Apple’s not known for being the most outward-looking organization. For much of its existence, it’s seemed to project an aura of indifference—verging on ignorance—of what goes on outside its walls. That’s in large part by design: Apple has always had a carefully cultivated veneer of being in a league of its own, eschewing any need to pay attention to what its would-be rivals were up to.
Even when it has deigned to work with others, Apple generally presented an attitude of doing this as a favor to its partners, bestowing some small iota of the Apple brand and mojo upon them. (Remember its deals with Motorola and HP in the 2000s?) There’s no better example than porting iTunes to Windows—arguably one of the best business decisions Apple made, since it brought the iPod to scads of PC users—a move that Steve Jobs famously, if not decorously, described as “giving a glass of ice water to someone in hell.”
