In Our Own Words Instructor's Manual

Dan was at Harvard Business School at the time and Bob nominally had a day job writing software. "There was no great risk in doing a business," Bob wrote, "If it failed it failed. No big deal." [12] It's not quite as easy as I make it sound. It took a painfully long time for word of mouth to get going, and we did not start to get a lot of press coverage until we hired a PR firm (admittedly the best in the business) for $16,000 per month. However, it was true that the only significant channel was our own Web site. [13] If the Mac was so great, why did it lose? Cost, again. Microsoft concentrated on the software business, and unleashed a swarm of cheap component suppliers on Apple hardware. It did not help, either, that suits took over during a critical period. [14] One thing that would help Web-based applications, and help keep the next generation of software from being overshadowed by Microsoft, would be a good open-source browser. Mozilla is open-source but seems to have suffered from having been corporate software for so long ...»