Are we talking about the same company? Apple is known for focusing on a few things and ignoring others that many believe would be "profitable".
I think Cringley is making a significant point, apple may lose focus on what we think of as computers.
“There are no plans to make a tablet,” Jobs was quoted saying to Mossberg. “It turns out people want keyboards…. We look at the tablet, and we think it is going to fail.”
and
“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read any more.”
Steve jobs is famous for misleading people with public statements
This says nothing about cancelling existing products, and you should not extrapolate it as such.
Can you name one example where Apple has cancelled a successful product? By all accounts, the Mac Pro is a successful and profitable product, so why cancel it? It makes no business sense.
By what accounts exactly? Cringely gave revenue numbers that show that their consumer electronic business is far larger than their pro computer business. This is a basis, you may disagree with the conclusion, but you are exaggerating at best.
Also, I'm not too concerned with them outright canceling it, but I am concerned that they won't particularly care about their computer business. Snow leopard was a very minor update, and I haven't heard anything about the vision for the mac in a long time. I think it's clear that Steve's focus has moved on to the consumer electronic side of their business.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/nov00/11-13...
I don't think the iPad's niche is for reading books. I'm sure Apple has all kinds of cool stuff in their labs that they don't announce because most will never see the light of day. Apple built their "tablet" first then decided that there was a possible market with smart phones. Three years later they did the natural thing and built a big iPhone. I use mine for apps and to browse the web. It's a great little device!
Personally, I would like to see a real tablet (with optional stylus), but at least Apple kickstarted the market in the public's eyes.
You don't pay a premium in that market for nothing -- your rack-mount server has a CPU go up in smoke, and Dell WILL have someone in your datacenter replacing it within 24 hours. That's the part that Apple didn't get -- shipping your box back to the manufacturer just doesn't cut it.
The big winner in that was actually Linux though, not Windows.