A Tale of Two Companies
If you are like me you haven’t seen so much of a hoopla about someone’s passing since John Lennon.
And Jobs really was a lot of things to a lot of people. Family guy, an adopted child who wasn’t aborted, and many other things. But I also see a lesson in out of control government.
Most of you remember seeing a picture of Bill Clinton and Gates playing golf one weekend.
Naturally you assumed that Gates was being shaken down by Clinton for DNC money. Well Gates played golf but he didn’t play ball. Within weeks Reno’s justice department was filing an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft.
One of the first things Bush did after he gave the military a pay raise was to stop this suit.
But as a result Microsoft fell behind a couple of years in innovation. This allowed Apple to take the lead, and their products still command a 50% or larger price premium as a result.
This has made Apple rich, but made mobile devices more costly to the masses.
Once again out of control government ends up costing everyone.
Personally I have never been able to justify the big price difference between the Apple and Microsoft product.