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Apple Marketshare and 'Sales Guys'

As part of the Macintosh's 20th anniversary, Newsweek's Steven Levy recaps the Mac's origins and discusses with Jobs about the Mac's (lack of) marketshare. Jobs is openly critical of the management of Apple during his absence:

Jobs has a theory about that, too. Once a company devises a great product, he says, it has a monopoly in that realm, and concentrates less on innovation than protecting its turf. "The Mac-user interface was a 10-year monopoly," says Jobs. "Who ended up running the company? Sales guys. At the critical juncture in the late '80s, when they should have gone for market share, they went for profits. They made obscene profits for several years. And their products became mediocre. And then their monopoly ended with Windows 95. They behaved like a monopoly, and it came back to bite them, which always happens."

Jobs goes on to parallel this to Microsoft's current position and that a "Sales Guy" (Steve Ballmer) is leading Microsoft.

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