I believe he meant that the OS was ten years ahead when it debuted in 1984. By the time it was on your desk some 13 years later the rest of the market had caught up and in many ways surpassed it.
Perhaps in 1984 it was a year or two ahead of the competition (Windows 1 was released in 1985). Or another way to look at it is that it was a decade behind (the Alto was released in 1973). In any case that's no excuse to sit around and do nothing for 13 years.
Windows 1 does not remotely qualify as "catching up" with the Mac.
And no one, not Jobs or anyone else, is defending those 13 years, so no excuse is necessary. Jobs came back to a shell of a nearly bankrupt company and turned it into the most successful company in the world. It was a remarkable feat.
Come on, Windows 1 was a pathetic joke, not remotely comparable to the Macintosh OS of the time. Mac OS was quite good up until System 7 in the early 90s when Microsoft finally caught up with windows 3.1.
System 7.x was a work of art imo. The system was still small enough to 'understand'. Loved the old system folder layout (with folder for Preferences, Control Panels, Fonts, Extensions, etc...). Whenever the Mac had issues, the fix was generally to start-up without Extensions (by pressing the Shift key on start up) and clean-up the folder. Then add a few extensions at a time and keep restarting until the issue was found.
