“30 years after its founding, Apple Computer has grown from a tiny start-up to a household name and cultural icon known as much for its iPod digital music players as its computers,” Ina Fried writes for CNET News. “‘The technology industry is fundamentally about change and no company can survive for long without reinventing itself,’ said Rick Rashid, head of Microsoft Research and developer of the Mach kernel, which serves as the open-source core of Mac OS X. ‘Companies that can survive for 30 years are the exception rather than the rule, and something to celebrate.'”
“Apple has a brand name as recognizable as Coca-Cola and Federal Express and last year had a record $13.93 billion in annual sales and a $1.34 billion net profit,” Fried writes. “Given the company’s current success, it’s easy to forget how it fell from the top of the tech heap in the 1990s and scuffled along as Microsoft grew into the largest software company in the world and PC makers such as Compaq Computer and IBM came to dominate the industry Jobs and Wozniak helped create.”
“But glossing over those years would make it difficult to describe just how remarkable Apple’s current renaissance is. While Compaq now only exists as a brand name sold by Hewlett-Packard, and IBM no longer makes PCs, Apple is enjoying perhaps its finest hour. The iPod is a pop-culture phenomenon. And, incredible to some, Apple is having an easier time updating its flagship Macintosh operating system than Microsoft is having with Windows,” Fried writes. “Some say there are no second acts in business, but Jobs & Co. are making mincemeat of that old chestnut.”
Much more in the full article here.
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