Leon wrote:


"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...

Bought _what_? Microsoft owns neither Commodore nor Apple so what the
Hell
are you talking about?

Ok, the giant bail out. Apple would probably be gone had Microoft not
dumped millions into Apple.

At the time of the "giant bail out" Microsoft purchased 150 million dollars
worth of Apple preferred stock. "Preferred" stock is non-voting. At the
time Apple has 1.5 billion dollars in "cash and cash equivalents" on hand.
Yeah, they were _really_ in trouble. I should be so poor.

Gone. Apple did fine until it had competition.

Apple had competition on the day that they sold their first machine.
Intel-based S-100 micros were already well established in the
market--Apple
with their 6502 was fighting the trend. Successfully. Wasn't until IBM
came in that Apple ran into a serious competitor, but they've managed to
maintain market share right along.

No they lost market share. Their share is squat compared to what it was
before the PC came along.

Everybody lost share to IBM. But Apple did not lose as much as their
competitors. What other computer hardware company that was in business the
day the IBM PC shipped is still in business? The only ones that come to
mind are Rat Shack and Cray.

Steve Jobs fallacy was
his
insisting that Apple manufacture everything including the software. It
was simply out paced by the enormous number of other choices.

Apple still manufactures everything including much of the software.
Seems that that strategy actually worked pretty well.

No, there is now hardware and software available for an Apple not produced
by Apple.

There was always hardware and software available for an Apple not produced
by Apple. Remember Visicalc? Remember the coprocessor boards that let
Apples run CP/M? I can't remember now what all was available, but
accessorizing the Apple was an industry in itself.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)