[fishcakes]

Interesting to think about why this reality didn’t come to pass. Ben was clearly right about the opportunity market being huge and i think it’s timing. Without having thought too much about I think he underestimated or couldn’t compete with Microsoft. Having cheap wintel PCs everywhere made next irrelevant.

[danielbarla]

The points Steve makes in the early parts of the session were quite visionary, but when he got to the hardware parts, I guess it's quite easy to say in retrospect what they got wrong.

What's interesting, however, is that he does discuss this from several angles (my interpretation / memory below), namely that a) the hardware angle was a way to get people to use the software, b) a purely software venture couldn't sustain funding for the level of marketing required to break into the market, c) software seems to be moving slower than hardware (? - I guess that's the 80s / early 90s for you) and d) there's still a juicy hardware business that would be left off the table, if it were a software-only venture. So, it was a fairly well researched and opinionated bet, that just didn't pay off. I guess by tying the success of their software to their hardware, they ended up sealing its fate.