Live data from Hacker News

Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

thenextweb.com

51–60 of 82 posts

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you actually try to defend prostitution? Would you defend murder and rape too? Both are crimes, both are immoral, both are as old as hills.

What is inherently immoral with prostitution? Unlike murder and rape, it is a victimless crime and is in fact legal in many countries.

Oddly enough it would be victimless if it was legal and regulated.

But since it isn't in many countries it is a haven for people trafficking, child prostitution, kidnapping, drug abuse etc. The sooner we shine a light on these darker parts of society the better everyone will be.

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#52

Can anybody say "bubble"? It's clear to most people Apple isn't worth the money the stock markets assign it - well over half their cap is investment in the brand. If they ever do anything to damage that or if they do something even remotely wrong, a whole lot of people are going to lose a whole lot of money.

Why do you think the stock is overvalued? They only trade at 15 x earnings, so the cap is very much aligned with earnings and growth, i really see nothing in the stock price, that indicates a brand factor. If you compare it to Google, they trade at 20 x earnings.. and have less growth...

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#53
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: I see nothing innovative with the list of devices you mentioned - 'The new iPad', 'Retina MBP', etc. They are just iterations of previous devices with a higher resolution. The iPad mini is old news, because it is just following the path the Nexus 7 has set. Nothing innovative here. Many talk about fragmentation on Android all the time, just wait and see how much fragmentation, nightmares and hell this Retina re…

The Retina resolution 'issue' has been solved and well understood for a while now. You simply create two images one at original and one at @2x.

I'm a designer myself and what you're telling me is not a 'fix', it is a maintainability nightmare.

http://tablettrends.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/the-retina-ipad...

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#54

Apple has become the big bully a-hole company that Microsoft used to be (perhaps even worse). Apple always was the little guy and had it's faithful niche market. It was the "underdog" that everyone rooted (or at least deep down felt a bit felt sorry for). Now it has "sold out" and gone mainstream. It has become a greedy corporate giant and with it's figurehead now out of the picture - it's image has begun to tarnish…

Apple does NOT have a patent on rectangles or rounded corners.

And there is no evidence that Apple's image hasn't been tarnished at all in the eyes of the general public. I see no reason that the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini will again be record breaking sellers for Apple this year.

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#55
post #13
post #4

Seriously, I'm tired of all this BS. What matters for a real company is how they stand to innovate, not how much they make. Right now, Apple's strategy seems to be more of 'litigate' than innovate. What's the use of all this market cap by exercising unfair, unjust monopoly by abusing the patent system with trivial, BS patents? I know a lot of companies that don't make a lot of money but strive for true innovation (Eg…

first of all I don't think its wise to really say demeaning words about some profession (its the oldest profession and still running many people's house). secondly, there is nothing like an obvious patent, if a patent is defensible then its very much obvious that it wasn't obvious. Remember, Apple hasn't won a case against a small startup. Samsung in itself is a pretty big company and has all the resources to fight A…

Apple has won a jury trial in its own backyard against a Korean company. Now, I do understand the anger among the people of California about Samsung copying their home side's products so brazenly. But a patriotic statement like that isn't exactly what I find very relevant when making up my own mind up about the merit of those patents or the merits of the US patent system.

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#56
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're being way too pedantic here. With your definition you could argue that truly nothing is innovative then... From Wikipedia: Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments, and society. You don't think Apple fits that definition?

By that definition, Samsung is more innovative than Apple- 4.8 Inch Display vs 3.5 Inch Quad core processor vs Dual Core processor 4g vs 3g And, no lawsuits from Samsung. Who is more innovative, now?

But why is bigger, more and faster automatically better or more innovative? All three of your hardware choices (assuming the lower level details are understood) have a direct worsening impact on battery life for example and so need to be chosen and used wisely.

The innovation in a modern handheld device is about so much more than the base hardware spec.

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#57
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're being way too pedantic here. With your definition you could argue that truly nothing is innovative then... From Wikipedia: Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments, and society. You don't think Apple fits that definition?

By that definition, Samsung is more innovative than Apple- 4.8 Inch Display vs 3.5 Inch Quad core processor vs Dual Core processor 4g vs 3g And, no lawsuits from Samsung. Who is more innovative, now?

CPU cores as a performance metric between two very different platforms.

Makes sense to me.

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#58
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last decade they've been innovative, yes, but I think your examples from this year are pretty obvious iterative improvements on their current product lines. PG expounded on this once, as well: I was talking recently to someone who knew Apple well, and I asked him if the people now running the company would be able to keep creating new things the way Apple had under Steve Jobs. His answer was simply "no." I alr…

Well obviously whoever Paul talked to is clueless about Apple. All of Apple's products from now through the next year or two was designed and developed when Steve Jobs was alive as was revealed in his biography. So this idea that Apple is somehow on their way down is ridiculous. Also all of Apple's releases for the last few years have been iterative.

> All of Apple's products from now through the next year or two was designed and developed when Steve Jobs was alive as was revealed in his biography.

I'm not sure why you think this statement essentially disagrees with grandparent comment. All this says it that there's some backlog. What happens after one year or two?

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#59
post #11

Market cap means nothing though. Facebook's size measured this way was bigger than all the publicly listed supermarkets in the UK combined, yet Facebook makes less profit than each of them individually.

> Market cap means nothing though.

Well, it does. If it didn't, then the stock market would mean nothing.

Market cap reflects the present value of future cashflows (basically future profits). Supermarkets tend to have very low profit margins, and there are physical and regulatory limits to their growth. The stock market is reflecting investors' prediction that Facebook's future profits will be bigger than several supermarket chains' combined. If you have reason to believe that is false, try and short $x worth of Facebook stock while buying $x worth of UK supermarkets stock. (Actually it's a bit more complicated than that in practice due to different currencies etc, so don't do it at home.)

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#60
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would, happily. I dread the times we no longer have a choice to type on a physical keyboard. Not one Android/iOS phone would now convince me to throw away my N900.

I was just trying to say that someone would have made touchscreen as primary input method. Sorry for the ambiguous statement. But, I could've argued in your direction too - I really miss physical keyboard. Typing on touchscreen is just plain wrong, imho.

i had a sony p910 some years ago, that had an optional keyboard but i never used it, character recognition (as in one character at a time ocr) actually worked, I was quicker on that than i am with swype etc now, it was awesome.
Post reply on HN