Platform Licensing

Good article from John Gruber about Apple and Licensing:

This idea has been repeated so often by so many sources that today, most people, even Mac users, simply take it at face value: If only Apple had licensed the Macintosh, they could have been Microsoft.

But this is not a fact. It’s conjecture, and barring a time machine, it can never be proven. But even if you could go back to 1984 and show Apple’s then-executives a glimpse of the future and the Mac’s eventual market share — merely “licensing” the Mac very likely would not have made a difference. In fact, in an alternate universe where Apple had licensed the Macintosh or Mac OS in the mid-80s, things could have ended up worse for Apple, as in bankrupt-and-out-of-business worse.