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How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

nytimes.com

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Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#31

Post by melling »

thomasz wrote: post #26
melling wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I can't seem to find Microsoft's file formats for Excel and Word published anywhere. Microsoft is open source where it doesn't really matter, as far as the market is concerned. Btw, Apple has never been open source. And they only have 5% desktop market share worldwide. Pretend that mobile doesn't exist. The "PC" world hasn't changed much in 20 years. Mac is more accepted but they're just a rounding error compa…

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecm...

Yes, you're missing something.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#32

Post by yuhong »

jkot wrote: post #22
Rapzid wrote: post #10

Is interesting but now Microsoft is the more open company and Apple is IBM from the 1984 commercial. Maybe I'm just older, but now at 30 I'm much more of into Microsoft than when I was a teenager(I never really got on the hate M$ bandwagon though). What they have been doing with Azure and .NET ecosystems is great. They have top engineering and research chops; just look at the new goggles and a lot of their labs proje…

MS must be open to survive. It is being crushed by opensource. And they still put DRM where it maters (EFI).

Secure Boot isn't really DRM.

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#33

Post by peteretep »

guelo wrote: post #13

An article about how and why Apple overtook Microsoft would be interesting but this was not it.

Actually, the answer is right there in the story, and it's one word: iPhone.

    > the iPhone accounted for 69 percent of its revenue
Without the iPhone, Apple would still be huge, but they'd just be a luxury computer maker who dabbled in some portables, and there would be no talk at all of having passed Microsoft.

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#34

Post by mahyarm »

capkutay wrote: post #11
thewarrior wrote: post #5

>> But he noted that by many measures, Apple shares appeared to be a bargain. “The valuation is still inexpensive,” he said. “It’s less than 13 times next year’s earnings and less than 10 times cash flow,” both below the market average. “Those are very low multiples. They have $140 billion in cash on the balance sheet and they’re generating $60 billion in cash a year. All the numbers are just enormous, which is hard…

I don't know...I'm a relatively young investor. I started investing in 2009, bought a bunch of apple and google stock. Now I feel like the market is inflated like crazy and I'm afraid to touch anything. Am I being irrational or is it normal to see these types of cycles? Anyways, if you want my unsolicited stock advice, I think Tesla still has a lot of upside. The way I see it, it has a $25b market cap where as a lot…

Until you can make signifcantly more money off the returns of a broad index fund vs. your near future salary, it's not worth the labor to try to beat the most well capitalized and skilled finance firms in the world in the stock market.

So if you can make 250k/yr and you get a %5 net return from an index fund, it's not worth it to play stock investor until you have $5mm in the bank.

So if you have $300k in the bank, the constant hours of life, labor and anxiety might get you +%5 more return than usual (doubtful) and you've spent a huge amount of hours to make an extra $15k that year. It usually ends up less than minimum wage and you were better off just doing contract programming work on the side.

And the reason why the stock market is inflated like crazy is because central governments of the world have been printing money like crazy with QE everywhere, and it has to go somewhere...

Just buy an index fund, your going to have a relatively large amount of apple stock indirectly as a result anyway.

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#35

Post by PhoenixWright »

The same argument could be mad about Google and search. I don't think Microsoft will ever come out with something as big as Windows. Nor do I believe Apple will top the iPhone. For the next great profit generating product I'd bet on existing companies that aren't bogged down by legacy products. Maybe Facebook with Oculus or Amazon with AWS?

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#36

Post by YorkianTones »

jkot wrote: post #22
Rapzid wrote: post #10

Is interesting but now Microsoft is the more open company and Apple is IBM from the 1984 commercial. Maybe I'm just older, but now at 30 I'm much more of into Microsoft than when I was a teenager(I never really got on the hate M$ bandwagon though). What they have been doing with Azure and .NET ecosystems is great. They have top engineering and research chops; just look at the new goggles and a lot of their labs proje…

MS must be open to survive. It is being crushed by opensource. And they still put DRM where it maters (EFI).

I think Microsoft was being squeezed out of new markets by Google and Apple. I'm not sure how accurate it is to say Microsoft "is being crushed by opensource (sic)". Also, despite being overshadowed by other tech companies, Microsoft's business lines are healthy and growing.

Stacking up Microsoft versus Apple, their businesses are fundamentally different - see exhibit: https://visualign.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/applemicrosoft...

Interestingly Apple (Hardware), Google (Ads), and Microsoft (Software) are quite dominant in different business areas. While Microsoft needs to keep a close watch on Google and Apple encroaching, I think AWS is a bigger rival in terms of growth opportunity.

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#37

Post by swift »

Dwolb wrote: post #17
DigitalSea wrote: post #12

The easiest explanation of what happened was Microsoft were a software company who had all of their eggs in one basket relying upon third parties to use their operating system and consumers/enterprise to use their products like Microsoft Office. Whereas Apple started out as both a hardware and software company, first computers and then portable music players (iPod), watches (iWatch) and phones (iPhone). This is where…

I think you're not giving MS enough credit. The pieces of the story that are missing are IBM and Intel. IBM was the only firm in the world at the time that were able to integrate a working computer. To do so at a price that was appropriate for the home, IBM had to outsource large pieces of the project, both the CPU and OS. MS and Intel were brilliant to allow substitutes for the early IBM computers to rise to market…

> IBM was the only firm in the world at the time that were able to integrate a working computer.

I don't understand what you mean by this. A variety of personal computers were already on the market when the IBM PC came out, including models from Apple, Tandy, and Commodore.

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#38

Post by weego »

jkot wrote: post #22
Rapzid wrote: post #10

Is interesting but now Microsoft is the more open company and Apple is IBM from the 1984 commercial. Maybe I'm just older, but now at 30 I'm much more of into Microsoft than when I was a teenager(I never really got on the hate M$ bandwagon though). What they have been doing with Azure and .NET ecosystems is great. They have top engineering and research chops; just look at the new goggles and a lot of their labs proje…

MS must be open to survive. It is being crushed by opensource. And they still put DRM where it maters (EFI).

My view has been they were losing hearts and minds in the dev community and that using dual licensed or open products as leverage in price negotiations was becoming more common. It felt like much more of a slow bleed.

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#39

Post by PhoenixWright »

avelis wrote: post #14

I think in some ways Microsoft lost its dominance by focusing on the wrong competition. Microsoft Bing is a great example of Microsoft trying to become a company it wasn't. (i.e. Google) In my perspective, Apple dialed in it's focus, avoided the same pitfalls, and came out a dominant player in a market not many were focused to innovate on. (i.e. smartphones).

I agree. Microsoft wasted great opportunities by trying to copy Google. I really think they've fixed that however. Microsoft seems to have its own identity as of late.

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#40

Post by seanmcdirmid »

rch wrote: post #8
dodyg wrote: post #6

Apple had the grit, conviction and endurance to see it all through. I mean everybody wrote them off in the mid 90's.

By the late 90's the tide had turned back in Apple's favor though. I was more into AltiVec than iMacs, but the G4 was really a nice box.

The G4 era was actually kind of gut wrenching. I mean, when the G5 was announced (2004?), I was excited that I might actually get a decent replacement for my powerbook...but I had to wait a long time...until 2007 actually, for the x86 macbooks to come out (incidentally, the iPhone came out at the same time). I would say 2007 is where they really turned their trajectory way upwards.
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