Too Long; Didn't Read
It was 1998 and, as described in ‘<a href="http://amzn.to/2sT9tN1" target="_blank">Good Strategy, Bad Strategy</a>’, Richard Rumelt asked Steve Jobs how he was going to grow <a href="https://hackernoon.com/tagged/apple" target="_blank">Apple</a> from a niche play into a company well worth more than the $150M Bill Gates had recently invested. Jobs had recently returned to the company he’d founded and was successfully turning things around. Jobs had convinced Gates that investing in Apple, and keeping the company alive, would help Microsoft get past the issues it was having with the Justice Department. Gates invested. Jobs cut all but one of the fifteen desktop computers. He also reduced the number of portables and focused on one laptop. The decision was made to sell directly to customers online.