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Funny you mention Apple because they are proof that taste can be king. Yeah they also kidnap their users into their ecosystem and make smart business decisions, but what really differentiates them is taste. And Microsoft is sort of the counterpoint. There's more than one way to succeed I guess.

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Apple's taste during the 1990's almost killed the company.

Because let's admit it, later it was a taste of one guy who got another "chance" or the company got a "chance" to be lead by him. Now as he is gone the company still carries that taste legacy with better or worse results.

It's not that the machines were ugly or badly designed (albeit not as good as the 80s heyday), but they were unable to compete on price/performance and OS tech stack, and that in turn was making them uncompetitive in application support, which would likely have killed them.

It's an interesting alt history - who would have won with no Apple around? I reckon we'd all own a lot more Sony and Nokia gear, it's possible the Cambrian explosion of weird featurephone form factors would have carried on a lot longer, perhaps the black rectangle form factor would never have won out.

Or, used to be proof.

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