> This trend does not fit with history either. Standard Oil, US Steel, and Boeing were all iconically huge companies that were built as businesses. None of them went through a phase where they looked like toys.
This is largely because "inventing a new thing" and "building a massive business from that invention" are more closely linked now than they have been, historically. Standard Oil and US Steel postdated the invention of steel and steam engines by centuries. Boeing postdated the Wright Flyer by a few years, and even then mostly got off the ground due to the World Wars. (And the Wrights actually did try and make a business out of their invention, but that's another story.)
The Apple I was a toy computer designed in 1976. The Apple II was a mass-market personal computer designed in 1977 by the designer of the Apple I. There wasn't a World War nor any obvious military applications for the early Apple Computers, and the inventor who designed them (Woz) just happened to be close friends with someone who was just mercenary enough to try and make a business out of it (Jobs).
The rapid development of ICs was greatly influenced by their military applications, there wouldn't have been anything to make an Apple I or II out of without that.
> Standard Oil and US Steel postdated the invention of steel and steam engines by centuries.
The first component of what was to become US Steel opened in 1857, only 2 years after the invention of the Bessemer process that made it practical to produce steel in industrial quantities.
I mean, of course once you invent serious industrial scale processes, you can set up a serious business. But the lag time between "invention of steel" and "invention of the Bessemer process" was a lot bigger than the lag time between "invention of Apple I" and "invention of Apple II".
>The first component of what was to become US Steel opened in 857
I'm such an idiot that I read that and didn't even think it was a typo. I was really impressed that the company had lasted that long, with that belief propped up by the fact that steel itself by far predates the Roman Empire. Sure, the steelmaking process we use now is pretty new, but battles in Ancient China and Rome were fought using steel weapons.
The Apple II was not a toy. It was what businesses used to run VisiCalc, the spreadsheet program. Huge productivity gain over doing spreadsheets with a big piece of ruled paper and a calculator.
This is largely because "inventing a new thing" and "building a massive business from that invention" are more closely linked now than they have been, historically. Standard Oil and US Steel postdated the invention of steel and steam engines by centuries. Boeing postdated the Wright Flyer by a few years, and even then mostly got off the ground due to the World Wars. (And the Wrights actually did try and make a business out of their invention, but that's another story.)
The Apple I was a toy computer designed in 1976. The Apple II was a mass-market personal computer designed in 1977 by the designer of the Apple I. There wasn't a World War nor any obvious military applications for the early Apple Computers, and the inventor who designed them (Woz) just happened to be close friends with someone who was just mercenary enough to try and make a business out of it (Jobs).