How did Apple flourish despite Neal Stephenson's prediction that proprietary software companies would fail?
In the Beginning... Was the Command Line In the Beginning... Was the Command Line is an essay by Neal Stephenson which was originally published online in 1999 and later made available in book form (November 1999, ISBN  ). The essay is a commentary on why the proprietary operating systems business is unlikely to remain profitable in the future because of competition from free software. It also analyzes the corporate/collective culture of the Microsoft, Apple, and free software communities.
Apple Worldwide Developers Conference The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC, also referred to as "dub-dub") is a conference held annually in California by Apple Inc. The event is used by Apple to showcase its new software and technologies for software developers. Attendees can participate in hands-on labs with Apple engineers, and in-depth sessions covering a wide variety of topics. WWDC began in 1983 in Monterey, California. Until 2007, the number of attendees varied between 2,000 and 4,200; however, during WWDC 2007, Steve Jobs noted that there were more than 5,000 attendees. The WWDC events held from 2008 to 2015 were capped, and sold out at 5,000 attendees (5,200 including special attendees).