This is a terrible, link-bait comparison. IBM was powerful because it created a monopoly. Apple doesn't even hold the dominant marketshare in the products the sell (phones, computers).<p>A more apt comparison would be IBM and Microsoft.<p>Apple is an unusual company. Simply look at their original meteoric rise in the 80's, to the 90's where the company nearly folded, the inverted return Steve Jobs where Apple thought they were buying NeXT, but NeXT ended up taking over Apple, and the resurrection of Apple through Mac, iPod, and iPhone. Finding a real company that is an apt comparison to Apple could make for an interesting article since finding such a company would probably be hard, and one likely most people haven't heard of.
Microsoft needs to make a deal with Valve and offer money to developers implementing touch-screen support. Indies is a group Apple/Google are failing to address properly.