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Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

reuters.com

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Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#81

Post by gumby »

scottyah wrote: post #10

The main things I see lately are: Apple is creating VR headsets and new chip technology, Microsoft is buying up AI companies and injecting ads/spyware into their operating systems. Also Microsoft is getting big into cloud. Interesting to see what Wall Street rewards.

Investors are throwing money at anyone who can spell “AI”, just like 25 years ago they thrust cash at people who could spell TCP, or who were one.

Love them or hate them, Apple isn’t playing that game (and despite their having hired Giannandrea, who was the reason Google has an AI strategy in the first place).

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#82

Post by slowmovintarget »

gumby wrote: post #81
scottyah wrote: post #10

The main things I see lately are: Apple is creating VR headsets and new chip technology, Microsoft is buying up AI companies and injecting ads/spyware into their operating systems. Also Microsoft is getting big into cloud. Interesting to see what Wall Street rewards.

Investors are throwing money at anyone who can spell “AI”, just like 25 years ago they thrust cash at people who could spell TCP, or who were one. Love them or hate them, Apple isn’t playing that game (and despite their having hired Giannandrea, who was the reason Google has an AI strategy in the first place).

Apple has their own AI strategy and it includes things like Ferret and scientific papers like running inference on "low-memory" devices. I wouldn't count them out over the long run.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#83

Post by kaashif »

CharlesW wrote: post #63
paxys wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of that other half would still be around if the iPhone was no longer a thing? Apple Care? App store purchases? IAP/microtransactions? Apple Pay? iCloud storage? Chargers? Airpods? They can structure their financial reports however they like, but it doesn't change the fact that their entire ecosystem is directly or indirectly tied to that one device.

Fair enough, but Microsoft would be equally dead without Office and Azure revenue. One way to think about this is that Apple isn't diversified enough. Another way to think about it is that Microsoft's long tail is a mess.

> Fair enough, but Microsoft would be equally dead without Office and Azure revenue.

Office and Azure make up half of their revenue, but their other revenue streams are actually different things, like Windows, gaming, LinkedIn, Bing advertising. It's actual diversification.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#84

Post by bionsystem »

ephemeral-life wrote: post #68
bch wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> world class research arm Honest question: does Wall Street care? In my experience, this is the kind of thing that’s (rightly or wrongly) considered a “cost center”, not a “profit center”.

> does Wall Street care? Some people on wallstreet do. In Mckinsey's book Valuation, they make it pretty clear to the reader that companies who spend a lot on r&d tend to have outsized returns compared to their counterparts, who don't spend that much.

I'd say the whole market gives a premium to companies with R&D spend, that's part of the reason why they have higher valuation metrics (alongside growth, margins and other quant factors). That is, when they are not stupidly burning it or giving it away as stock compensation.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#85

Post by gumby »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #82
gumby wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investors are throwing money at anyone who can spell “AI”, just like 25 years ago they thrust cash at people who could spell TCP, or who were one. Love them or hate them, Apple isn’t playing that game (and despite their having hired Giannandrea, who was the reason Google has an AI strategy in the first place).

Apple has their own AI strategy and it includes things like Ferret and scientific papers like running inference on "low-memory" devices. I wouldn't count them out over the long run.

I am not counting them out. In fact I’m hoping for, if nothing else, a working Siri better than the alternatives.

But I think wall street is ignoring them at the moment.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#87

Post by evilduck »

yousifa wrote: post #44
devinprater wrote: post #9

Apple just has to make a Siri key on their MacBooks. They'll then be so number one they might go passed 1 into 0, and then -1, ETC. /s

that already exists, its the microphone button

Not even needed, you can set up "Hey Siri" on macOS too and just talk to it.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#88

Post by paradox242 »

tivert wrote: post #22
sho_hn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so one of those technologies potentially saves people time and levels the playing field by enabling the use of computers with less special training to achieve equivalent results. The other one aims to strap screens to other people's faces to keep them even longer in a perpetually-online computer bubble of their own choosing, because that's been going great for society so far.

> Ok, so one of those technologies potentially saves people time and levels the playing field by enabling the use of computers with less special training to achieve equivalent results. Did you forget allowing the sum total of human knowledge to be swamped by dogshit, because it allows for the creation of dogshit at scale more cheaply than ever before?

Once content generation has been completely commoditized the platforms relying on user submitted content will collapse under the sheer weight of AI generate trash. Part spam, part DDoS, the bad will drive out the good until we settle at some even lower equilibrium than we are at now. There will be a strong incentive to find solutions with technology and regulation to determine who the actual humans are on the internet.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#89

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

Sad. Microsoft, after advancing the state of consumer-oriented computing more than anyone else through the '90s, is now a despicable anti-customer troll.

Nothing epitomizes that more than the reduction of all users to a goddamned "Microsoft account" that nobody wants. You can't use or even install Windows now unless you do so as a "Microsoft account," lest you be hounded day and night to log in, log IN, LOG IN WITH YOUR "MICROSOFT ACCOUNT!!!!"

Office365 is subscription trash with hopelessly inept UI. Windows itself is a depressing shitshow of UI defects and... I was going to say half-baked... but in reality NO ideas.

I was a professional developer on Windows from the days of separate 16- and 32-bit versions of Visual C++, eventually leading what was (according to Microsoft, as far as they knew) the largest Visual C++ project of the early/mid-'90s. You could have called me an evangelist for most of their products. I continued using Visual Studio until the mid-2000s, even while working at Apple.

Today I don't have a single installation of Windows running in my home (which is also my business). I'm a pilot, and I want to use MS Flight Simulator, but not even that is enough to get me to buy an Intel box and tolerate the disgusting abuse that is being a Microsoft Windows user. There's simply no excuse for the execrable state of Windows, Microsoft's other product offerings, and the way they treat users. Fuck Microsoft.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#90

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

CommanderData wrote: post #86

Apple needs to become a player in the cloud space. OS agnostic just like the other three big players. It's a big mistake they didn't invest in the space earlier.

That's an absurdly vague declaration. What do you want them to do "in the cloud space?"
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