[SIGCIS-Members] Counterfactual history: Did the Mac cost Apple a shot at market leadership?

[Paul McJones]

Tom,

I believe you meant “Macintosh II” each time you said “Apple II” (three occurrences). (The Apple II, sometimes referred to as the Apple ][, was of course the original late 70s Apple product.)

My view is that while Apple as a company almost failed, the Macintosh was an early critical success, helped companies like Adobe create a large market for computer graphics, was widely used in education, and, after the return of Jobs, has become the most profitable personal computer brand ever, to say nothing of providing the technological base for the iPhone. Horace Dediu, the analyst who runs http://www.asymco.com, has plenty of financial information backing this.


Paul McJones

> Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2017 4:17 PM
> To: members at sigcis.org <mailto:members at sigcis.org>
> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Counterfactual history: Did the Mac cost Apple a shot at market leadership?
> 
> Hello SIGCIS,
> 
> I’m looking for your opinions. I’m currently working on a project that involves coming up with a coherent overall narrative of the development of the modern PC. One question I’m facing is how to treat the Mac, in particular whether its development was a huge blunder by Apple. This gets into some classic questions about the role of the individual in driving history.
> 
> …
> Thoughts? Pointers to sources?

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/attachments/20170426/a0dc47f6/attachment.htm>