Earlier quoted context omitted.
Um, not to get all defensive, but we at STB are making quite a bit of money. It's probably over a million a quarter per developer. I don't know many people who can say that. ;)
Server and Tools Business?
Yes.
Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)
81–90 of 102 posts
Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just over a year old, and just past two years since Apple first showed it at WWDC 2008. Snow Leopard was a relatively minor upgrade even by Apple's admission (hence the price tag $100 lower than for previous iterations), yet it still suffered delays because of work on iOS. Meanwhile, there was zero mention of anything Macintosh at WWDC this year, meaning we're probably at least a year off from any real news at 10.7,…
To be honest, what more do you want to see in it? Perhaps Apple should go down Microsoft's route, and add more and more stuff until it looks and acts ridiculously. I hope it does not.
>To be honest, what more do you want to see in it?
An App Store for OSX would be nice. Or even just a repository mechanism - I am so sick of updating the apps on my Mac systems when my multiple Linux boxes are always up-to-date with the latest stable releases.
Its 2010, can we please have an OSX repo mechanism, Apple?
Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)
#83Maybe that's the problem at Microsoft: they think they can solve problems by throwing lots of people at them. They put together large teams to build products. And large teams require managers. I didn't know Microsoft had a problem, they seem to be doing pretty well. They have some good products. Apple being successful doesn't necessarily translate to Microsoft sucking. They are both damn good companies.
"Apple being successful doesn't necessarily translate to Microsoft sucking." - absolutely.
I remember reading somewhere (I'll post the link if I find it) that in terms of computers, Apple and Microsoft actually occupy very different positions in the market. Apple have something like 91% market share in desktops and laptops priced above $1000, while Microsoft dominate cheaper priced machines (how many Apple computers can you buy below $1000?). A person who is a Mac user is unlikely to voluntarily switch back to Windows, they tend to keep buying Macs despite the price tag (product differentiation justifies the price in their mind). How many people spend over $1000 on a new PC? Gamers and people who need/want advanced hardware, but they are in the minority of PC users.
Obviously, this is in relation to the historical relationship between Apple and Microsoft, now Apple is mainly a consumer devices company in terms of revenue, and Microsoft will go toe-to-toe will Apple in the tablets and smartphones markets soon. Will be interesting to see how the relationship fares as this happens.
Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I guess that we can say for sure (2009-2010 numbers) that online stuff is now loosing money, windows is now doing better that office, and gaming is quite behind but stable and profitable (albeit a lot less that office or windows). Let's be frank too, were talking about billions here, so those segments are quite big.
I can't tell you specifics but I can tell you that Microsoft knows the cloud is losing money for now.
That's okay though - At least MS is smart enough to make an investment in a nascent technology. I bet everyone is losing money on the cloud, or barely breaking even.
Even Rackspace's Net Income is only 10 million dollars, coming off of 178 million dollars worth of revenue.
New businesses take time to grow.
Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)
#85Maybe that's the problem at Microsoft: they think they can solve problems by throwing lots of people at them. They put together large teams to build products. And large teams require managers. I didn't know Microsoft had a problem, they seem to be doing pretty well. They have some good products. Apple being successful doesn't necessarily translate to Microsoft sucking. They are both damn good companies.
IBM was a damn good company for many years after the industry had effectively left their technology behind. Even today they make serious money; if that satisfies your criteria for doing well. They just didn't grow in proportion to the industry. And they've had to cut and refocus on their core products to maintain profitability. Microsoft is now in a very similar situation. Fumbled opportunity might not drag down toda…
They realized that companies have a lot more money to spend than consumers.
Which is essentially the same tactic that Microsoft uses to get high profitability.
Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)
#86The iBooks app, too, with all the sexy page turning animation was written by one guy (before it became big).
I'm sure he had tons of notes from Steve Jobs on the details though.
Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)
#87Because of the Remote App was written by one guy, Apple is a huge startup?
No, that's just an interesting fact from the article. I assumed they assembled a crack-team of iPhone engineers to bang this out. I was surprised that one person put together such a high-quality app, especially in a company that could afford to throw lots of money/developers/teams to solve this problem.
Maybe they should have that one guy make an iPad version of it now.
Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)
#88Maybe that's the problem at Microsoft: they think they can solve problems by throwing lots of people at them. They put together large teams to build products. And large teams require managers. I didn't know Microsoft had a problem, they seem to be doing pretty well. They have some good products. Apple being successful doesn't necessarily translate to Microsoft sucking. They are both damn good companies.
@volski: "Apple being successful doesn't necessarily translate to Microsoft sucking." Completely true, and as Steve Jobs famously said in 1997: "If we want to move forward and see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go of a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job.…
RE: MSFT Failures; Windows Mobile 6.5
A dose of reality, Microsoft was in the smartphone market long before Apple. WinMo 6.5 was the last in a line of OS releases from the CE lineage that was incredibly successful. Apple for all its success with iPhone did not truly pioneer this space, they embraced and extended to borrow a term.
Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
XBOX, .NET, Bing, Facebook (1.3% ownership + exclusive ad partnership). Enough said.
As I remember correctly, Office saves everything else at MS right now (by a large margin, followed by OSes). The gaming has recently been making more money than they are loosing (and will probably become their next important money maker). But the rest of the revenue makers are so low compared to those three that it's not even funny. I suspect that they will probably announce service based offering (consulting) type i…
MCS (Microsoft Consulting Services) has been a business component for them for a long time. Whereas someone like IBM-GS seeks to make as much margin as they can off the services side, MCS is in the unique position of being willing to make smaller margins because the licensing revenue is significant. That attitude has been changing in the past 5 years but it is still part of the MCS culture.
Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)
#90This article, like many others, seems to overestimate how large the actual numbers of developers is at Microsoft, as opposed to full teams with Test and mgmt and their associated marketing, sales, etc. organizations. The .NET GC was roughly 1 person (sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more). Most of the base class libraries were one person. Even larger things, like the text editor, were usually a senior pers…
FWIW I heard a story of the "Find Dialog" (Ctrl-F) in Excel being written by a separate team of several people that included few developers, few testers, a project manager and a technical writer. It was in '94 and it was told by a guy who presumably left MS not long ago in the context of describing the benefits of the COM.
I met someone that was project manager of the copy/paste functionality in Visio...
edit: that was 2 years ago