[Poiesis]

It is illuminating to compare Apple's priorities then and now. You can easily see the common obsession with design and the drive to make it affordable. Despite Apple's early reputation, it's clear that they were still trying to keep the cost down so the experience could be shared by more people. Jobs was different, though, in that he would aggressively cut costs and just as aggressively not compromise on the user experience. Better a few things well than many poorly.

Apple then and now was able to make these "insanely great" products by attracting the absolutely best engineers. Yes, Jobs without [a] Woz is not successful. But Woz without [a] Jobs is equally so. And while brilliance in either slippery is rare, I don't doubt it's still easier to find someone with Woz's kind of talent than Jobs'.

Finally, even supposing that both skill sets are equally rare--who's going to be better at attracting new talent? One of the nice things about being able to persuade people to buy stuff is that the skill translates nicely to persuading people to share your vision and work for you.

[ajross]

Apple never meaningfully cut costs on the Apple II. It was a success in 1976 for reasons of cost, because it had features other machines didn't at a part count (i.e. production cost) much lower than its competitors. But the retail price was always higher than competing machines, always. This got a little silly towards the mid 80's, when a IIe would run you more than $1k while the C64 next to it was $200.

I continue to find it amazing the degree to which the reality distortion field still holds.