Ondrej Holzman On the first of April, April Fool's jokes spread around the world like a plague, but Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne took this day dead serious 38 years ago - because they founded the Apple Computer company, which is now one of the most successful not only in its field. Although various people predicted her downfall and end in oblivion many times...
For example, Michael Dell once advised Apple to close shop and return money to shareholders. David Goldstein, on the other hand, did not believe in brick-and-mortar stores with a bitten apple logo, and Bill Gates just shook his head at the iPad, which first saw the light of day in 2010.
Since the death of Steve Jobs, Apple has been a favorite subject of sensationalist journalists and its supposed doom because it lost its leader, but it wasn't just journalists who were predicting the worst-case scenarios. In Apple and its future, even the already mentioned giants, who meant as much to the technological world as Steve Jobs, were often wrong.
On the 38th anniversary of Apple's founding, let's recall exactly what they said about it. And how it turned out in the end...
Michael Dell: I would close up shop
"What would I do? I would close the shop and return the money to the shareholders," advised the founder and CEO of Dell in 1997, when Apple was really teetering on the brink. But the arrival of Steve Jobs meant the company's meteoric rise, and his successor, Tim Cook, practically had no choice but to really return the money to shareholders - on Dell's advice. Apple now has so much money in its account that it had no problem distributing more than 2,5 billion dollars between investors every quarter. Just for comparison - back in 1997, Apple's market value was $2,3 billion. He now gives out this amount four times a year and still has tens of billions left in his account.
David Goldstein: I give Apple Stores two years
In 2001, David Goldstein, the former president of the retail sector at analytics firm Channel Marketing Corp, made a stark prediction: "I'm giving them two years before the lights go out and they acknowledge this very painful and expensive mistake." Goldstein was talking about the beginnings of Apple's brick-and-mortar stores, which eventually really faded away— but not themselves, but the competition. Apple, with its retail chain, which now has more than 400 stores, completely crushed the competition. Perhaps no one else in the world can offer customers such a shopping experience.
In the last quarter alone, the Apple Story earned $7 billion, more than the entire company earned in 2001 ($5,36 billion), when David Goldstein made his prediction.
Bill Gates: The iPad is a nice reader, but nothing I want to make
Bill Gates, along with Steve Jobs, is one of the most important men in the technology world, but even he could not have predicted the success of the iPad introduced in 2010. he wasn't aiming high enough.' It's a nice e-reader, but there's nothing about the iPad that makes me go, 'Wow, I wish Microsoft would do this,'" said the great philanthropist.
Maybe there is a second option as well. Not that Bill Gates could not predict the success of the iPad, but he just did not want to accept the fact that Microsoft - the company he founded, but which he has not headed for ten years - absolutely failed to capture the advent of mobile devices and after the iPhone, he just followed the next hit presented by his old rival Steve Jobs.
what is the point of rewriting an article from AI in English?? lazy journalism…
probably such that not everyone can speak English, Mr. Smart, and also where thousands of bloggers would constantly take original ideas for specific events.
I'm not trying to be clever, I just thought that on the occasion of 1.4, someone from the editors would write an article and not just include an article about AI, but also sign his name under it. But hey…