David vs. Goliath

January 3, 2018

Comment from E-mail

Knowing your time is at a premium, any feedback you might supply to the following questions will be greatly appreciated.

I’m writing a story about the rise of the computer industry for our millennium series ( http://www.usatoday.com/2000/2000.htm ), and was hoping you could answer two questions.

1) Is there any other field that would’ve allowed a company as imaginative as Apple to thrive? Why or why not?

2) Did you experience a David vs. Goliath-type triumph over some of the larger computer companies when your Apple computers began to take off?

Thank you for your time, and great site by the way. (We check out the WozCam a few times a week.)

Woz

I think that a company as imaginative as Apple, coming from youngsters and not established companies, could only be started in a very rapidly and unexpectedly growing field. Of course this happens once in a while, maybe once in a decade. Surely early times of the steel industry and railroads must have been like this. Not to mention the gold rushes, and in more recent times, the internet and it’s many facets.

When we started Apple, the Goliaths didn’t think that the industry was worth much or going far. So there was really no triumph. Our first competition was with Radio Shack and Commodore, and we did feel a great triumph over them because their products were so much less than ours. But IBM was a bit tougher, even after we had the majority of the market.