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Apple’s latest moves show how much–and how little–it is willing to change
Apple seems, in general, to have weaponized the idea of institutional stubbornness. This is the company that refused to license its operating system to PC makers back in the 1980s and 1990s, insisted on making a smartphone, and launched yet another streaming service. There’s something in the company’s DNA—probably handed down in part from late co-founder Steve Jobs—that promulgates the idea that there are two ways to do things: an Apple way and a wrong way. It’s one of the traits that often makes it most infuriating to its biggest detractors.
But that doesn’t mean that Apple won’t change course when needs suit. Despite its insistence on doing things its own way, the company has over the past several years made more than a few changes that even its closest observers might have judged unlikely at best. There are always reasons behind these decisions, of course, and they’re hardly devoid of self-interest, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t, somewhere deep down, an acknowledgment that maybe, just maybe, the Apple way can evolve.