Renaissance Nerd

I never heard whether Jobs addressed the intentional destruction of all the Apple dealers while he wasn't at Apple, but the Apple Stores made me think he was the one guy at Apple (Woz was already retired) that realized it was a terrible idea. When Apple cut all their dealers throats by changing their lineup to exclude small stores, including many other policies that favored big box stores, they had a 19% market share. Over 3,000 Apple Dealers went out of business over the next eighteen months. By the time the BizMarts and CompUSAs and others went out of business a few years later, Apple market share had sunk to just above 2%, and then Jobs came back. The climb from that suicidal series of decisions is why Jobs gets so much credit; it's one of the greatest turnarounds in business history. I am still wary of anything Apple does, because I was one of those dealers. Small dealerships like mine preached Apple as much as sold it back then, and the reward for our loyalty was oblivion. Fighting the 'IBM compatible' fetish was hard work, and Apple without Jobs and Woz actually believed that just putting their computers on the shelves in bigger stores would sell more units. It didn't, and almost all of those big box retailers are gone now. I knew it would happen, because the concept was fundamentally flawed, but corporate America is all about fads. When you see a board room you should picture a bunch of swooning teeny-boppers chasing Elvis, screaming and crying to get in on the latest thing. Apple is different today for one reason: they actually value excellence over faddish conformity. That is the legacy of the Steves, and so long as they keep to it they'll continue to do well. Ever wonder why so much of the tech press hates Apple? That's it in a nutshell: Apple doesn't follow the goofy fads.