Will Apple make the same mistake twice?

I'm fascinated with fail culture and the movement to embrace failure as an opportunity to improve and evolve. It's something American corporate and educational culture has had trouble with for some time. If you've been following the evolution of cell phones lately you'll know that Adobe and Apple have been duking it out over the importance of Flash on the mobile device. Without going into the specifics Apple argues Flash is an old technology and Adobe argues in favor of open markets, a response hinting that Apple must let go of its strangle hold and yield control to developers. There are a variety of perspectives, but the fact is that Apple only has 10% of the mobile phone market and the other 90% of the market share IS supporting Flash.

The bigger question here is not about the success of Flash but rather the ability of Apple to learn from its past failures in the PC business. Didn't they fall to Microsoft because of their hard headed decision to open their operating system to other hardware manufacturers and isn't Job's following a similar path to failure within their mobile business?

Technology reversal

Apple is trying to be Microsoft and Microsoft is trying to be Apple. Today Apple released Genius, an application that "helps" connect you with music by means of a complex algorithm; and Microsoft released the first film in a series of comedies that is supposed to brand Microsoft as a more user friendly company.

These are my first two initial thoughts.

1. Microsoft, you need to create something that is user friendly; software or a product people love to use, then re-brand yourself. In the mean time, thanks for the parody of what it would be like if Bill & Jerry got injected into reality TV.

2. Apple, I like the Genius play list feature; not because I can't figure out how to make a playlist myself, but because I like to look at the 38,172 songs I have loaded in iTunes arranged with a fresh perspective. I do not, however, like the genius sidebar that insists on telling me songs that I need to buy.