“Apple is at a crossroads where it must decide what it will be over the next decade. It’s not the first time, either. In the late ’70s it set itself up to be the inward-focused, proprietary computing wunderkind it became in the ’80s. In the late ’80s, it set itself up to be the flailing, disorganized disaster it became in the ’90s. In the late ’90s, Steve Jobs set Apple up to be the streamlined, user-focused, iPod-fueled juggernaut it is today,” Jon Fortt blogs for Business 2.0.
Fortt asks, “So it’s the late ’00s. How’s Apple setting itself up this time around?”
“Let me be the first to say that anyone who claims the ability to specifically divine Apple’s future is delusional; the best any longtime Apple watcher can do is read between the lines. That’s what I’m doing here,” Fortt writes.
Fortt writes, “And to me, it looks as if Apple’s positioning itself to be the Sony of this century, only without making clock radios, movies and TV shows. Apple’s focus remains on crafting software and hardware that’s an indulgence and a delight for everyday people, it just wants to take that philosophy beyond the computer and into more facets of life. (Sony followed a very similar path after its early success with tape recorders and transistor radios.)
Fortt writes, “At the foundation of this move by Apple is not the Mac, not the iPod, but iTunes… And that’s why every new device Apple introduces – Apple TV, iPhone, you name it – will connect to iTunes. Apple wants to grow iTunes into the control panel for our digital life.”
Full article here.
