this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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Yeah, this is exactly what happened, although some of the clone brands were perfectly high-quality (Power Computing in particular made great machines, usually the fastest on the market). In the Mac community at the time, a lot of people (myself included) wished Apple would just exit the hardware business and focus on what they were good at: software.
Then Steve Jobs came back and did exactly the opposite of that. First order of business was to kill cloning. Then came the iPod.
To be fair, the next generation of Power Macs after that were about half the price of the previous gen.
Prior to Steve coming back Apple had a ton of different product lines. You had three or four models of Performa, then two different lines of Power Macs, three different Powerbooks, and even some servers. This wasted a ton of effort and resources maintaining all these product lines.
Steve divided the segments in to four quadrants on two axes: Portable vs. Desktop and Consumer vs. Professional. I think if they'd have started with simplifying their product line there might still be a market for the clones.
Totally agree. Their product line was an absolute mess back then. Their current lineup is getting a little bloated too. I don't know why they bother having two laptop product lines anymore when they are so similar.