Apple once faced a US export control on its 'supercomputer.' Steve Jobs turned it into a marketing moment.
Anthropic is far from the first first Silicon Valley giant to trigger US government export controls. Apple turned the prospect of a 1999 export limit on the Power Mac G4 into an ad campaign. JOHN G. MABANGLO / AFP via Getty Images Steve Jobs once turned the prospect of a US export restriction into a marketing moment. In 1999, Apple's Power Mac G4 "supercomputer" exceeded the allowed computing threshold for US exports to some countries. Apple released an ad that leaned into the US government's concern that the computers didn't fall into the wrong hands. Sometimes, the US government's concerns that a powerful new tech product could fall into the wrong hands can be a marketing opportunity. Just look at Steve Jobs and Apple back in 1999. In August of that year, Jobs, who was then Apple's interim-CEO, took the stage to unveil the company's new desktop "supercomputer": the Power Mac G4. Jobs called it "the most powerful personal computer ever...
