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For whatever it's worth (perhaps not much!), I more or less stand by my answer from 2011[0]: Sun lost track of the fact that it was (or should have been) a syst

For whatever it's worth (perhaps not much!), I more or less stand by my answer from 2011[0]: Sun lost track of the fact that it was (or should have been) a systems company. As for Apple: it came within a hair's width of perishing in the Amelio era -- and surely would have capsized had they not purchased NeXT; it's harder to endure that it might look! [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287033

musicale 2y ago
> 2) Inability to capitalize on their inventions. IBM used Java as a common language across all of their enterprise platforms, they sold Websphere as a common application platform. NetApp was able to build a large business off NFS. Personally I'm grateful to Sun for developing useful things like Java and NFS for the rest of the industry. IBM and NetApp certainly are as well. Innovator's dilemma perhaps. It's certainly hard for a large company to pivot to new businesses. Apple remarkably entered the music player, tablet, smartphone, and smart watch businesses, as well as new services businesses. Now the Mac is almost an afterthought compared to the iPhone. Apple even seems to sell more iPads than Macs (though Mac revenue is slightly higher?) And they weren't afraid to let the iPhone kill off the iPod (though I still miss the iPod touch, basically a wi-fi only iPhone.)