Why would you say Apple, whose main business was an extensive traxk record in creating, promoting, and selling next generation technology, that their major investment in a new field was blind speculation?
In contrast to Microsoft whose business was providing stable solutions and extracting monopoly rents.
Not sure I understand your point. Mine was that in science or business we are often held back from understanding by the limitations of our models, even when we ourselves are the inventors.
I thought I used an example well known to HN to make the point. Apple’s stated hope was to eventually have 1% of the market (and they didn’t originally plan for an App Store). Like Maxwell, they didn’t know they had a blockbuster.
Microsoft listened very closely to their customers, who were and are mainly corporate I/T and something like the iphone wasn’t something they said they wanted. In fact it honestly had no affordances that IT wanted.
Maxwell understood the math but his own mechanical metaphor distracted him, and other physicists too, so that they couldn’t really see the larger implications.
I think the issue is that example doesn't seem to be true.. Jobs said at the time of launch that it was a revolutionary and magical product which was five years ahead of everyone else and would change everything. And the hope wasn't to have 1% eventually, but by the end of 2008.
In contrast to Microsoft whose business was providing stable solutions and extracting monopoly rents.