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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

#111

Post by dartharva »

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?

> 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?

What does that even mean? When has human knowledge ever gotten "swamped" by the capability of creating newer content?

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#112

Post by dartharva »

tiffanyh wrote: post #28

Bill Gates, at time of IPO owned 49% of Microsoft. If he hadn’t sold his stock, he’d be worth ~$1.5 Trillion To put that into context, he'd be worth 6x Elon Musk (who's the current riches person-in-the-world) https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-gates-could-trillionaire... .

Who knows, Microsoft probably wouldn't have reached its current heights if less people had enough stakes.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#113

Post by dartharva »

vrc wrote: post #36
riley333 wrote: post #17

Apple just needs to do SOMETHING exciting with AI. Vision Pro looks great, but it's only a small piece of a much larger puzzle. I'm not sure if they're just too big to move at the speed they need to move or if it's something more damning about their internal culture but they need to do something in this space faster than I think most people realize.

I'm just waiting for Siri to reliably set timers when I'm cooking. Between my watch and my phone, it's a damn nightmare to actually do the most basic thing with what should be a ubiquitous AI platform. They've had ages to make it better and some great minds in their employ, and yet they've really not done much. That said, if and when they do, they have immediate distribution and proof points to sell oodles more of th…

"A nightmare" really? For something as trivial as that? Why not just buy a physical timer then?

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#114

Post by dartharva »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #89

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 Y…

Microsoft was never consumer-oriented, it was always a B2B/Enterprise-catering firm. They only tolerate retail customers because they don't want us getting used to something else.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#115

Post by seuraughty »

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.

You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#116

Post by yunwal »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #110
yunwal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple Pencil is an example of a nicely designed product that Steve Jobs almost certainly did not contribute to (he hated styluses).

That's sarcasm, right? Surely you're not lauding this asinine peripheral that is supposed to be jammed into a fragile port to recharge while sticking out like a chopstick waiting to be snapped off. Surely you're not lauding a near-useless gimmick that inexplicably doesn't work on the (defectively) giant trackpads of Apple's own computers... or most of their iPads.

Im referring to the 2nd gen, never really saw the first gen until now but the charging method now is quite nice.

First gen still is no worse than first-gen Magic Mouse, which launched under jobs though. Which is my main point, I don’t think Jobs was solely responsible for apple’s focus on design

> Near-useless gimmick

Man, millions of procreate enthusiasts would beg to disagree

> doesn’t work on the giant trackpads

Does anyone who stops to think about this for more than 2 seconds actually want this? What would you use it for besides digital signatures? Writing-to-text is just barely usable on tablets, I can’t see it being viable when you can’t see what you’re writing.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#117

Post by nineteen999 »

another2another wrote: post #103
nineteen999 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People forget that Apple of today probably wouldn't be around if Microsoft hadn't given them $150M to save them from bankruptcy in 1997[1]. With the introduction of IE in 1995 and its deep integration into Win95 and ruthless take-no-prisoners assault on Netscape, Microsoft was probably already aware that they were starting to resemble a monopoly, given Apple's poor sales and market share at the time. My personal take…

>probably wouldn't be around if Microsoft hadn't given them $150M to save them from bankruptcy in 1997 I'm _pretty_ sure Apple could have gotten the money from elsewhere if they really had to. It's history now, so we'll never know for sure, but I'd bet that they could have found other investors if they really had to. People seem to think it's a black and white scenario - money from MS or death! But I don't think it e…

The 70's through 90's were littered with the corpses of computer companies that were outcompeted and never recovered - the IBM PC/DOS/Windows 3.x effectively killed not only the competing CP/M (8080/Z80) market for PC's, but outcompeted the Amiga, Atari ST, and of course the entire 8-bit market was obsoleted by the 16-bit 80[2]86. Apple's struggle to enhance MacOS to keep up (vs Win95/NT juggernaut) at that time are well documented. At least Apple still had some brand recognition, so maybe you are right.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#118

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

yunwal wrote: post #116
ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sarcasm, right? Surely you're not lauding this asinine peripheral that is supposed to be jammed into a fragile port to recharge while sticking out like a chopstick waiting to be snapped off. Surely you're not lauding a near-useless gimmick that inexplicably doesn't work on the (defectively) giant trackpads of Apple's own computers... or most of their iPads.

Im referring to the 2nd gen, never really saw the first gen until now but the charging method now is quite nice. First gen still is no worse than first-gen Magic Mouse, which launched under jobs though. Which is my main point, I don’t think Jobs was solely responsible for apple’s focus on design > Near-useless gimmick Man, millions of procreate enthusiasts would beg to disagree > doesn’t work on the giant trackpads D…

For sure, the "Magic" mouse is another Apple entry in the Hall of Peripheral Shame.

"Does anyone who stops to think about this for more than 2 seconds actually want this?"

Really? Have you ever heard of Wacom? They built an entire company on people who want this, and it has been in business for decades. And of course you can see what you're writing, right there on the screen! The surface area of current Apple laptop trackpads is 33% larger than that of a Wacom Intuos tablet: https://i.imgur.com/D8pmsTC.jpeg

It has nothing to do with handwriting recognition, either. That's another area where Apple failed spectacularly to make the Pencil useful. All they had to do is add a single-character writing area to the standard keyboard on the iPad, as was nailed in the '90s by Palm. That way, ALL applications would have immediately have gotten handwriting-entry capability. Instead, Apple left it up to every application developer to implement it separately. Baffling.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#119

Post by al_borland »

yunwal wrote: post #116
ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sarcasm, right? Surely you're not lauding this asinine peripheral that is supposed to be jammed into a fragile port to recharge while sticking out like a chopstick waiting to be snapped off. Surely you're not lauding a near-useless gimmick that inexplicably doesn't work on the (defectively) giant trackpads of Apple's own computers... or most of their iPads.

Im referring to the 2nd gen, never really saw the first gen until now but the charging method now is quite nice. First gen still is no worse than first-gen Magic Mouse, which launched under jobs though. Which is my main point, I don’t think Jobs was solely responsible for apple’s focus on design > Near-useless gimmick Man, millions of procreate enthusiasts would beg to disagree > doesn’t work on the giant trackpads D…

>First gen still is no worse than first-gen Magic Mouse, which launched under jobs though. Which is my main point, I don’t think Jobs was solely responsible for apple’s focus on design

The first-gen Magic Mouse used AA batteries and did not have the charging issue of the current Magic Mouse. The second-gen Magic Mouse, with an internal battery and the horribly designed charging port, was released in 2015, 4 years after Jobs died.

Jobs was largely responsible for Apple's obsessive focus on design, even if he didn't design everything himself. He positioned Jony Ive to be #2 at the top of the company, no other company (other than maybe a strict design firm) is going to have a design person be 2nd in command after the CEO. He also famously reviewed each thing that was going out the door and it had to meet his standard of design. This goes far back, here is a story from when they were designing the original Macintosh, they handed the design to Jobs, because he kept rejecting all their designs.

https://www.folklore.org/Calculator_Construction_Set.html

Of course there were misses under Jobs well, no one is perfect. The mouse the shipped with the G3 iMac, while it may have looked good in a press photo, was not great to use. That said, I have a hard time believing Jobs would have let the changing of the first Apple Pencil or the second-gen Magic Mouse out the door. They are so awkward. Even the newest pencil, plugging it in with a cord is weird compared the elegance of the second-gen Pencil.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#120

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

al_borland wrote: post #119
yunwal wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im referring to the 2nd gen, never really saw the first gen until now but the charging method now is quite nice. First gen still is no worse than first-gen Magic Mouse, which launched under jobs though. Which is my main point, I don’t think Jobs was solely responsible for apple’s focus on design > Near-useless gimmick Man, millions of procreate enthusiasts would beg to disagree > doesn’t work on the giant trackpads D…

>First gen still is no worse than first-gen Magic Mouse, which launched under jobs though. Which is my main point, I don’t think Jobs was solely responsible for apple’s focus on design The first-gen Magic Mouse used AA batteries and did not have the charging issue of the current Magic Mouse. The second-gen Magic Mouse, with an internal battery and the horribly designed charging port, was released in 2015, 4 years aft…

Jony Ive presided over the worst usefulness/usability regressions and design blunders in the history of Apple. That guy is a pompous hack who, in the end, had no ideas for the advancement of products. His only M.O. was to take functionality away, with the excuse of making whatever the product was "thinner."
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