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Comment by chrislomax | Hacker News Reader

I personally think it's impossible to replicate what Apple have done. It's not just one thing that has caused a change but a series of changes starting when they introduced the iMac.

Apple is more of a "love mark" than a technology company. Back in 95, Microsoft was a love mark, people loved it when a new version of windows came out, now people dread it.

People started looking for an alternative and Apple was there, all different and shiny. It wasn't 1 year that turned them around, its the result of 12 hard years.

Microsoft released a tablet back in 2000, did anyone care? Apple does it and millions rush to buy it, they have created a following, this is not easily replicated. They innovate, amaze and move onto the next thing. There is nothing simple about this process.

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To be fair there is little in common between the iPad and Windows Tablet computers, it is a shame they both manage to be called the same thing simply for lack of a physical keyboard. The windows ones, with the stylus, certainly deserve the name, as they are identical in spirit to a stone tablet: the defining feature is the ability to write freehand. Definitely not the case on the iPad, in fact, we use a digital keyboard on the iPad! It's no "tablet."

You could take everything you just said and apply it to Sony in 1980. Then their founder, Akio Morita, retired with poor health and they diversified into lots of sensible business decisions about owning studios

Then some little computer company in California moved in on their territory and began making beautiful, simple, well made upmarket products.

By "sensible" you mean "disastrous." Owning Sony Pictures has been a consistent money loser, and the studio IP concerns at Sony Music and Pictures hamstrung their electronics arm from innovating in the face of the iPod threat.

It was a very 'sensible' decision if you are an MBA! If Sony had been a little more flexible and far sighted it could have worked. But as you say, it resulted in the DAT tape and minidisk being restricted to protect the studio.

It's the same sensible that means Apple shouldn't have started iTunes (we aren't a record company) and Amazon shouldn't have done Kindle (we aren't a computer company) !

In Sony's defense, the idea of a modern electronics company owning actual content was an interesting idea, especially as they introduced new media formats. It's not far removed from what Amazon is attempting in publishing and what turned out to be a very successful model for the game industry. Unfortunately for Sony, it turns out that the economics just don't work for music and movies.

It's more than the economics of owning a studio - Sony's ownership of their studios actively harms their other, actually profitable, product categories.

Look at the PSN's movie rental store - perpetually hamstrung by limited selection. Why would competing studios want to get into bed with one of their biggest competitors on their closed service?

Similarly, it creates internal conflicts of interest. Sony's electronics are constantly crippled when it comes to content, probably at the pressure of owning their own content themselves. For the longest time it was impossible to get any movies on a memory stick, forcing PSP users to buy them on expensive and battery-murdering discs instead. It took years to fix that mistake, but of course, by the time they did, public interest in mobile movies had basically all but disappeared.

Might I just add, I am not your typical fan boy for Apple. Quite the opposite actually. I am a Microsoft geek at heart, learnt basic when I was 13 and loved them since. They can do minimal wrong in my eyes (except for windows ME).

I appreciate Apple in a completely different way, I think how they have created their following in nothing short of amazing. The spot a market potential and they make it work, really well.

The iPod worked really well but it was really the iPhone that did it for them, they brought Apple to the absolute masses. I am still not 100% sure if the iTunes store was a fluke, I don't think it was on the first iPhone. If it was planned in it's entirety then hats off to Steve.

Look at the market share now, Microsoft should be scared. I don't think Microsoft has ramped up it's game much either, Ballmer is a bit of a joke so I'm going to find it hard to take him seriously but I think I will always be Microsoft at heart.

The iTunes Store came with the original iPod, and it was an integral part of Apple's strategy.

You probably meant the App Store, which wasn't on the very first iPhone and was, in fact, a bit of a lucky strike. Jobs didn't want anyone installing anything on the phone (classic Apple control-freakery at its finest), so he insisted for months after launch that extensibility would come exclusively from sandboxed web-applications. Eventually they did release a SDK and establish a process to publish apps, but only after encountering overwhelming demand.

I did mean the AppStore, thanks for califying!

No, the iTunes store came in 2003, two years after the iPod.

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