Apple's mistake
Who would have known back in 1984 that Apple would rule the technology roost and have corporations around the planet trying to catch up, keep up or steal the spotlight.
For a company that started the race from the front, it is interesting that Apple is in a lead position they must maintain just to stay in the overcrowded race. At this point Apple has the financial resources, developer talent and the market momentum to remain dominant.
Apple is still trying to deal with the historic times that they made colossal strategic errors by lifting their skirt and enabling and empowering massive competition by inviting Microsoft at first and years later Google into their loop only to give away the long range future and create competitors that would offer Apple’s innovation to the whole computer industry leaving Apple to serve a proprietary marginalized niche. Microsoft’s infamous one year UI deal with Apple back at a time when “DOS was dead” allowed Microsoft to grab up the Mac’s user interface and give birth to windows. The rest is history. One would have hoped that Apple would have learned it’s lesson. Fast forward a few decades, Apple managed to do the impossible by surviving and thriving only to repeat the same mistake with Google both of which I think were the two biggest businesses blunders ever. the rest again is history. Future developments of the iPhone, iPad and MacBook products will finally determine just how this will all play out and shake out. This is an on-going epic story without a clear ending at this point, but my money, as always, is on Apple. If only for their style, design sense and leadership, and definitely not their long-term strategic partnership decisions. If not for those blunders right now Apple should be and would be ruling the digital world.