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Apple's entire business model is based on their hardware. They're not Microsoft. It may not have worked that well in the 90s, but their problem in the 90s was not the model, they just needed to make products that the market actually liked, which their leadership was totally incapable of without the vision of Jobs. Desktop software (including operating system) is going nowhere, Microsoft is just going to milk whatever value is left in it as everything moves to web-style services. Hardware is where Apple makes a difference. True it doesn't have the appeal to businesses, yet, but they're gaining the advantage, iPhone? The web browser is already the most important tool for home and mobile computing, business is heading that way and Apple is in a good position to capitalize. And the iPod, most successful consumer electronic of the decade, all the profit is on the hardware, not soft music sales. It would not surprise me to see Apple's value greater or equal to Microsoft's in 10 years on the same model, at least if Microsoft continues to show a complete inability to adapt to anything beyond its bread and butter.
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"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." --Abraham Lincoln
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