Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably a coincidence, but a lot of noticed that "WNT" is one letter on from "VMS". Mind you, HAL is one letter behind IBM.
Some claim the HAL/IBM connection was intentional (though Stanley denies it).
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Apple becomes the first $1T company
151–160 of 352 posts
Re: Apple becomes the first $1T company
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say more interesting is the Dutch East India company sort of portrays what life would be like if companies became their own govts.
I'm not as familiar with the VOC as maybe I should be, but the British East India Company actually was the government of India from 1757 to 1858, when the British state took over. Until 1858, the territory of the EIC was administered by a Board of Directors who were responsible to shareholders, not to Parliament.
VOC also functioned as a govt of sorts, establishing colonies in Indonesia and SE Asia etc and having a private army that fought for territorial purposes.
Re: Apple becomes the first $1T company
#153Good for it. Becoming a trillion dollar company selling quality products people love. Not data mining everything about your life and using it for advertising (Google), ruthlessly destroying competition (Microsoft), or destroying the environment (Exxon). How old fashioned.
On the other hand. I think Google creates way more value for the world, they are just not as good as Apple at capturing that value. Android, Maps, Docs, Gmail, Navigation, Analytics are all (mostly) free.
I like Apple’s simple transaction model - I give them money and they give me stuff. My desires and thier incentives are mostly aligned.
Everything Google does is about advertising and collecting data. Those two things don’t align with my desires.
Re: Apple becomes the first $1T company
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's legal to find ways to reduce your tax burden.
because they're utilizing that money so well.
It's their money. If they have a $1 trillion cash sitting on the sidelines doing nothing that is their right to do so.
Apple doesn't make money to support governments.
Re: Apple becomes the first $1T company
#155"A $600 phone?! Who's going to buy a $600 phone?!" -Steve Balmer
I worked in Windows Mobile at the time. He was just quoting what the best market researchers had told him. We were given a LOT of market research papers with in-depth customer surveys where lots of people said, repeatedly, that they would "never pay money for a phone". If you think back to then, phones were "free" with a 2 year contract. The idea of getting someone who was used to free to switch over to $600 overnigh…
There's a Henry Ford quote that's pretty popular at Apple - “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
Re: Apple becomes the first $1T company
#156This will be very controversial, especially in HN, but market cap doesn't mean shit. Apple has roughly $50B in revenue and $120B in equity. Most of it's products could be replaced in less than 5 years by a competitor. Market cap is a measure of public trust among other things but not actual worth or value to society.
I just finished Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull who was one of the founders of Pixar and current president. Highly recommend the book for anyone on HN.
In the book Ed Catmull wrote that Steve Jobs would say regularly "as brilliant as Apple products were, eventually they all ended up in landfills."
Gives you some pause to realize how quickly Apple's business could be relegated to the trashbin with no new products to pick up the baton.
Re: Apple becomes the first $1T company
#157Re: Apple becomes the first $1T company
#158This will be very controversial, especially in HN, but market cap doesn't mean shit. Apple has roughly $50B in revenue and $120B in equity. Most of it's products could be replaced in less than 5 years by a competitor. Market cap is a measure of public trust among other things but not actual worth or value to society.
On top of the holes in your financial argument, you've overlooked something in your competitor argument.
A competitor could replace most of Apple's current products in 5 years, but where will Apple be in 5 years? They'll be five years ahead.
Re: Apple becomes the first $1T company
#159>“Apple’s $1 trillion cap is equal to about 5 percent of the total gross domestic product of the United States in 2018,” said David Kass, professor of finance at the University of Maryland. “That puts this company in perspective.” The comparison would be Apple net income (~$50B) vs. GDP, not market cap (which has units of USD) vs. GDP (which has units of USD per year).
Yeah, that was a real howler. I really hope he was somehow misquoted, because the comparison literally does the opposite of put something in perspective.
I think it puts it in perspective as a magnitude of money, which I'd assume was all he meant to do. I don't think he was suggesting that Apple actually accounts for 5% of GDP, but was just using it to illustrate how monumental $1T is.
Re: Apple becomes the first $1T company
#160Good for it. Becoming a trillion dollar company selling quality products people love. Not data mining everything about your life and using it for advertising (Google), ruthlessly destroying competition (Microsoft), or destroying the environment (Exxon). How old fashioned.
We can still complain about their walled-garden approach to software distribution, particularly the extortionist 30% fee and handicapping of non-native apps. Or their kowtowing to the Chinese censors.
I don’t think you were around before the App Store. The carrier were a lot stricter about what you could sell through thier stores and the carrier took a 70% cut.
Not to mention the cut the publishers, wholesellers, and the retail stores use to take when you sold boxed software.
Their cut is the same as Google’s and Steams.