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What you are buying
What you get
- 23 verified Decision Cases on Apple, one record per page.
- Each record states the fork, the options on the table, the choice, the reason the company gave, the money committed where the case states it, what happened at one, three and five years, and every source.
- The same records in five files: Excel, JSON, PowerPoint, Word, and PDF.
How to use it
- Open the Excel to compare records side by side and filter by company, date, or verdict.
- Cite a record in a memo from the Word or PDF page; the sources are on the page.
- Load the JSON into your AI workspace so the assistant reasons from verified cases instead of inventing them.
What it is not
- It is not a report. There is no introduction, no analysis across the records, and no recommendation.
- Each record says only what its source story says, so the writing is factual and brief, not narrative.
- If you want the argument, a Strategy Pack makes it; the casebook is the evidence behind it.
About the Apple Casebook
What can you learn from Apple's strategic decisions? How did Apple handle the forks that defined it, and what happened next? The knowledge of these decisions will help you glean insights, inspiration and actionable ideas. The Apple Casebook comprises 23 verified Decision Cases with dated outcomes.
Every record follows the same structure, which is what makes the set useful rather than merely interesting. You see when the fork came, what was on the table, what the company chose and the reason it gave, what it committed, and what happened at one, three and five years. Every fact is cited to its source, and where we offer a judgment, it is labeled as one. Across the 23 cases, which span 1985 to 2024, 23 carry dated outcomes; 19 of the decisions held, 0 were reversed, 4 held in part, and 0 are still too early to call.
Why it is worth your time
Following one company across every kind of decision it faced shows you something a single case never can: how its choices compounded. The Apple Casebook covers 16 decision types, from Vertical-Integration Bet, The Fork, The Pricing Lens and more, with forks between 1985 and 2024, so you can see the pattern in how Apple sized its bets, when it reversed, what it committed, and what came back. Each record carries the same fields and every source, which is what lets you compare a pricing move with an acquisition and a crisis response on equal terms.
Who reaches for it
Anyone competing with Apple, selling to it, investing in it, or learning from it: strategy teams sizing up a rival, consultants building a company profile that goes beyond the annual report, investors who want the decisions behind the numbers, and faculty who teach the company as a case.
What it saves you
Assembling comparable precedents by hand is slow work: find each decision, date it, read the filings and the coverage, pull out the same fields, and check every number. At three to four hours a record, this set is roughly 81 hours of a strategist's time. It is $299, once, and every record has already been through the same fields and the same checks.
How people use it
In the memo, you cite the records that match your question, outcomes and sources included, straight from the Word appendix. In the room, the PowerPoint gives you one record per slide with an action title and a source line. In the model, you sort the Excel by verdict, horizon or capital committed. And in your AI workspace, you load the JSON as vetted context, so the assistant reasons from verified cases instead of inventing them.
What is in the download
A sample case
One case, free, exactly as it appears in the files. The other 22 verified cases are in the purchased files.
| Company | Fork date | The fork | Options | Choice | Stated rationale | What happened | The market | Judgment analyst | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple Read the story → verified | 2024-01 | License Masimo's patents or disable the feature and route around them |
| Fight and route around | A license would be a permanent, rival-priced tax on every future watch, so Apple refused it to keep future dependency cost at zero | 3 years · 2026-03 ITC ruling on redesigned feature: an ITC administrative law judge found 'no underlying act of direct infringement' in the redesigned, iPhone-dependent feature | +5.8 pts over 1 year vs the S&P 500 | reversibility medium verdict held | Bloomberg (2024-01); 9to5Mac (2026-03); Thurrott.com (2025-08) |
What is in this casebook
23 verified cases across 16 decision types: Vertical-Integration Bet, The Fork, The Pricing Lens, Standards War, Succession Question, Crisis Response, The Counterfactual, Bet-the-Company, The Reversal, The Money Machine, Distribution Rebellion, The Flywheel, Ecosystem Lock-in, Adjacency Expansion, Cannibalization Choice and The Turnaround.
Questions
- What do I get in the Apple Casebook?
- 23 verified Decision Cases on Apple across 16 decision types. Each one tells you when the fork came, what was on the table, what the company chose and why, what it committed, and what happened at one, three and five years, with every source named, as Excel, JSON, PowerPoint, Word and PDF.
- How do I know the cases are accurate?
- Every case is drawn only from the story it comes from and that story's sources. Every fact carries a citation and a verbatim excerpt, a mechanical check rejects anything the story does not contain, a second model from a different vendor reads the record against the story, and a third arbitrates any disagreement. Only records that pass all of it are in the files.
- Is this a subscription?
- No. It is a one-time purchase, re-issued whenever a story a case rests on changes. The library license keeps every casebook current for a flat annual fee.