What were some jobs in the 80's?

Would we really be any better off if Steve Jobs hadn't squashed the Apple clone industry in the '80s, Apple became as big & powerful as Microsoft, and there were 2 sets of competing standards?

• Answer:

  I felt this way for a while, but these days I’d have to go with a big “no.” First of all, there *are* two sets of competing standards; Apple has always had upwards of 20% of the USA home user base (and before you downrate me, note that I said *home*, not *business*; Apple has always had a disproportionately high percentage of *home* users), and their current market share in terms of new sales is up around 15% of all new purchases. They’ve also just retaken the #1 position in education back from Dell and continue to dominate most creative markets (e.g. graphics, music, movies, etc.). In other words, to claim that Apple isn’t a “standard” is to really miss the mark, IMHO. Secondly, the whole point of an Apple computer is that they make the entire “widget,” so to speak. Your toaster doesn’t have a third-party OS; why should your computer? I know that may sound weird to some, but that’s exactly the draw of the Apple computer: first of all, it works well because they don’t have to worry about millions of widely different configurations; they worry about their own machines and take it from there. Secondly, in the event that something *does* go wrong (which of course it occasionally will), you don’t have to call five different companies, each of which passes the buck to another. If I have a question about my Mac, I call Apple and they answer it. Period. So in short, no, I don’t think Apple would be anywhere near as great as they are, if they were as big as Microsoft. As for powerful, I tend to think they’re the more powerful company, anyway. They didn’t get to be America’s most-admired company for nothing! (see http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/29/news/companies/amac_apple.fortune)