Wozniak's insistence on eight expansion slots for the Apple II, against Jobs's preference for two, created a third-party ecosystem that drove sales. This open architecture's success funded the company, enabling the development of Jobs's later closed-system products.

To prevent its suppliers from going bankrupt if contracts were cut, Apple mandated that no supplier could be more than 50% dependent on its business. This forced highly-trained manufacturers to find other customers, directly enabling the rise of sophisticated Chinese smartphone brands like Huawei and Xiaomi.

Over four decades, Dell has seen countless entrepreneurs fail. He argues their downfall isn't typically due to external competition but from their own fatal mistakes, poor choices, and a failure to deeply understand what's happening in their own business.

The Apple III was a commercial disaster because its design was finalized by marketing and Steve Jobs's aesthetic vision before the engineering was proven. This approach, which forced engineers to cram immature tech into a small case without fans, was the exact opposite of the engineering-first process that made the Apple II successful.

When Apple went public, Steve Jobs and the board excluded many early employees from stock options. In response, Steve Wozniak created the "Woz Plan," selling his personal shares at a steep discount to these colleagues. His actions were driven by a personal code of ethics, ensuring the team that built the company was rewarded.

Apple wasn't a visionary in offshoring; it was a laggard. Its move to China was driven by the inability to manufacture the radically different iMac, a product designed to save the company. This desperation forced it to abandon its long-held control over manufacturing and partner with Asian suppliers.

Beyond his known skills, Steve Jobs's core practice was metacognition. He treated his own thinking as a tool to be perpetually sharpened, constantly working on its elegance and discipline. This focus on the 'generator function' of his mind was the source of his profound impact.

Terry Guo of Foxconn pursued a partnership with a struggling Apple, recognizing that learning from Apple's demanding standards was more valuable than short-term profits. He understood Apple's uniqueness better than Apple did, betting that mastering their complexity would make Foxconn capable of serving any client.

The young founder hired an experienced executive who became a mentor and effectively his boss. He learned more from observing this leader's actions—how he interacted with people and approached problems—than from direct instruction. This demonstrates the power of learning through osmosis from seasoned operators.