"The past couple of years, Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs has gotten nothing but roses and kisses from the public and the media. But a feud between Apple and RealNetworks over music downloads is exposing Jobs' tragic flaw. Amazingly, he seems to be making the same devastating mistakes with the iPod that he made with the Mac 20 years ago." writes Kevin Maney in his Wednesday column in USA Today.
Maney says Avram Miller, a tech investor and former vice president at Intel, compares Apple to Singapore. "You know Singapore: autocratic, insular, elegantly engineered, repressively controlled — and destined to never amount to more than a small but interesting dot on the world map."
Comment: It's an old tale, but amusingly told. However, it isn't true to say that Jobs refused to license the Mac OS in 1985 (which was when Gates wrote to Apple, recommending and offering to support licensing as a way to make Mac OS a standard). Jobs had no real power at Apple once the Mac had flopped: John Sculley was the CEO, and it was Sculley who decided against licensing.
To be specific, Jobs was booted out of Apple on May 24, 1985 and the Gates memo was sent on June 25.
Of course, Jobs would certainly have made the same mistake, and it was Jobs who -- after returning to Apple in the 90s -- got rid of the Mac "cloners" that Gil Amelio had belatedly allowed in. But at the critical time, Jobs wasn't even there.
