One secret to Apple's success...

Simple supply and demand. If you have demand for a product, make sure there is a supply available at some point. Yeah, they sometimes have demand outstrip supply (not a bad thing if you catch up quickly), but when Apple says "this is now available" they make damn sure it IS available. Unlike so many other businesses.

Example: I saw our story on TUAW about a Nikon Coolpix (of some idiotic random assortment of letters and numbers for designation which I can't remember nor can any other human) which has a projector in it, and you're able to plug it in to an iPad or iPhone and project video. No clue if it supports mirroring on the iPad 2, and no question the light strength is likely minimal at best. It's a gimmick, I realize, but I wanted one. WANTED one. So what does Nikon do? Say, "here it is, go buy it!" Except you can't. I'm currently in NYC and no one has this thing in stock. They haven't received their stock.

You see, what Tim Cook and other smart people at Apple know is that when you make a big deal about a cool product, at the end of the day you must make this product available to consumers for purchase. It boggles my mind how Nikon and so many others do not grasp this very simple reality of business. That is why they fail.