not that MS wont' go down in flames, but Apple itself has been successful in more than one era. In the era of the Apple II, Apple was extremely domninant. They took a step back from that with the Apple ///, the early Mac, et al, but they are easily at the top of the game now in the areas where they specialize.

The conjecture suggests that its impossible for a company to stay "on-top." Apple wasn't on top in the first era.

somebody's kicked off the Microsoft Death Knell counter.

Apple was on top in the first era. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head but they started the personal computer era.

What I suspect Mr. Stross is saying (haven't read the article myself) is a company can't stay on top in 2 consecutive eras.

At the tail end of the 'personal computing' era, they were definitely not on top. They were for a short period at the beginning maybe, but not for long. I'd say MS was the clear winner in that era. It remains to be seen now in the internet era... don't count the butterfly out yet.

Thing is, to stay on top of 2 consecutive eras, you have to be willing to tear down what you built and start something new on top of the wreckage. That's very hard to do on a personal, emotional level. So, when you hesitate, somebody else jumps in, tears down your life's work and they build their own imposing edifice atop your rubble.

The first step microsoft should have done was to split their OS and Apps divisions. Then they should junk all legacy apps and win their customers all over again. The creative energy unleashed by the break up and inspired by the product rebuilding would have been a potentially awesome force. Who knows what new ideas that might have generated?

But of course they don't have the vision or guts to do what it takes.

Two things come to mind from reading the article in the Times.

1) If Microsoft is in decline then what is in store for big business, government administration/research and everyone else who uses Windows in a big way? How about Google? Do they use servers from Microsoft? Lets face it.. the great majority of the world's IT is MICROSOFT! ....(SHUDDER) If everyone using Windows wants to bail out, where are they going to go??? Apple Inc. has SMB solutions. Not an option for big business.

2) Where does this leave Apple Inc.? The business model is very diversified. iTunes, an online endeavour is successful, and I think that Apple TV will eventually be as successful (note the efforts to tweak this). What about the software side of Apple? Will this go the way of Microsoft? (run aground) How important will "features" be in successive OS X versions? I have yet to see a compelling reason to upgrade to Leopard. As much as I think iWork '08 is fabulous, I know of long-time (all their life) mac people who are using Open Office and Google for word processing and spreadsheats. In my opinion the strength of the Macintosh computer is the combination of hardware and software. (1+1=3) Will this be able to span two successive technological eras??

Cheers:
Bob