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I've been thinking about all the great things that have happened within tech companies in the last few decades, and it seems clear to me that a couple of centur

I've been thinking about all the great things that have happened within tech companies in the last few decades, and it seems clear to me that a couple of centuries into the future, some of these events will be hallmarks of history. I don't think it's crazy to say that Tim Berners-Lee will eventually reach the same stature of Gutenberg. Unfortunately there aren't many 'historians of technology' so people like Don Melton are doing an invaluable work to record the inner culture where technological revolution is taking place. Nobody is better suited to write history than those who made it happen. All the best to Don in his new adventure :)

rednukleus 14y ago
It really depends on how things progress. Apple might be in the history books as a "shining example of how tightly integrated hardware and software works so well"; or as "the last big attempt which showed that in the long run closed systems never work". It could really go either way from here. How these events are remembered is going to be very coloured by how they are perceived after the event.
- simonh 14y ago
  I think the historical perception bias you're talking about is why so many people dismissed Apple's attempt to enter the phone market as doomed from the start. Hence Ballmer's famous quip "I like our business model" when the iPhone came out. Steve Job's analysis of the situation in the 90s was quite different. He put Apple's failure to capture the mass market back then to Apple leaving a price umbrella under which Windows could grow to dominate the market, and stated that Apple would make sure not to do that with what we now call iOS devices. I think Apple's strategy is to lower prices as required to maintain a viable market share, but keep them high enough to dominate in terms of profit share. It may well turn out that the business model (licensed OS versus integrated hardware/software) doesn't actually matter all that much.
- snowwrestler 14y ago
  I think the dichotomy you express is probably already a thing of history. The concepts of hardware and software as separate markets made sense when it was still possible to buy hardware that was not run by software. Today even "hardware" companies like Nokia or Samsung do quite a bit of sophisticated software development, and "software" companies like Google and Facebook build datacenters and server hardware. You can't even buy a car or TV without a few million lines of code these days.

rednukleus 14y ago

It really depends on how things progress. Apple might be in the history books as a "shining example of how tightly integrated hardware and software works so well"; or as "the last big attempt which showed that in the long run closed systems never work". It could really go either way from here. How these events are remembered is going to be very coloured by how they are perceived after the event.

simonh 14y ago
I think the historical perception bias you're talking about is why so many people dismissed Apple's attempt to enter the phone market as doomed from the start. Hence Ballmer's famous quip "I like our business model" when the iPhone came out. Steve Job's analysis of the situation in the 90s was quite different. He put Apple's failure to capture the mass market back then to Apple leaving a price umbrella under which Windows could grow to dominate the market, and stated that Apple would make sure not to do that with what we now call iOS devices. I think Apple's strategy is to lower prices as required to maintain a viable market share, but keep them high enough to dominate in terms of profit share. It may well turn out that the business model (licensed OS versus integrated hardware/software) doesn't actually matter all that much.
snowwrestler 14y ago
I think the dichotomy you express is probably already a thing of history. The concepts of hardware and software as separate markets made sense when it was still possible to buy hardware that was not run by software. Today even "hardware" companies like Nokia or Samsung do quite a bit of sophisticated software development, and "software" companies like Google and Facebook build datacenters and server hardware. You can't even buy a car or TV without a few million lines of code these days.