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..and the iPhone that killed it.

Not really. Even in his first tenure with Apple, Steve Jobs held Sony in high regard as a sort of blueprint for Apple.

This idea of the consumer electronics leader, that Sony was in the 80s with the Walkman etc, inspired Jobs long before he founded NeXT. Apple was "Apple Inc." instead of "Apple Computer Inc." in Steve's head for a very long time.

Having been around for quite some time, it appears to me that the OS X generation is completely unaware of how Apple used to be like, and whatever "openness" they had during the critical business years was just for survival, nothing else.

It's obvious now. And the lesson is expensive one.

Let's not forget this lesson when it comes to Microsoft.

Google, Facebook, Oracle, IBM, Red-Hat,....

> OS X generation is completely unaware of how Apple used to be like

I think they would be more accurate being referred to as iPod and iPhone Generation. The vast majority of people today only came to know Apple ( and Mac ) only after using those products.

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