“OK, time to rip off the mask”

It would be glib to say “that Apple ceased trading on February 7, 1997”, the date that NeXT, Inc. finally disappeared as an independent business. But that’s not what happened. That company slowly boiled as the temperature around it rose. The iMac, iBook, iPod, Mac OS X, iPhone, iPad: all of these things came out of that company. Admittedly, so did iTools, .Mac, and Mobile Me, but eventually along came iCloud. Obviously 2020 Apple is a continuation of the spirit and culture of 1997 Apple, 1984 Apple, 1976 Apple. It has some of the same people, and plenty of people who learned from the people who are and were the same people. But it is also entirely different. Through a continuum of changes, but no deliberate “OK, time to rip off the mask” conversion, Apple is now the IBM that fans booed in 1984, or the Microsoft that fans booed in 1997.

Source: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programmers » Six Colours by Graham Lee