[dragonwriter]

> I don't disagree with the lesson, but does it always apply? When Jobs came back Apple was in a different place than it is today.

Maybe, but on the other hand there is a lot of similarity between Apple v. Microsoft/PC-cloned on desktop and Apple v. Google/Android-devices on mobile.

And one similarity would seem to be that Apple is in no position to win on breadth and choice, but they may be in a position to win (at least, create a solid, profitable I market where they have little effective competition) by identifying key niches, and narrowly tailoring offerings to them.

In fact, I'd argue that their path in tablets and smartphones has been pretty similar as in PCs; they developed the market ahead of everyone else with fisrly narrow offerings, a competing platform emerged where the core software was separate from hardware manufacturers offering more choice, and drew them into trying to compete on the kind of choice offered by the competition.