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Apple's Focus is Still Software

Posted by Zonk on from the coulda-fooled-me dept.

bonch writes "Via a Forbes interview, Steve Jobs reassures Apple faithful that despite the runaway success of products like the iPod they are still a committed software company. He also talks about the real motivations behind negotiating Microsoft's 1997 $150 million investment in Apple, the development that went into the original iTunes (only four months!), their future expected revenues, and much more. MacObserver provides an overview, and Fortune has excerpts here."

2 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. That's what I thought by Knights+who+say+'INT · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I watched Steve's kenyote speech, and he spent fiteen times as much time demo'ing software than talking about the Mac mini -- which I thought was the big event of the night. Some totally noncharismatic VP demo'ed Pages for ages, a band was called to demo GarageBand, and Steve generally spent a lot of time clicking around.

    I ended up thinking "wow, Apple is really a software company that happens to make hardware".

  2. Re:Apple software is dedicated to apple hardware.. by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have yet to figure out why they havent botherd to make an OS to run on x86 based systems rather then there mostly proprietary hardware

    Heh, x86 is proprietary and closed. Intel reverse engineered it. AMD reverse engineered it. Transmeta has an implementation. Contrast this with the PowerPC platform. IBM wrote most of the specs. It is completely open and documented. IBM and Motorola sell large numbers of systems and their is no barrier for any other company to enter.

    In Bizarro world "closed but popular" means "open" and "open, but not as popular" means "proprietary."

    If apple botherd to try and spread out into the larger PC market they would slaughter MS rather quick and I woudlent mind seeing it happen. Apples software is limited mostly to apple branded hardware and that limits how well the company can compete.

    Yeah because so many companies have done well competing with a company convicted of abusing their monopoly to stifle competition. That is why OS2 and BeOS are so popular. It is especially a good idea to destroy 95% of your income by entering into an overpopulated commodity market where all but one player is losing money at the same time as trying to compete with said monopoly. Brilliant!