Love this article, as many others do. I’ve read other articles touching on this, but none has made the case so clearly.

Apple is not an engineer-driven tech company.

It has always been driven by the vision of paradigm-changing tech and by the consumer, even to the detriment of the company when they too quickly ditched the Apple II in favour of the new Macintosh. That was a very painful lesson in timing, product roll-out and business management they learned, and Apple hasn’t made exactly the same mistake again. It almost killed the company, and if it wasn’t for John Scully’s management ability, and removing Jobs, who couldn’t accept that the consumer wasn’t yet ready to adopt the Mac like he believed they should be, the company wouldn’t be around to be what it is today.

The other similar lesson in timing and in this case, product positioning, was the Newton — groundbreaking tech (which I loved, and owned, and wish I’d kept) that just was too high priced and didn’t adequately solve the consumer problems for which is was made. (Like Google glass). But it gives us great insight into how Apple has used this valuable lesson to become expert at market timing. By the time Jobs had returned, he had (apart from learning how to run an innovative tech company) finally “got it”. The consumer would tell them how the products “should be”, but Apple would decide the “when” based upon their unmatched vision and ability to deliver not only a product but an ecosytsem to support the underlying world-changing concept and simplicity and ease-of-use that has made their products ubiquitous.

So became the consumer products & media behemoth that Apple is today. They “get” the IoT concept better than anyone. And while they stick to their philosophy, which is truly unique, and a company setup that enables such a fanatical focus on consumer feedback and design, which they seem to be doing, I don’t see why they can’t continue “own” a lot of the IoT space and continue growing into new industries.