It's the tide. Digital corporation: very profitable minicomputer business... until workstations were good enough. Sun microsystems: very profitable workstatio

It's the tide. Digital corporation: very profitable minicomputer business... until workstations were good enough. Sun microsystems: very profitable workstation business... until microcomputers were good enough. It's hard for a business to get back to where it was, when the very basis of its success is washed away. See "the innovator's dilemma" (actually inspired by the Digital story). You're right though, that Apple has done it... seemingly by shifting its weight to a different aspect of its business (consumer design) that was present all along. IBM has also done it (from cash registers, to mainframes, to minicomputes, to microcomputers, to today) - however, it seems now to be consulting-based (like Accenture), which is a different kind of business altogether, from IBM's traditional office automation products, but which was always present (like Apple).