[telendram]

The part where he is wrong is the premisses that every new computer must more or less gives up all the software of the previous one in order to reach a new trajectory. This used to be more or less true with early 80's computers, such as Apple II or C64, but that's exactly what changed with the PC. 32-bit arrived, and kept compatibility with 16-bit alive. Windows arrived, but (initially) kept compatibility with DOS. etc. Fast forward today, and the Mac M1 arrives, and can still count of Rosetta to continue running x64 applications.

This is a key change, and a necessary one, as rewriting everything for a new system is just a killing blow.

Unfortunately for him, this mistaken analysis is exactly what lead Jobs to the NeXt, a new computer re-invented from scratch, dropping everything that existed prior to rebuild it. This costed too much time and energy, and the NeXt was late, expensive, incomplete, a commercial failure. Jobs was lucky to be bought by Apple before going under.

And arguably, that's a lesson he learned well. Immediately after, while taking command of Apple, he states basically the opposite : re-use everything that can be re-used, especially open source. Only redevelop what you think you can do better.