3 ms·

One interesting thing about the idea that most companies can't be like Apple because their super-focused design attitude is risky and costly is: how did Apple g

One interesting thing about the idea that most companies can't be like Apple because their super-focused design attitude is risky and costly is: how did Apple get here? If it's so hard for a company to bootstrap themselves into this philosophy (and get large while doing it), how did Apple pull it off? If my understanding of history is correct, it took a few failures and a dark period of non-success. Perhaps there is an additional lesson in there about recovering from failure and turning unsuccessful enterprises around. On a related note, can anyone recommend a good book about Apple's history and particularily the story of how Steve Jobs turned the ship around when he returned? I'd be willing to bet there are a lot of interesting stories in that history which probably haven't been widely disclosed.

kenjackson 16y ago
Absolutely. The biggest factor in Apple's current success is their past failure. Apple's willingness to completely redo their OS is a result of their OS struggling, both in the market and technologically. The other thing that their failure also helped solidify is their base. Being the perpetual underdog they had a very strong enthusiastic core fan base. This allows them to get decent sales on even their worst sellings products. And for products with public displays (think iPod and iPhone) it helps them create early viral marketing. This base is much less effective for non-publicly displayed items (think their new touchpad or AppleTV). I think these two things have allowed Apple to do bolder moves, yet actually have less risk associated with it. The only other tech company I could think of that would have been able to do something similar was Commodore. But they self-imploded before publicly displayed technology devices were very viable.

3 ms·

One interesting thing about the idea that most companies can't be like Apple because their super-focused design attitude is risky and costly is: how did Apple g

by brown9-2 16y ago

kenjackson 16y ago
Absolutely. The biggest factor in Apple's current success is their past failure. Apple's willingness to completely redo their OS is a result of their OS struggling, both in the market and technologically. The other thing that their failure also helped solidify is their base. Being the perpetual underdog they had a very strong enthusiastic core fan base. This allows them to get decent sales on even their worst sellings products. And for products with public displays (think iPod and iPhone) it helps them create early viral marketing. This base is much less effective for non-publicly displayed items (think their new touchpad or AppleTV). I think these two things have allowed Apple to do bolder moves, yet actually have less risk associated with it. The only other tech company I could think of that would have been able to do something similar was Commodore. But they self-imploded before publicly displayed technology devices were very viable.