have browser, will travel
Dave Winer pointed to a nearly 3 year old DaveNet piece about Apple today. Here's a funny (to me anyway) quote:
"Cancel WebObjects, it's too confusing, grabs too much of the spotlight from the developer community, and it represents an insignificant revenue opportunity for a company as large as Apple."
LOL! The reality, nearly 3 years later: WebObjects has been the crown jewel of the NeXT deal (well, everything in the NeXT deal was a crown jewel, from the software to the people) and WebObjects brings in the 2nd most revenue to Apple on the software side. Only the MacOS itself brings in more money. Even though Apple gave WebObjects NONE of the spotlight.
WebObjects is the best tool for doing serious highly-scalable and highly-maintainable web application development on the market. It captures the awards and the biggest customers. (US DoD, and the US Postal Service, for example. Adobe. Toshiba. Toronto Dominion Bank. PASBC. 
)
Dave Winer responds with a Steve Jobs quote: "If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth--and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago."
And that's exactly what he did! They milked the MacOS for all it's worth, and they got busy on the next great things - iMac, Desktop Video, and Mac OS X. And they're still milking the Mac for all it's worth -- now it's called Carbon. There's still life in them APIs!
Microsoft may have won, but when the DOJ verdict comes through, Apple will have yet another opportunity. MacOS X for Intel. (including Carbon) According to a highly snickered at sources, that's what Apple's up to. Since most of Carbon already runs on Intel in the form of QuickTime for Windows (and thus the logic isn't tied to the PPC or the MacOS ROM toolbox), and the rest of OS X has been running on Intel for over 5 years in the form of OpenStep and Mac OS X Server, this isn't as unbelievable (technically speaking, anyway) as it sounds!
(cough) I linked to PASBC because I was a member of the team that made it!
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March 17th, 2000 - 05:48
Jim Jim, now I’m LOL. I don’t think Steve meant that in a friendly way. If you go back and read the press in 1996 or so, and see what Apple execs were doing, you’d understand why those quotes are there. I cared a lot more about the Mac then, I was trying to help, so go look for some more quotes, you’ll find that you’re being quite selective, and a bit misleading. If you want to use me as a foil for your args, go ahead, have fun, but you’re not being accurate. And, Steve Jobs is your hero? He knew he knew. Little nuggets of wisdom left behind by Chairman Steve. Good luck Jim! I also suggest you read Doc Searls’s analysis to see where you (and I) fit into the Steve Jobs Master Plan.
March 17th, 2000 - 09:12
I’m sure he didn’t mean it in a friendly way, but on the surface of that one sentence it seems that’s what he did.
I’m sure he was talking about Newton and Pippin, among other things. As much as I miss the Newton, for example, I understand why they killed it. I’ll go back and re-read that fortune article.
Time flies when you’re having fun!
Jim