I think this item means stop designing, building, and selling hardware. This article is from a time when all PCs were third party clones of IBM PC yet there was

I think this item means stop designing, building, and selling hardware. This article is from a time when all PCs were third party clones of IBM PC yet there was breakneck innovation happening. Apple had toyed with licensing hardware. Regardless I think they did realize that they were competitively out of the hardware game and eventually doubled down instead of folding.