Is Apple a victim of sour grapes?

16 years ago

“In the clearest sign that Apple has emerged as an industry superpower, government regulators are beginning to scrutinize its every move,” Miguel Helft reports for The New York Times. “‘This is unfamiliar territory for Apple,’ said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, who has followed Apple for nearly three decades.”

“The changes are a testament to the remarkable turnaround orchestrated by Steven P. Jobs, who returned to Apple more than a decade ago when the company was on the verge of extinction,” Helft reports. “But those changes have also thrust the company into an unexpected and potentially perilous role as competitors start to cooperate with each other against Apple.”

“For all the complaining, Apple’s self-interested and quirky pursuit of innovation is not new,” Helft reports. “Time and again, it has been willing to break with technology industry standards by doing things its way, even if it ruffled feathers. ‘Apple has always marched to its own drumbeat,’ Mr. Bajarin said.”

“The company often irked suppliers and confounded pundits, for instance, when it chose to use 3.5-inch floppy disks instead of the more common 5.25-inch disks, or later, when it did away with floppy disks altogether,” Helft reports. “But now that Apple has grown from a niche player into one that leads the fastest-growing segment of the industry — mobile computing — its actions are far more consequential and the complaints have turned to grievances.”