Michael Fischer

Canterbury

Anthropologist

If René weren't so well known, I'd suspect a Microsoft plant here. When René was IT director of IPC (1995-1998), Jobs had just returned towards the end of that period, taking control in 1997.

His comment about it costing "three times more" to support Macs would suggest that he was not a very good IT director, given that at the time Windows support costs were reckoned by most independent surveys of industry to cost between 1.8 and 2.5 times more than Macs, which was down from Dos costs of well over three times more. Performing up to 9 times worse than the industry might explain why he was kicked upstairs to CEO.

His comment about "Apple not changing" is also odd, given what Apple is being compared to. The only problem Apple did have over that time was trying to 'change' to the prevalent model and licensing their operating system only to find they were cannabalising their own sales.

So, as far as learning from its past ... the critical event at both ends is Jobs ... he left (was ejected) and the company went down, he returned and it goes back up. Not so much learning from the past as regaining the past.