Great article, thanks for posting. I haven’t heard some of those names in years.
My point on the subject remains that even though Sculley was at the helm for the Mac OS issues in question, he was following suit by not licensing Apple IP; a precedent set by Jobs and still exists today whenever possible. Whether Jobs, Sculley, Woz, or whomever, the problem was not a bad contract, but rather a bad business model. Most companies are reluctant to invest in single source solutions, particularly something as complex and expensive as IT. If Apple were to go out of business, suddenly change course, decide to hold their installed base for ransom, or whatever, companies would have to scrap a huge portion of their IT investment and go elsewhere. With Windows, if you don’t like HP you can buy from Dell, Lenovo, or countless others. If Microsoft were to change course, or any of the other examples I suggested for Apple, the same could be true, but what could possibly motivate MS to jeopardize their 90% market share? It simply isn’t going to happen and every CIO, CFO, and CEO knows it.