You know the old saw about the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Well, when Apple was down in the dumps, lots of industry pundits seemed to want them to fail; goodbye, kaput. Whatever they did was fated to fail, because only Microsoft was allowed to succeed. In recent years, as Apple has grown faster than anyone had a right to expect, Google joins Microsoft as one of the companies that is fated to dominate.
Indeed, it doesn’t seem that some of these media critics will allow Apple to catch a break. When the iPod was first announced in 2001, they howled. What business did Apple have in entering the consumer electronics market? They seemed to have forgotten Apple’s forays into digital cameras (QuickTake) and mobile computers (Newton) in the 1990s. Oh, right, neither product succeeded.
When the iPod took off, with ever-increasing sales, you were told it must only be a temporary phenomenon. The “real” consumer electronics companies would respond with their own gear, and set the world right. Forgotten was the fact that they all had their chance, in the years before the iPod arrived. They ended up building junk that few purchased.