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How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

nytimes.com

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Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#41

Post by bluthru »

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…

>They have top engineering and research chops; just look at the new goggles and a lot of their labs projects. MSDN is a wealth of free knowledge.

A common comparison between MS and Apple is that MS pours a lot of money into R&D and makes a lot of forward-looking videos. Meanwhile Apple is laser-focused, spends way less on R&D, and ships.

Microsoft lost a decade, and you feel that MS is more substantial in computing? Are you sure they're not just tugging at your geeky heartstrings?

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#42

Post by PhoenixWright »

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…

I'm just under thirty and feel the same way. Microsoft has garnered a lot of good will from young devs through programs like MSDN and DreamSpark. I remember being in school and hearing everyone talk about their MSDN accounts and being able play around with dev tools like VS and SQL Server. I also love working with C# on .NET.

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#43

Post by xorcist »

peteretep wrote: post #33
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.

That's the big challenge for Apple right there. It's a one trick pony, stock-wise, with an enormous valuation. It's not at all obvious where to go from there.

They need to diversify even more but that means either back to their computer roots, which would be devastating to the stock price, or find even greener pastures than one of the most commercially successful products on Earth.

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#44

Post by pjmlp »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #25
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…

> Apple had the hardware and were providing the software thus locking out any competitors from their platform. Lockout is one way of looking at it. Another way is that it gives them the ability to make things integrate extremely well. Seamless integration like Apple does is extremely difficult to achieve without complete control of the ecosystem. > Not to mention, they were focusing on the design aspect of the device…

> Everything Apple makes looks and feels beautiful.

I don't care how beautiful it looks if I cannot buy a CPU/GPU combo that I really need, nor if the only way to agree on device data requires some brain damaged software.

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#45

Post by arandomafrican »

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…

Probably not.

Because you'll only make money if the stock stops being undervalued. And there's no sign that the reasons it's undervalued will change any time soon.

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#46

Post by CmonDev »

erikj wrote: post #30
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…

The 1984 commercial wasn't about "openness", it was about the looming x86 monoculture in personal computing and the market dominance of IBM. Before showing the commerical at the 1983 keynote, Steve Jobs said: "Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry? The entire information age? Was George Orwell right about 1984?"

Can I build my own device with an access to AppStore? Now that's a monoculture.

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#47

Post by bhandziuk »

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...

True, these are very open standards. Microsoft even provides a pretty good xml editing tool to inspect a docx of xlsx or whatever once it is made to see how it is made https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/bb448854(v=o...

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#48

Post by WorldWideWayne »

bluthru wrote: post #41
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…

>They have top engineering and research chops; just look at the new goggles and a lot of their labs projects. MSDN is a wealth of free knowledge. A common comparison between MS and Apple is that MS pours a lot of money into R&D and makes a lot of forward-looking videos. Meanwhile Apple is laser-focused, spends way less on R&D, and ships. Microsoft lost a decade, and you feel that MS is more substantial in computing?…

I feel like we're comparing a consumer electronics business to an enterprise software company though, so there are bound to be some stylistic differences.

And Microsoft ships more products than Apple does. I don't want to turn this into one of "those" posts because I'm sure you can find a list of products (and versions) that Microsoft has shipped over the past decade including the Surface line, which positively out-classes Apple's iPad.

How can you say that they "lost a decade"? Where you see "laser focus" I see lack of options. Where Microsoft has 3 products that cover a broad range of use cases that people actually need, I see Apple with 1 product that covers only the most common use cases. It's really nice for Apple's bottom line, but it's also the same reason that most businesses don't use Apple computers.

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#49

Post by pmelendez »

bluthru wrote: post #41
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…

>They have top engineering and research chops; just look at the new goggles and a lot of their labs projects. MSDN is a wealth of free knowledge. A common comparison between MS and Apple is that MS pours a lot of money into R&D and makes a lot of forward-looking videos. Meanwhile Apple is laser-focused, spends way less on R&D, and ships. Microsoft lost a decade, and you feel that MS is more substantial in computing?…

> "Microsoft lost a decade "

Did it though? MS has been pretty strong in the enterprise. Also is the same decade of Xbox and Kinect.

Re: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

#50

Post by pmelendez »

YorkianTones wrote: post #36
jkot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/ap…

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

It is very interesting how MS is the only one that have different basket of eggs. If Google ever lose relevance in the online Ads market then it's done. The same can be say of Apple (in a lesser degree) if the iphone becomes irrelevant.

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