“It wasn't that Microsoft was so brilliant or clever in copying the Mac, it's that the Mac was a sitting duck for 10 years. That's Apple's problem: Their differentiation evaporated.”

— Steve Jobs

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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Steve Jobs 150

American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc. 1955–2011

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“Microsoft has had two goals. One was to copy the Mac and the other was to copy Lotus' success in the spreadsheet. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost.
They were able to copy the Mac because the Mac was frozen in time. The Mac didn't change much for the last 10 years. It changed maybe 10 percent. It was a sitting duck. It's amazing that it took Microsoft 10 years to copy something that was a sitting duck. Apple, unfortunately, doesn't deserve too much sympathy. They invested hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into R&D, but very little came out They produced almost no new innovation since the original Mac itself.”

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

Steve Jobs, "Steve Jobs in 1994: The Rolling Stone Interview" https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/steve-jobs-in-1994-the-rolling-stone-interview-20110117 June 16, 1994, reprinted in Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone, January 17, 2011
1990s, Rolling Stone interview (1994)

“The only reason the Mac has been such a low priority to Apple is that it's been such a low priority to Apple.”

David Gewirtz American journalist

Maybe it's time for Apple to spin off the Mac as a separate company http://zdnet.com/article/maybe-its-time-for-apple-to-spin-off-the-mac-as-its-own-separate-company in ZDNet (2 January 2018)

“I get asked a lot why Apple's customers are so loyal. It's not because they belong to the Church of Mac! That's ridiculous.”

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

As quoted in "The Seed of Apple's Innovation" in BusinessWeek (12 October 2004) http://www.businessweek.com/print/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041012_4018_db083.htm?chan=gl
2000s

“Apple mentions the Mac less and less at its big events. The company knows that the machine is a drain on resources that detracts from its new core business … Mac will be phased out and the whole line will be replaced by iPads.”

John C. Dvorak (1952) US journalist and radio broadcaster

Apple Is Ready to Ditch the Mac http://pcmag.com/commentary/357782/apple-is-ready-to-ditch-the-mac in PC Magazine (7 December 2017)
2010s

“I've moved on, grown and learned in the years since then, and am designing interfaces that make the Mac's GUI feel as clumsy to use as the Mac made the old DOS-based systems feel primitive.”

Jef Raskin (1943–2005) American computer scientist

MacUser interview (2004)

“All land lines are down.
Reports of mobile phones
are false. One half-excoriated Apple Mac still quotes the Dow Jones.”

Simon Armitage (1963) Poet, playwright, novelist

from Convergence of the Twain.

“When the Teardrops and the Bunnymen started, Mac and I wanted to be absolute megastars. We wanted to be the biggest cult heroes in the world, to be millionaires, to look brilliant, and to be total bastards.”

Ian McCulloch (1959) singer, musician

Julian Cope in Spin magazine (May 1987).

“I think [Apple is] ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security.”

Eugene Kaspersky (1965) Russian specialist in the information security field

Kaspersky: Apple '10 years behind Microsoft in terms of security' http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/kaspersky-apple-10-years-behind-microsoft-in-terms-of-security/11706 in ZDNet (25 April 2012)

“Apple is a hugely successful company and its Mac business, even though it trails the wider PC market by a wide margin, is a great business, a very, very successful and desirable business. For Apple. Why anyone would care about that, other than employees of Apple, is unclear to me.”

Paul Thurrott (1966) American podcaster, author, and blogger

Market Share Matters http://winsupersite.com/blog/supersite-blog-39/commentary/market-share-matters-140372 in Paul Thurrott's Supersite For Windows (27 August 2011)

“I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn [the art of decorative or hand lettering]. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful. Historical. Artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture. And I found it fascinating. None of this had any hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would never have multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.”

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

2000s, Address at Stanford University (2005)

“It wasn't that Microsoft was so brilliant or clever in copying the Mac, it's that the Mac was a sitting duck for 10 years. That's Apple's problem: Their differentiation evaporated.”

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