[Dbug]

Apple has been far from low risk. Their ditching the floppy, changing ports, switching processor families (more than once), all those iMac form-factors, moving to LCD while they were still quite costly, replacing the operating system... are all examples of them being willing to make major transitions to move forward. Some say dumping Flash is risky. There was risk getting into phones, a market that already had many very well established players, and starting with a product that cost MORE than what was out there. It's kinda funny how now people act like Apple had some early entry advantage. Apple took a risk offering a tablet that DID NOT have binary compatibility with their desktops.

After the 9/11 attacks, Apple was still working hard on development while others cut back. Many thought Apple was crazy to build fancy retail stores at very costly locations. Many said that targeting the high-end of the market was doomed to fail in a weak economy, but Apple kept expanding.

Maybe the choices Apple has made just don't seem so risky after seeing them being so wildly successful? The Gateway stores are long gone. I haven't seen details of the revenue per square foot at Microsoft stores.