian vision. Even when the iPhone was the only 'modern' smartphone and Android devices were years away from competing effectively with it, Apple never went for the market share play. At the time this was roundly criticised in the media as a grave strategic error, in some circles it still is, but that was to completely misunderstand Apple's strategy.

> That's not a Jobsian vision. Even when the iPhone was the only 'modern' smartphone and Android devices were years away from competing effectively with it, Apple never went for the market share play

Yet Apple achieved a large market share and was perfectly happy with it even when Jobs was on the board. I'd find it hard to believe that you don't want Market Share anyway, even if you target premium users. You don't want to be a Ferrari maker in the end with a minuscule market share. I'd rather say Apple was always trying to keep a substantial market share while having "better" products (just like P&G for example, they win on the market with more expensive products) but failed until they entered the Portable Music Players and Smartphone market.

They did, but profit has always been a higher priority for them than market share and the 'platform dominance' that goes with it. If they happen to get a large market share, or if their platform becomes dominant anyway that's a nice benefit, but it's not a strategic goal.

A good example of when Apple became a market share elader is the iPod. If you look at Apple's product strategy though, they never did anything to gain market share at the cost of profits and premium branding. The combination of devices and services via iTunes created a dominant platform. They didn't do anything to avoid that, it's not that beign dominant is itself a bad thing, it's just that it wasn't a strategic goal. They never under-cut competitors to achieve it. Yet at the height of their market dominance, when they were best placed to use their position to exert market control, instead of using that power against customers to increase lock-in, they used it to force reluctant labels to embrace DRM free content. They then used it again to coerce the labels to sign up to iTunes Match. They did this becaue these moves ease customer pain points and improve the customer experience, making their products more attractive and therefore more valuable.

Can you imagine Microsoft or IBM making moves like that? I can't. As another example, Apple has always maintained that they don't allow third party keyboards, or third party browsers to use the accelerated Webkit engine for security reasons. These explanations were widely derided as fig leaves to cover a lock-in strategy, yet as soon as Apple has implemented controls to open these restrictions securely, it did so. It turns out their stated reasons for doing that really were their actual reasons for doing it. So if you want to make your 'Apple lockin would be worse than IBM' thesis stand up, you need to explain why their actual behaviour when they're in that situation doesn't match the thesis.

Apple dropped DRM in iTunes because of bad PR. Everything Apple have done with regards to content distribution has been a balancing act between industry demands and PR.

Except for Sony, every other media player disregarded DRM. You may not have noticed this if you only had an iPod. The fact that they joined the ranks of their competitors in this regard should not be seen as a positive, it should only be seen as PR.

> Except for Sony, every other media player disregarded DRM.

The Sandisk Sansa Fuze[1] had the bizarre "slot radio". http://gizmodo.com/5126743/how-sandisks-slotradio-turned-a-g...

Wow, thanks for the link. I didn't know about that at all...

Surprising that it's from 2009. I thought that the big players had worked out the public's opinion by then, but it may be that that product was in development during the DRM battles and Sandisk had to either release it, or scrap the product.

That's untrue. Every audio ecosystem, be it iTunes, Zune, Rhapsody, whatever had DRM. It was a requirement from the record labels.

Not true at all if you bought a device that wasn't made by the big players (the majority of early media players). They had no DRM, and provided uniform, simple USB removable media access to the media on the device.

The record labels only stepped in when your quoted companies/brands entered the fray.

I think we're talking at cross-purposes about what we mean by 'No DRM'. The devices you're talking about would only run DRM free MP3s so in that respect they 'had no DRM', but they would be incapable of running DRM'd muic e.g. copied from a Zune or iPod.

But then Zunes and iPods could also always run DRM free MP3s copied from other sources as well, so I'm not sure what you think the difference was, or what advantage you think these independent players had with respect to DRM.

> Yet at the height of their market dominance, when they were best placed to use their position to exert market control, instead of using that power against customers to increase lock-in, they used it to force reluctant labels to embrace DRM free content. They then used it again to coerce the labels to sign up to iTunes Match. They did this becaue these moves ease customer pain points and improve the customer experience, making their products more attractive and therefore more valuable.

You almost had me choke on that one. Yeah, yeah, they did everything for the best interests of the customers. Oh wait, like preventing to put your own songs if you did not use their proprietary software (iTunes) that ran like shit on Windows (Hey, even I had to use it) and was impossible to run under Linux or anything else. And let's not forget they did not embrace the non-DRM MP3 until everyone else started to do it - they were far way from leading the trend to benefit customers in providing interoperable devices. As a matter of fact, iPods were locked and you were NOT able to use the songs you licensed on iTunes with any other music player.

Yeah, what a great experience that was. Thumbs up for User Freedom! But I'm sure you will build a case to tell me that Freedom is not good, and everyone is better in an Apple jail.

The scary thing to me is that we're currently seeing a reply of a chunk of history with the worst case alternative outcome, closed silos and tremendous user lock-in, nota-bene on top of an open operating system.

Very frustrating.

> Once IBM gains control of a market sector, they almost always stop innovation. They prevent innovation from happening.

It's funny because Apple is now in that same situation. Apple isn't exactly known for innovation anymore (as much as they would like to lead you to believe in their keynotes).

>(as much as they would like to lead you to believe in their keynotes)

This is not unique to Apple. When a business has market dominance through regulation, lockin or high entry cost, they usually spin it as being simply because they provide the absolute latest and best service.

It's especially easy to see among internet providers that provide stoneage speeds, as they will brag about their amazing cutting edge internet service.

One may say "no shit sherlock" to that, but there is a lot of potential advertisement that wouldn't be equally deceptive in that context. They could advertise themselves as "tried and true" or "the enduring provider you can rely on".

> They could advertise themselves as "tried and true" or "the enduring provider you can rely on".

The problem with that is that consumers nowadays are far more focused on "cutting edge" and "latest and greatest". Not much is made to last anymore (especially in the consumer electronics industry) and most people seem fine with that. I know buying a smartphone isn't the same as buying services from an ISP, but I think the same principle applies. Faster speeds are more important to consumers than "tried and true" services and so if ISPs want to maximize the effectiveness of advertisement, that's what they'll do.

In the worst case scenario, "tried and true" and "the enduring provider you can rely on" would turn consumers away from your service because they would make your ISP seem old and boring (again, not something that's bad per se, but bad going by the preferences of the average consumer).

Innovation doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.

"The term innovation can be defined as something original and, as a consequence, new, that "breaks into" the market or society."

Making technologies acessible and useful to people, where previously they were the domain of specialists and geeks, is pretty much definitive of Apple's entire business model and core competency from 1997 to the present day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation

http://www.asymco.com/2014/04/16/innoveracy-misunderstanding...

I think the "Dark Ages" of the desktop was inconsequential due to adoption of the internet.

All platforms were not necessarily equal when the Internet/WWW came around. The browsers eventually came to be multi-platform and support standards but it took a very long time to move away from platform specific software. Look at the legacy created by IE, for example.

Standards brought us out of the dark ages. Perhaps the dark ages were necessary for us to arrive at where we are today. The importance of standards and interoperability over the past decade has made possible what we have today.

Maybe, but I fear it's a constant battle we have to fight. Chrome tends to want to be the New IE with specific functions implemented nowhere else, Apple still locks down users to their store and devices, etc... interoperability is far from being achieved.

I couldn't disagree more. There was indeed a very dark age due to Microsoft. I often wonder what a world full of scientist and engineers that had the highest quality software available to them would have been like. Instead we got Microsoft's monopolistic and predatory business and consequently we have all suffered. If you perceive Apple as being controlling then you must not have lived through this Dark Age like I did.

I was not referring to Microsoft, I was referring to the PC as a hardware platform. Besides, in Microsoft's OS, there were very few restrictions as to what you could do and develop and distribute, so de facto Windows was a very open OS as well in that sense. Not very good maybe, but a space everyone could use without restrictions.

And despite Microsoft and its practices, the fact that the PC was open, hardware-wise, made it possible for Linux to exist. That's how flexible the PC platform is.

But Peter says competition is for losers!

Yeah, imagine if the car market had been won by General Motors and 9 out of 10 cars was a GM. That's what happened in desktop computers. All other variants died. Apple was down to 4% at one point, and Microsoft extinguished all competition by requiring hardware makers to pay for DOS no matter what OS they actually shipped.

Anyway, don't you think we'd all be better off with 3 or 4 desktop and mobile choices?

Actually, no. Having multiple targets requires more shots. Ammo cost. Every company has to figure out how they will handle the mobile market. They have to pour resources into android and iPhone or else into a bridge tool like appcellerator. Bridge tools have costs because the require customization time.

Compare this to modern Web Development. There is only one family of targeted platforms: html and Javascript. That's it. Don't like Javascript? Tough. But at least you don't have to learn and pay for multiple, vendor-centric tech. I actually long for a standard platform for native mobile development.

10 years. Interview is dated 1985, Windows 95 is obviously 1995.

Hmm...the prediction came through fairly precisely.

The PC has been a haven for innovation on the desktop, in case you failed to notice. Hardware wise the PC surpassed the Macs in power and price in no time. Precisely because it was an open platform.

Not quite. IBM paved the way for Compaq, which in turn led to an explosion of computer brands all around the same Industry Standard Architecture.

Apple first bet on the 68K line, then moved to IBM (the Power series CPU), then finally joined that 'closed' culture with the advent of the second generation iMac.

Each of those machines was as closed as they could make them without welding them shut (and your present day iMac is no exception to this, it doesn't have to be designed in such a way that it is hard to open).