It's the libraries, stupid!

From Why Apple Will Dominate Next Gen Computing - ReadWriteWeb (by Alex Iskold):

Let's be clear. It is not the language, but the libraries that matter. Every time I hear developers talk about a new language and say it is by far the best one, I just shake my head. A new language is not going to be usable in today's world unless all of the libraries are in place. As the complexity of our software increases, so do demands on libraries. Microsoft learned it the hard way with years of set backs when it rolled out .Net. Had it simply embraced and optimized Java, it could have been years ahead instead.

Apple choose a different path. For the last decade Apple has been wowing the crowds and investors with its flawless and lightening quick execution. Every new Apple announcement, we keep thinking that they won't top it. But every time, Jobs and his crew pulls another trick out of the hat. Clearly, Apple is a well-oiled machine that has perfected the art of execution. But beyond that, Apple's secret sauce has been its software. While others have been inventing new languages and frameworks, Apple kept perfecting and building up its code.

Since the early days, Apple embraced a language called Objective-C - an object-oriented flavor of the popular procedural language. When Jobs returned to Apple, one of the early smart decisions was to ditch the old operating system in favor of Unix. This moved allowed Apple to instantly tap into serious programmers while retaining a beautiful and simple UI. When Java came along, Apple was unmoved, because it was just too slow. In general, over the years Apple has ignored new languages and just stuck with its platform. Smart, disciplined and mature...