Nearly every analyst was pushing Apple to make its Mac OS operating system the company’s product. In 1997, Wired proclaimed: “Admit it. You’re out of the hardware game.” Even Apple’s cofounder, Steve Wozniak, subscribed to this view: “We had the most beautiful operating system,” he said, “but to get it you had to buy our hardware at twice the price. That was a mistake.” Steve Jobs disregarded that advice. In fact, one of his first acts as CEO was to stop licensing Mac OS to other hardware providers.
