Anatomy of an Apple: The Lessons Steve Taught Us

Notes

Anatomy of an Apple

At the Core

By Ben Klaiber

To Steve, Jony and Tim:

Thank you, for giving a damn.

®

ISBN 9781483506975

Copyright © MMWB, Inc. 2013. All rights reserved.

MMWB and associated logo are registered trademarks of MMWB Inc. Product Refinement & Licensing Company is an unregistered service mark of MMWB Inc. "Anatomy of an Apple" is an unregistered trademark of MMWB Inc.

Anatomy of an Apple is an independent publication of MMWB Inc. and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. All opinions and views expressed in this book are solely those of the Author. No endorsement, authorization or sponsorship by Apple Inc. of the author, nor the opinions and views expressed therein shall be implied, whatsoever.

All product names and services are used in an editorial fashion only, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use, or the use of any trade name, is meant to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this title.

Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features that appear in this title are assumed to be the property of their respective owners.

Because of the nature of this title, it uses terms that are trademarks or that are the registered trademarks of Apple Inc. You will find a complete list of the trademarks and of the registered trademarks of Apple Inc., you can visit http://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/appletmlist.html.

All efforts were made to respect copyrights of respective owners of sources cited. Any issues or concerns will be immediately addressed upon contact. Contact may be made at ipmgmt@makingmyworldbetter.com.

To Loriah

Dedicated? Check. Talented? Check. Valuable beyond words? Check.

For years, I sought out a business partner with dedication, talent and a unique ability to elevate not only our work, but also our company (MMWB) as an entity. I found all that, and far more, in Loriah Robinson.

Her ability to weave multi-layered messages with words is impressive. However, it is her ability to operate seamlessly on multiple levels that yields amazing results. She truly is a Woman of Many Talents. She is my Jony Ive.

Loriah’s influence is multidimensional, energizing and challenging. It is irreplaceable.

Her perceptiveness allows her to elevate our purpose, our interactions and our creations, personally and professionally. Loriah’s astute observations and her honest critiques lift everyone fortunate enough to enter her orbit.

Special Thanks To…

Shari and John Schmidt

Ahlia Arvantis

Robert Cavin

Ronn Musser

Emory Whittington III

Brian and Anna McCarthy

John Vaughn

Eric Kramer

Ron Roberts

Bob Lind

Toni Battle-Gaines

The emotion that can break your heart is sometimes the very one that heals it.

― Nicholas Sparks, At First Sight

The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

― Rumi

Introduction

Anatomy of an Apple reveals the combination of principled vision and deft business decisions that Steve Jobs used to transform Apple from near bankruptcy, to the biggest success story of the century.

How Steve’s life unfolded is an incredible story.

In tenth grade Steve told his girlfriend Chris-Ann that he was going to be a millionaire. This was coming from a kid who grew up in a family that wasn’t poor, but was far from middle class.

His father, Paul, was a high school dropout who worked tirelessly to ensure a better life for his family. He earned for his family variously as a journeyman machinist, a used-car salesman, a repo man and a real estate broker. When those day jobs couldn't fully provide for his family's needs, he'd buy old cars, fix them up and sell them. His mother Clara took care of neighborhood kids and worked in various part-time jobs, to help Paul cover the family’s bills.

Paul and Clara couldn’t afford to send Steve to an expensive college. He enrolled anyway. Clearly, he had the chutzpah to pursue higher education, but lacked the GPA (2.65) for any financial assistance. When the bill came to his parent’s attention, reality landed. There was no way he could continue. The money just wasn’t available — but Steve found a way. He convinced the dean of students to allow him to live in a dorm room and audit classes for the rest of the semester.

At twenty-one, Steve moved back to his childhood bedroom. He and his best friend, Steve Wozniak, had the idea that people would pay for pre-assembled circuit boards in cases. It was a pipe dream to many, but the two young men turned it into a thriving business that changed the world.

Their Apple I was a solid seller, but the real magic began with the Apple II. When Apple filed for incorporation in January 1977, Steve had almost nothing. Then the Apple II began selling.

When I was twenty-three, I had a net worth of one million dollars, Steve later told a reporter. The duo's business had catapulted Steve from freeloader, to instant millionaire, in a short time. At twenty-four Steve was worth over ten million dollars. By age twenty-five, it was over a hundred million dollars.

Then, only a few short years into his corporate life, Steve was booted from Apple by those he once deeply trusted. Worse yet, Apple was now solidly in the hands of those that staunchly opposed Steve's vision. He spent years in the wilderness, pushing and pursuing other ways to contribute to computing. He weathered the deepest betrayals, endured relentless public humiliations and was pushed to the brink of bankruptcy. When he returned to the company he had co-founded, he was welcomed home by an Apple that was just as battered and bruised as he was.

How these two entities, Steve the man and Apple the company, healed each other, is well worth learning.

"You don’t need to take notes.

If it’s important, you’ll remember it."

— Steve Jobs

The Author’s Inspiration

Dear Tim,

It's a Sunday afternoon, so I appreciate you taking the time to read this.

I've written a book that I intend to submit to your iTunes store in the next few weeks. The title is Anatomy of an Apple. The subtitle, and the deeper message, is The Lessons Steve Taught Us. I have no doubt that you'll agree that the book reflects well on your company —  I simply told the truth and stuck to the facts.

This book was actually years in the writing. Thirteen years ago, Apple and Steve first became a huge part of my life in a tiny corner business in Ohio.

I'd known of Apple, and its special place in the world, since I was fourteen and my mom bought our first computer. Taking programming courses using Apple IIs in junior high led me to beg my mom for an Apple IIGS at home. That Apple IIGS was still going strong for my little sister and mom, when I moved out after high school. With no computer of my own, I began using my roommate's Windows ’95 PC.

That PC gave me fits nightly. After working 12-hour days, I'd arrive home at one in the morning to yet another blindsiding PC problem. I was often up until sunrise, just to get it working. Finally, fifteen minutes of use, then off to bed as the sun rose.

When Steve introduced that Blue & White G3 Mac, my friend James kindly ended my torment by putting one on his credit card for me. I was hooked.

When I read about Steve returning to Apple, I began following the company's leaps in both technology and thought. Growing up with parents who started several small businesses, and then owning one myself, I was fascinated by the skillful maneuvering that took Apple from the brink to where you stand today.

Soon, my own talents for designing systems and products led me to pursue switching industries. The overlap in my Product Refinement & Licensing company and Steve's approach was inescapable. In conversation after conversation, I found myself teaching my team using Steve's lessons. I'd been meticulously studying and documenting the best available research and articles over the seven years that my business incubated. Now, I had a collection of nearly a thousand articles that I'd read and analyzed over an eight year period — all on virtually every aspect of Apple or Steve.

Steve's lessons kept me alive in both the literal and financial senses over the harshest years of my life.

When a business partner betrayed me just after the economy crashed in 2009, Steve's lessons kept me going. I was left with a building without power and empty coolers. With next to nothing left financially, I was powering up half the building using a gas generator. Too avoid the risk of the generator being stolen, I would sit in a 30º building for three hours at a time to warm it up to 60º so we could open for a few hours of business in the dead of a harsh Ohio winter. I'll never forget packing those beers in two backpacks and hiding them outside in the snow to keep them cold. If anybody had stolen them, I would have been done for.

At my lowest point, I had placed my property on craigslist out of total desperation and exhaustion. I'll never know what kept me from signing it all away for next to nothing that day. A buyer asked me to turn on the lights so he could look around and it hit me — I couldn't even afford the gas for the generator.

I'd worked tirelessly for years, and my entire net worth was locked in this desolate property. It had sold twice before for $97,000. The crashing real estate market had chopped its value, and the economy was the worst it had been in decades. Here I was, standing in a dark and freezing room, about to sign it all away for the measly $20,000 being offered.

I saw no way forward, but I also saw no way back if I surrendered. I thought about how Steve was once merely months from bankruptcy with NeXT and Pixar. Didn't he watch as his entire factory at NeXT was liquidated? Steve didn't give up, I thought. There was no way in hell I was, either. I rejected that sale.

Putting one foot in front of the other,  I rebuilt it all over the next few months and was able to successfully sell for $85,000 and fully launch my new venture — makingmyworldbetter.com (MMWB Inc.). Our first contract has been a product to reduce concussion risks and is now under licensing consideration with one of the top three sports clothing companies.

In those lonely and scary days, I didn't forget Steve's lessons of the comeback. I also didn't forget how he so skillfully weaved today's reality from threads others would have discarded out-of-hand. Steve's contribution is what my book is about, but it's about more than that — it's about what happens when you relentlessly pursue quality and principle.

The last few years unleashed a torrent of information about Steve, and too much of it has been inaccurate. This saddens me, because the fight he led was (for the most part) about improving humanity. Yes, I'm aware he had personal flaws. Yes, I’m aware that he made mistakes. In the end, what really matters to history, and to the world at large, is what he honestly worked for and supported, and why he did so.

Thank you for doing a fantastic job of growing Apple as its CEO and proving there's more greatness over the horizon.

Sincerely,

Ben Klaiber

CHAPTER ONE

Ready to Step Up Your Game?

"Your reach may never be long enough. Your heart may never find complete satisfaction.

Your vision may never entirely reach fruition. Do it anyway. Elevate and evolve. Movement is life."

— Ben Klaiber, CEO & Chief Design Architect MMWB Inc.

Ready to Step Up Your Game?

Those seeking to step up their game face some serious barriers when looking to Apple. It’s extremely time consuming to track down the truth and sort through conflicting stories. Complex topics are more valuable when they’re explained in everyday English, that’s both understandable and actionable. Time-wasting platitudes don’t produce results.

Rest easy, for Anatomy of an Apple provides well-vetted information, breaks down even the most complex tech tales into everyday language, and avoids indulging in platitudes.

Anatomy of an Apple will unveil the oft-overlooked keys that made Steve and Apple the unmitigated success we know today. These keys can easily be applied to unlock your potential and overcome obstacles large and small. Those that have already benefited from, and/or enjoyed, this book:

Fortune 500 CEO’s

Tech & Business Gurus

Tech & Business Pundits

Tech & Business Journalists

Historians

Product Pickers

Corporate Trainers

Business/Life Coaches

Success Promoters

Entrepreneurs

Educators and Students

Parents

Anyone Looking for Inspiration to Overcome Obstacles

… And of course, Apple Fans & Aficionados

Steve wanted his son Reed to witness how Apple handles a crisis, firsthand. When Reed was in high school, Steve brought him along for two days of Apple meetings. He insisted Reed attend every meeting. Emphasizing to his son, You’re going to be in the room with the best people in the world making really tough decisions.

Without putting you ‘in the room’ at Apple, this book will inform, enlighten and elevate your business game on many levels. You’ll come to understand Apple’s life in the industry trenches, share the sting of their losses, marvel at the nimble moves behind their renewal, and grasp the indefatigable principles that drive them to this day.

Plenty of books try to lay out an overall formula behind Apple’s success. They fall flat, when they base that formula around mistaken perceptions. Trying to shoe-horn complexity into simplicity sounds terrific in principle, but limits the scope of discussion. Tabloid-style exposés make for entertaining reading, but leave entrepreneurs empty-handed at the end of the day. Even simply conveying Steve’s words directly, along with those who lived the events, doesn’t address matters of validity.

There are books on Apple, written by sources applying many layers of abstraction, that separate Steve’s lessons and the results. This leads them to examine everything in a sterile and academic manner. The drawback of this is an unwillingness to contradict the statements of parties when the facts require it, call out hidden agendas that put events in a very different light, or take sides when the facts warrant a clear outcome.

Anatomy of an Apple isn’t a dispassionate attempt to examine Apple in the laboratory. We get right to the heart of the real people involved, the motivations behind their actions and decisions, and we present our view of each lesson in whatever form that can most benefit people who are trying to be successful in life and business. Some chapters are vivid stories, some are detailed history lessons, and some are concise arguments against commonly held misconceptions.

Tracking down the facts required the fortitude of a detective. Ask any two people what just happened during an accident they witnessed, and expect two different stories. Some of Apple’s key lessons happened during a thirty-year time span. Everyone involved has their version of events and their side of the story. Anatomy of an Apple put them under cross-examination. We read (and re-read) all the witnesses interviews and took a fine-toothed comb to their testimony. One benefit of that lengthy time span was that it allowed retrospective comparison between statements made at the time and (sometimes unintentional) admissions a person made years later, when they felt safe from consequences.

There are literally hundreds of business platitudes about Apple. Generic and one-size-fits-all statements that skip the messy parts don’t provide precise or realistic information about the application of the lessons involved. We get into the details, while also getting to the point.

Anatomy of an Apple conveys what happened, what it felt like to those living through the events, and how to apply the lessons to your situation. Sometimes Apple’s lessons are uplifting inspiration for your own struggles, while other times they are a precise road map to navigating challenging moments.

You may ask ‘Why is Anatomy of an Apple written differently from other books covering Apple’?

When you run a small business, especially in an economically hard-hit part of the country, business survival isn’t an abstract concept, to be debated over coffee. You can’t simply ’regroup’ when things don’t work out. There aren’t investors to fill the gaps, getaways to inspire your team, or the resources to strengthen your fortitude to keep going in the darkest hours. Golden parachute packages don’t cover up our mistakes, or allow us to simply ‘move on’ without cleaning up our messes. Bottom line? We take the full responsibility for our businesses.

Getting these lessons wrong is a deal-breaker, when you’re acutely aware that someone’s bottom line may depend on your accuracy.

Big company CEOs can usually walk away, leaving employees and investors to deal with the mess.

However, when you’re a small business owner or self-employed, the ‘directly responsible individual’ is the person in the mirror. No one else covers your losses. You’re the one taking the responsibility for the key decisions that ultimately decide your financial survival. You’ve got to get it right, or fall by the wayside. That mindset is something no book on Apple has had — until now.

Ready to step up your game?

CHAPTER TWO

Genius or Guide?

Timeline of Steve’s Life

1955 Steve is born February 24 in San Francisco, CA. He is immediately adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs.

1968 Thirteen-year-old Steve calls up Bill Hewlett and gets a summer job at the HP factory.

1969 Steve meets Steve Wozniak through a mutual friend.

1973 Steve enrolls in Reed College, drops out to audit classes that interest him. Moves to a commune later the same year.

1974 Steve gets his first job at Atari. Travels to India to 'seek enlightenment’ while on business for the company.

1976 March, Woz and Steve show the early Apple I board at the Homebrew Computer Club. Apple is incorporated on April 1st. That spring they begin selling the Apple I.

1977 Mike Markkula invests in Apple and hires Mike Scott as CEO. Woz leaves HP to join Apple full-time.

1978 The Apple II launches.

1979 Steve visits Xerox PARC and sees the GUI for the first time.

1980 Jeff Raskin gets the go-ahead for Macintosh project, as Steve pushes Lisa product into using a GUI and mouse. Apple III hits the market, with terrible sales. Apple Computer company becomes publicly traded company.

1981 Raskin is replaced as Macintosh project leader by Steve. Feb, CEO Scott lays off 50 Apple employees and is asked to resign by the board. Markkula becomes interim CEO. The IBM PC launches.

1983 Lisa computer hits the market in January. April, Sculley becomes Apple’s CEO.

1984 The Macintosh is launched.

1985 Steve turns 30 in February. May, CEO Sculley persuades board to remove Steve from all power and forbid interaction with product development teams. September, Steve resigns completely from Apple, to begin NeXT with other departing Apple alumni. Apple sues to lock NeXT out of the home computer market.

1986 January, Steve buys Pixar. Mother, Clara, dies. Discovers his biological mother, Joanne, and his sister, Mona Simpson.

1987-1989 Ross Perot invests in NeXT. IBM and NeXT form a partnership to put NeXT software on IBM machines. The NeXT cube debuts. Pixar’s animated short Tin Toy is released. NeXT partners with Businessland as an outlet. April 1989, Steve shuts down Pixar’s hardware machines. June, Cannon invests $100 Million in NeXT to keep it afloat.

1991 March, Steve slashes Pixar’s staff almost in half, faces complete financial meltdown, takes back all employee stock, as the company has lost money for the entire five years of its existence. Steve marries Laurene. Two months later, Pixar signs film deal with Disney. That fall, Steve’s son Paul is born and Perot leaves NeXT, considering it dead in the water.

1992 NeXT licenses its OS for standard PCs. NeXT COO Peter Van Cuylenburg tries to ‘Sculley’ Steve by asking the CEO of Sun to buy the NeXT and remove Steve from his company - he fails.

1993-1994 February, NeXT fires 300 employees and ends hardware operations to become NeXT Software Inc. March, Steve’s father dies. November, Disney halts Toy Story development over creative disagreements. 1994, Pixar gets the go-ahead to resume Toy Story development from Disney.

1995 February, Steve becomes President & CEO of Pixar. November, Toy Story has blockbuster opening ticket sales. A week later, Pixar’s IPO takes Steve from the brink to being a Billionaire. Steve’s daughter Erin is born.

1996-1999 December, Apple buys NeXT for $400 Million. Steve becomes Apple CEO Amelio’s ‘informal advisor’. Steve meets designer Jony Ive. July 1997, mounting losses lead to Amelio’s removal as CEO, Steve becomes interim CEO. One month later, Steve announces Apple’s new board of directors. ‘Think Different’ campaign begins. January 1998, Apple is profitable again. The iMac is introduced and Steve’s youngest daughter is born, Eve.

2000 Steve officially become Apple’s CEO.

2001-2007 The first iPod is released. iTunes music store opens in 2003. That Fall, Steve is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He has surgery in 2004 to remove the tumor. The iPhone is released in 2007, same day as Pixar’s eighth feature film. December, Steve is inducted into the California Hall of Fame.

2008-2011 Apple’s App Store for iOS opens, launching a billion dollar developer goldmine. 2009, Steve undergoes a liver transplant. January 2010, Apple unveils the iPad. One year later, Steve announces an indefinite medical leave of absence. August, Steve resigns as CEO. Tim Cook becomes Apple’s CEO. October 2011, Steve passes away at his home, surrounded by family.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

― Steve Jobs

Genius or Guide?

Was Steve Jobs a one-of-a-kind genius? Are his examples and successes interesting curiosities, but impossible to emulate in practice? Reaching the correct answer requires a certain mindset.

An expert chef is one who learned the hows-and-whys of perfectly searing, caramelizing and sautéing and applies them individually to each culinary creation. They rarely memorize picture perfect recipes.

Steve learned the hows-and-whys behind specific successes of his heroes. He then tailored them to his own life circumstances. Therein lies the secret recipe behind his success.

We’re going to tackle the hows-and-whys behind Apple’s comeback. Before we can examine the lessons his choices and priorities offer us, we need a peek into the thinking behind it.

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them

pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."

- Winston Churchill

A Step-By-Step Guide to Apple’s Ascension

The comeback of the century has been called everything from ‘bizarre’ to ‘magical’. It’s spoken of as though Apple had upended the laws of nature in turning itself around. Perhaps it’s more believable to write it off that way. After all, the sheer volume of seemingly impossible challenges they overcame seems downright bizarre to the competition. Unless you remember all the events, it can seem as if the company magically returned in one fell swoop.

When Steve first approached the newly elected Board of Directors member Gil Amelio in 1994, he had a plan -- according to Amelio, a bizarre plan.

Steve’s bizarre plan was that he wanted to return to Apple, become its CEO and return the company to greatness. According to Amelio, Steve was looking like a boxer, aggressive and elusively graceful, or like a jungle cat ready to spring at its prey. Steve told him There’s only one person who can rally the Apple troops, only one person who can straighten out the company.

The Macintosh era had passed, and it was time for Apple to create something new that was just as innovative. Amelio asked, If the Mac is dead, what’s going to replace it? He dismissed Steve’s answers as vague one-liners. He was certain that it was all just the famous ‘reality distortion field’ at work. He wanted an actionable and simple-to-understand, itemized list.

Here’s what Amelio couldn’t grasp -- you cannot evaluate innovations into existence. It isn’t a process that can be calculated and planned on — it’s the outcome of a full commitment to greatness, firing on all cylinders, that yields those innovations.

That greatness was absolutely not the result of just one man. I say again, it was absolutely not the result of just one man. When Steve became CEO, he treated Apple as a living organism. Its mind had to be clear, its body had to be physically healthy and its heart had to beat with the joy of creation.

Removing the haze induced by ‘committee’ leadership was the first step. Steve had a powerful ‘logic flaw detector’ and was fearless about engaging it. There was no tiptoeing around egos and only the end result mattered. CEO Steve had the power to directly remove those who didn’t grasp, or opposed, a product’s vision. The clarity of purpose and vision was refreshing, to say the least, but success required so much more.

Bringing in the amazingly effective operations skills of Tim Cook transformed the entire supply chain. Cook improved the profit margins by orders of magnitude, which allowed Apple to profitably enter markets at price points that rivals would envy. His development of rapid-turnover supply lines meant that an entire product line could be refreshed throughout retail outlets in a week, without requiring costly end-of-life sales. Nothing sat on shelves, gathering dust or losing value. The body was healthy.

To ensure that the joy of creation beat strongly within Apple’s heart, Steve elevated designer Jonathan, ‘Jony’ Ive. The two met when Ive was placing his resignation on the desk of then CEO Amelio and Steve intercepted it. Steve talked Ive into staying at Apple by truly listening to Ive’s vision and making it clear to him that vision would no longer be ignored. In Ive, Steve had found the gentle artist who had the vision of a Michelangelo, while having the fortitude to endure Steve’s unrelenting and demanding enthusiasm.

Crucially, CEO Steve understood that Apple’s soul was its secret weapon. Giving Steve’s eulogy, Ive described Steve as having had many, many ideas — many of them absolutely dreadful, he laughed sadly. But every so often, Steve had an idea that the two men instantly understood as having been truly brilliant. Ideas so bold, crazy and magnificent that they took the air from the room.

Working side-by-side for over a decade with Steve, Ive was convinced Steve understood better than almost anyone that, Powerful ideas begin as fragile, barely formed, thoughts that could be so easily missed or compromised. Ive said, I loved the way that he listened so intently. I loved his perception, his remarkable sensitivity and his surgically precise opinions.

Steve constantly questioned if something was good enough. Steve celebrated making something great for everybody and enjoying the defeat of cynicism. Somberly, Ive tells us that Steve saw each day as "a victory for beauty and for purity. As Steve would say, a victory for giving a damn." That is the soul of Apple.

This book is not for anyone who cannot understand that.

The hordes of cynics undoubtedly see this as hyperbole, or ‘touchy-feely’ nonsense. To them, the very idea of a company having ideals, or driving emotions, is out of the question. They live in a cold world of spreadsheets and sales figures. Regardless of that cynicism, Apple is a company made up of living human beings. Those human beings have motivations that materialize in their actions, and in the results.

While no one can dissuade the cynics from their conviction about Apple, one could also be convinced that the sun won’t rise in the morning, but it still does.

Clearly, the total of Steve’s actions yielded amazing results. He resuscitated a company on the brink of bankruptcy and made Apple the most valuable company on earth. While we can’t reproduce every element, we can learn many key lessons that apply elsewhere from him. Steve taught us how to come back from the brink of disaster and create a thriving business. After all, it wasn’t magic.

"You know, I’ve got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can’t say any more than that it’s the

perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me."

- Steve Jobs, Fortune (Sept. 1995)

Metal Detectors, Not Magic

One school of thought is adamant about Steve’s thinking and actions being unable to offer any valuable lessons for others. That only worked for Steve, they solemnly tell us. They reach this mistaken conclusion by overlooking the scientific basis of Steve’s thinking and actions.

Partly to blame is a media insistent on ignoring facts that don’t fit the ‘lonely and misunderstood genius’ model they enjoy using to describe Steve.

Other sources of information are often lacking the key historical details that put a completely different spin on the events. They prefer to lazily repeat bromides like ‘open beats closed.’

The fact is that Steve’s methods worked quite consistently, but you’d hardly know it from most sources. Getting the details right and being able to discount those without credibility, no matter how loud they are, takes meticulous work.

That meticulous work is rarely done by the media or researchers. Instead, they take the easier path and write Steve’s actions off as magical.

Steve wasn’t really opaque — "I’ve got a plan that could rescue Apple" isn’t really open to interpretation. He clearly said it was a plan.

"It’s the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple" is not a magical wishing well. It’s a product strategy.

So, lets address the claims about him being a one-of-a-kind genius head on.

No matter how many times variations of ‘Apple does everything wrong, yet magically succeeds’ get repeated, it doesn’t become reality. There’s a massive difference between being unable to see an example, and simply refusing to follow it.

If you keep observing explosions as people walk across a field, at some point it’s got to become obvious that it’s a minefield.

Take the example of the many different digital music stores that tried to beat iTunes and failed explosively.

OK, so anyone can see that it’s dangerous to walk there and one wrong step could be fatal. But, what about that guy walking happily around the field? At first, you can dismiss him as lucky. But, once he’s been out there for years, walking back and forth, something is going on. Nobody is that lucky:

Year after year, iTunes smashed sales and profit records. Again and again, competitors appeared and swore up and down that consumers really wanted subscription models and songs with variable pricing. Meanwhile, a decade on, they are long gone and iTunes is still following a highly successful model where consumers own their songs and they all cost the same price.

The answer isn’t a mystery -- since that