Last I checked, Gartner was a supposed to be a pretty respectable shop… but then I read this. It’s worth a few minutes… I’ll wait.
If Apple decided to get out of the hardware business… We’d have some seriously dull beige (maybe grey) boxes – that were built in the cheapest way, caught on fire and sent you into Dell Hell.
Apple is a pioneer in the hardware business – and yes I am biased. They were first to lose the floppy and add USB port, the first to include Firewire, the first to go Wireless, the first to re-introduce the all-in-one system (iMac) and of course brought us the iPod. And let’s not forget the key piece of their business – they control the software AND the hardware and therefore the entire user experience.