“A more reasonable definition of an iPod Killer is not some proverbial portable that comes from the heavens and slays Apple's player in the electronic stores. Instead it is a player that itself can define proprietary standards that achieve market critical mass. Achieve this and now it is Apple that is forced to adopt (or be cut out) of a standard they themselves did not create.”

— Richard Menta

Source Sony PSP As Personal Media Player - Review http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/5002/psp_review.html - 5/14/2005
Quotes from the MP3 Newswire

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Richard Menta 10

American journalist

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“The transition from proprietary architecture to open modular architecture just happens over and over again. It happened in the personal computer. Although it didn’t kill Apple’s computer business, it relegated Apple to the status of a minor player. … You also see modularity organized around the Android operating system that is growing much faster than the iPhone. So I worry that modularity will do its work on Apple.”

Clayton M. Christensen (1952–2020) Mormon academic

"Why Clayton Christensen Worries About Apple" in Forbes (7 May 2012) http://forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/05/07/why-clayton-christensen-worries-about-apple
2010s

“With phones moving to technologies such as Apple Pay, an unwillingness to assure security could create a Target-like exposure that wipes Apple out of the market.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

How to Spot a Tech Company That's About to Lose http://cio.com/article/2686157/leadership-management/how-to-spot-a-tech-company-thats-about-to-lose.html in CIO (19 September 2014)

“Given that background, I was interested in what Steve Jobs might say about the future of Apple. His survival strategy for Apple, for all its skill and drama, was not going to propel Apple into the future. At that moment in time, Apple had less than 4 percent of the personal computer market. The de facto standard was Windows-Intel and there seemed to be no way for Apple to do more than just hang on to a tiny niche.
In the summer of 1998, I got an opportunity to talk with Jobs again. I said, "Steve, this turnaround at Apple has been impressive. But everything we know about the PC business says that Apple cannot really push beyond a small niche position. The network effects are just too strong to upset the Wintel standard. So what are you trying to do in the longer term? What is the strategy?"”

Richard Rumelt (1942) American economist

He did not attack my argument. He didn’t agree with it, either. He just smiled and said, "I am going to wait for the next big thing."
Source: Good Strategy Bad Strategy, 2011, p. 14; Similar story in Rumelt (2007)

“There came to these selected stocks a deadly, ungrateful complacence, which made them count these opportunities as their achievements, and belittle everybody else's achievements unless they were similarly confused with opportunities; and which did worse than this, by abolishing all standards from their minds except what they themselves were and did.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

Source: The Thinking Reed (1936), Chapter VII
Context: These women were fatuous with a fatuity which had threatened her all her life, as it threatened all people of means, and which was of mournful significance for humanity in general, since it proved the emptiness of one of man's most reasonable expectations. No more sensible form of government could be imagined than aristocracy. If certain able stocks in the community were able to amass enough wealth to give their descendants beautiful houses to grow up in, the widest opportunities of education, complete economic security, so that they need never be influenced by mercenary considerations, and easy access to any public form of work they chose to undertake — why, then, the community had a race of perfect governors ready made. Only, as the Lauristons showed, the process worked out wholly different in practice. There came to these selected stocks a deadly, ungrateful complacence, which made them count these opportunities as their achievements, and belittle everybody else's achievements unless they were similarly confused with opportunities; and which did worse than this, by abolishing all standards from their minds except what they themselves were and did.

“The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

As quoted in Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company (2004) by Owen W. Linzmayer
2000s

“Apple's big weakness is its control-freak nature and insistence that there is only one way to make a smart phone. No matter how many carriers sign on to carry the iPhone, in the long run, Apple has again set itself up to be a niche player in smartphones, just as it is in PCs.”

Daniel Lyons (1960) American writer

The Verizon iPhone Is Too Late http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/12/the-verizon-iphone-is-too-late.html in Newsweek (12 January 2011)

“HP’s goal is to bring the most compelling entertainment content and experiences to our customers, … We explored a range of alternatives to deliver a great digital music experience and concluded Apple’s iPod music player and iTunes music service were the best by far. By partnering with Apple, we have the opportunity to add value by integrating the world’s best digital music offering into HP’s larger digital entertainment system strategy.”

Carly Fiorina (1954) American corporate executive and politician

2000s, 2004

“People who cover Apple figured this racket out a long time ago, which is that if you become cozy with Apple and never criticize them, they will give you some access.”

Daniel Lyons (1960) American writer

'Disrupted' by Dan Lyons is the best book about Silicon Valley today. We talk to the author. http://latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-disrupted-lyons-20160429-snap-htmlstory.html in The Los Angeles Times (29 April 2016)

“During the early stages of an industry, when the functionality and reliability of a product isn't yet adequate to meet customer's needs, a proprietary solution is almost always the right solution -- because it allows you to knit all the pieces together in an optimized way.
But once the technology matures and becomes good enough, industry standards emerge. That leads to the standardization of interfaces, which lets companies specialize on pieces of the overall system, and the product becomes modular. At that point, the competitive advantage of the early leader dissipates, and the ability to make money migrates to whoever controls the performance-defining subsystem.
In the modular PC world, that meant Microsoft and Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), and the same thing will happen in the iPod world as well. Apple may think the proprietary iPod is their competitive advantage, but it's temporary. In the future, what will matter will be the software inside that lets users find exactly the kind of music they want to listen to, when and where they want to, with minimal effort.”

Clayton M. Christensen (1952–2020) Mormon academic

2006 interview in Business Week, cited in: Rebutting Clayton Christensen on Apple's 'Troubled' Future http://seekingalpha.com/article/5633-rebutting-clayton-christensen-on-apples-troubled-future-aapl-msft-dell in Seeking Alpha (11 January 2006)
2000s

“We don't really feel our games have created a standard. I have no concern over others making similar games, it just shows that players wanted games that were like this, that are difficult, and wanted other studios to make challenging games that achieve the same level of satisfaction. We enjoy those games and their approach to creating them are never the same, anyway. We enjoy seeing the differences. We're totally fine with seeing more games come out that borrow aspects. Our main focus is keeping game creation fresh for ourselves.”

Hidetaka Miyazaki (1974) Japanese video game director

Dark Souls 3 Interview: "It Wouldn’t Be Right to Continue Creating Souls" https://www.gamespot.com/articles/dark-souls-3-interview-it-wouldnt-be-right-to-cont/1100-6432425/ (November 20, 2015)

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Richard Menta 10

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