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IBM Unseats Microsoft As Second Most Valued Tech Company
First time accepted submitter FlatEric521 writes "The BBC is reporting that for the first time since 1996 IBM's market value has exceeded Microsoft's. The values cap a sustained period in which IBM's share price has moved steadily upward as Microsoft's has generally been in decline. Of course, Apple is still the #1 company by far."
IBM is worth more to the U.S. government then INTEL, Apple, and Microsoft combined.
It doesn't count because they don't own any of Apple at all.
They did purchase $150 million of non-voting stock as part of a court settlement many, many years ago, but they sold it a long time ago.
So IBM will be number 1 soon.
Really though. This isn't news for nerds.
Deleted
Even if they did, it would count and in no way contradict this.
And so Anonymous Coward learns of the concept of the "convergent series".
Macs are professional machines. The Power macs cost about $3,000 and are used as scientific workstations, and advanced video editing. Smaller businesses use Macs in Europe and run Office on them. Especially businesses that do design.
True they are leaving their roots but Macs are popular in business and where I used to work at the Anchorage School District, they have like 30,000 macs in use in both servers and classrooms.
http://saveie6.com/
Why doesn't anyone else take their laptops and add an aluminum case and 50% markup?
404: sig not found.
Steve, the legs of that chair sticking through your office window say otherwise.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Apple is the largest tech company followed by IBM and Microsoft, if measured by how much the stock market thinks each company is valued at. It is a completely meaningless metric that does not say anything about either company. The stock market is detached from the real world and how well a company's stock is doing is not proportional to how well that company is doing.
Football Odds
What happened to the last time this happened?
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/05/22/0232216/ibm-now-officially-worth-more-than-microsoft
MS doesn't have innovative growth plan. Instead what they do is wait and watch which next computing trend is going to get big and they go after it (i.e. Bing, Xbox, smart phone and tablet with multi touch, enterprise services, zune) The problem is once they're way behind it is very hard to get enough market share and a lot of these investments are not giving enough ROI.
I always find this a little absurd. Steve Jobs said it best: "We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose." The same basic sentiment goes here. The fact that Apple and IBM are doing better than Microsoft doesn't mean Microsoft is in trouble. They're making more money than ever, despite slashdot predictions of doom and gloom continuing since they made a fraction of what they do now.
That doesn't mean Microsoft isn't in trouble but there's really nothing about "not being the richest in the world" that means "dying".
It's extremely difficult for a major company to sustain its business leadership after its founder leaves. IBM was fortunate they had a son at the helm who was every bit as smart as his father. After the son the company lost its way but then found a new, better path after huge, painful adjustments. That's the exception, though. Apple had a near-death experience losing Steve Jobs, but the founder returned and put Apple back on track. It'll be interesting to see what happens now that Tim Cook is in charge, but we won't know the impact for several years. Likewise, Microsoft has yet to prove it can prosper in its post-founder era, and that experiment has been running a lot longer now. True, Ballmer has been with Microsoft a long time, but he's no Bill Gates, Thomas Watson (Jr. or Sr.), Steve Jobs, or even Lou Gerstner/Sam Palmisano.
Do you really believe that dribble or are you trying to be modded up? You're saying their old products are so good no one is buying their new products? Do you know how much profitable software they sell besides OSs and Office? ERP systems are a huge market for Microsoft and still a small part of what they sell. Poor Microsoft indeed.
"say, i couldnt help but notice you are trying to sell a mobile phone. all sorts of people might want to sue you over that, you know, what with patents and all. why dont you pay us, say, 10% of your income, and we can arrange it sos nobody patent sues you?"
there are 'people in washington' who might not approve of your 'tone'.
Too bad they pretty much ditched the server market.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Microsoft isn't in trouble. And as for hurting sales... Sales haven't ever declined, not a single year -- ever. Go spread your FUD elsewhere, the actual numbers are easy to see if you look.
And a PC that runs rings around an Apple-branded PC costs about 2k$. Seriously, when I built this computer, I cut a lot of corners, and it was still far higher in every spec than the best Apple had on the market. You're paying easily 30-40% of the price just for it being an iDevice.
"Macs are popular in business"
Graphics, music, and some small forays into movie production (although the real work still happens on Windows and the processing on Linux). Business-business, that being, engineering, finance, healthcare, point of sale, etc, still are Windows or Linux only clubs. For very, very good reason.
Great Intellect...
In the form of "Microsoft either needs to move everything else to India, or O/S, Office, and development tools should be split apart and individually sold off to enhance shareholder value. We can call what is left DEC."
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Numbers I see from www.cnn.com and others show PC sales lagging. Offices have been cutting back on upgrades and using older versions of software. I have not seen a single article stating that sales are actually increasing from MS in a long time. That was true 10 years ago, but not today.
In 2000 and earlier people upgraded WIndows and Office every 2-3 years. Now the standard life cycle is well over 5-7 years with people hanging on to Windows XP for life. The cost accountants in these organizations have noticed and they like it. Windows 3.0 did not have anything near 40% of the market when XP came out, likewise 10 years later 40% still have XP etc. Those numbers say a lot and equal lost sales.
Also please do not count the sales of new pcs as proof that Windows Vista is catching on, when corporations wipe them and use their old Windows XP volume license. Even if you include those numbers desktops and notebooks are on a big decline. The Ipad is part of that reason and so are some smart phones.
http://saveie6.com/
Part of that is that neither IBM nor Apple have been under DoJ supervision for the last decade, which tends to put them at a bit of a competitive advantage when it comes to pushing for growth. MS got slapped for going for other markets beyond Windows and Word. Granted they were going at it in an anti-competitive manner, but MS historically has only known how to grow via those sorts of sleazeball tactics.
That being said, Apple did have the good fortune of having a decade where the DoJ didn't believe in antitrust regulation where they were allowed to engage in questionable tactics to grow their business.
I love how you personify companies as people, much like countries do. I ask you to name a single IBM employee that was in the company at the time. I'd actually be somewhat skeptical if there are any active employees that were alive for said event.
Bye!
Apple is the largest tech company followed by IBM and Microsoft, if measured by how much the stock market thinks each company is valued at. It is a completely meaningless metric that does not say anything about either company. The stock market is detached from the real world and how well a company's stock is doing is not proportional to how well that company is doing.
Stock prices are not meaningless, they are simply misunderstood and misused. They are not a measurement of how a company is currently doing, they are an estimate of how a company will be doing in the future. The current state is just one of several variables that goes into that estimate. Regrettably when an estimate reflects a relatively large change in either direction, good or bad, speculators pile on and inflate or deflate that price. Apple is far more vulnerable to such speculation than IBM. As suggested by their respective beta's, 0.7 for IBM and 1.3 for Apple.
... You don't see anything meaningful or reflective of the real world in these numbers?
While far from perfect stock prices are meaningful in a normalized form like the P/E ratio. Apple at a P/E of 15, IBM at 14, Microsoft at 9, HP at 5,
Perhaps I'm old fashioned but for current health I like metrics based upon cash flows. A little more difficult to engineer than EBITDA.
Just out of curiosity, what precisely does that have to do with anything? Are individuals that were involved with the company back then still running it? Is there even a single employee working there that was employed by IBM at the time?
It's about as relevant to IBMs continuing operations as Henry Ford's known support of the Nazis.
Microsoft and Apple simply didn't exist at the time, so that is an unfair comparison. Knowing that you want to be a fair person, I ask you this... What countries have Microsoft and Apple refused to do business with because of human rights violations?
And the ironic thing is that Microsoft is the chief reason why that happened. They switched to Software Assurance after XP and Office 2003 came out and then, with a steady source of income from people buying in each year, the pressure was off and they took forever to put out Vista and Office 2007. Then of course Vista had horrible performance and there was that whole Vista Ready sticker fiasco. Thus decision makers held off on upgrades, so that by the time Windows 7 came out, companies had already been making do with no changes for half a decade, They had stayed off the upgrade treadmill and the world had not ended.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
It's not about sales. It's about profit (and profit growth). Wal-Mart generates far more revenue than Microsoft, but Microsoft has a market capitalization that's currently about $30 billion higher. Wall Street is concerned about Microsoft's potential for future profit growth, and that's not wrong. For example, Microsoft is going to find it increasingly difficult to collect its high Windows taxes in light of devices such as $199 Amazon Kindle Fires running Android.
Calculate the effect of the iPhone 5 being banned from europe vs the next Galaxy phone from Samsung. This battle is raging right now. For Apple, this is a major part of their business, it brings in a lion share of their profit.
For Samsung? They got plenty of other ventures, a block will hurt their bottom line but not in any significant way. Samsung is larger then Apple in many ways BUT not that much larger, it is just far more diversified.
It isn't fair to say Apple if a bubble stock because Apple isn't to blame for how much outsiders are willing to pay for its shares but during the bubble companies with promise were valued over companies with results. Had an ordinary factory turning out a steady profit for several centuries and wanted an investment during the internet bubble? NOT INTERESTED, burning through investor capitol like it was bonfire night, that was the ticket to get the investors piling their cash on the fires.
Apple if of course not doing that at all but what is its value based upon? A very narrow product line that depends on an economic climate in which people are willing to splurge.
Now whether this is a successful strategy depends on what you think the economic crisis is having and going to have. SOME seem to think that ALL people will feel the pain but this hasn't been the case. The crisis has hit hard but Apple is doing very well indeed. The real result of the crisis seems to be that the divide between have's and have not's is increasing. The iPhone buying bankiers got their social wellfare benefits and the factory workers have to sell of their house to pay for it. The rich not only kept their money, they got more of it. More to spend on more gadgets while the poor got less but they already didn't have enough to buy them anyway. So, some will steal them, getting the rich to buy even more...
Meanwhile poor Samsung has to actually pay its employees decent wages and run factory after factory with middle class (No republicans, middle class does NOT include people making 250.000 or more per year) workers...
Valuing Apple high makes more and more sense, since the valuing is done by the rich who got their wellfare check over the working man's back.
Apples stock will only crumble once the poor of America realize that the American Dream is the opiate of the masses and rise up. And that won't happen. Apple got EXACTLY the right business model for the USA. Poor Americans.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Apple's machine runs Apple's software. Something else doesn't. The value is in the software (and the content), customers recognize that, and so does Wall Street. It's really quite simple. The number that Wall Street assigns to the value of a company is far, far removed from the number of gigahertz in that company's products. Apple has found multiple winning formulas in its products, while Microsoft is struggling to deliver compelling products right now.
Monied might be more appropriate. I doubt that either MicroSoft or IBM are "valued" by anybody. They are simply players.
They did once. If they'd held it that bit would double their value now. But they lacked vision, then as now.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Lacked vision? Who would have thought that people would have been so stupid to buy en-masse the mp3 player with the worse usability among all those on the market? (unless you had a missing arm, that's it) Who would have thought that later people would buy en-masse a phone that was good at everything else but making phone calls? at a premium price and locked down? Come on...
Oh, yeah. They should have bought into Plays For Now, or Zune and they didn't. What fools they are! They should have grasped that brass ring when it was before them, and now they could be enjoying the rapture of Windows Phone's one percent market share. after having sold their soul to the devil to get there like Nokia is doing.
Um, no. Not just no, but Fuck no. Are you fucking kidding? I saw this movie and it doesn't end well. It's a sole survivor flick where even the survivor is tortured.
But it's different now because Microsoft has grown warm and fuzzy.
Fuck you. We've had that story a thousand times, and it's a faustian bargain every time. The devil treats only when it's his advantage to do so. Make a deal with him, and he gets your soul. That's how it works.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
What has Microsoft got to give but a halt to progress to preserve their control? Diddly. Is that enough? Maybe, if we're not watching.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You're paying easily 30-40% of the price just for it being an iDevice.
You're also paying for it being a little higher in quality than your average cheapest-component-everywhere bargain PC. If you compare the average Mac to a comparable quality brand PC, the difference is much less than your above.
I don't mind paying a premium for something that's worth it, but I hate it how the PC fanboys distort the numbers. Yes, Apple is more expensive. No, the difference isn't 30-40%, that's just ridiculous. You can't compare a product against its cheapest competitor and then claim it's that much more expensive than all its competitors. At least get your math right and use an average. And you can't compare an off-the-shelf product with building one yourself, unless you price in your time as well - what you're doing is comparing a product to the sum price of its components. I'm sure the car you're driving is also a lot more expensive than it would be if you'd bought all the parts and assembled it yourself.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I guess IBM's slogan should be - as variation of Google's "Don't do evil" - "Automating evil".
Part of what has made IBM and Apple so successful (and Nintendo too), is that they don't just "sell tech".
In Apple's case it's the whole experience of using a (usually portable) device to play music, surf online, communicate.....a whole range of activities that people are interested in doing. They don't just make those things possible, they concentrate on making the whole process a) simple; and b) enjoyable. Too many of their competitors have concentrated solely on selling the tech and letting the users try and work out the rest for themselves.
In IBM's case they've concentrated on selling business solutions. Yes, it's now a horrid buzz-phrase, but IBM decided early on that just selling tech wasn't enough. Most companies would rather not get involved in working out what they need for themselves, buying the appropriate tech, plugging it together and getting it to work. Getting this stuff right is hard. They would much rather have a company like IBM come in and just sort out the whole problem the company is trying to address by investing in tech. This is what IBM does, and companies pay big money for it, because the whole problem is taken off their hands - and IBM is one of the few companies left with enough reputation that companies would be prepared to trust them with something like this.
Us techies often forget that for the majority of people tech is a means to an end - not an end in itself.
Yes, everybody is stupid but you. Give me a fucking break, AC, the reason the ipod pretty much created the modern digital music player market because of it's usability, not in spite of it.
Actually buying all the parts would make it a lot more expensive for the car example. Try going to M-B and buying an E-class from the parts dept. and you will soon see.
How did you manage to get all those off the shelf parts into the screen and keep it virtually silent and cool running?
I'd imagine the GPU would stick of of the back or something, but I assume you had some sort of plan for that.
Apple is a media company, first and foremost.
Microsoft is a software company, first and foremost.
IBM is a services company, first and foremost.
Fame is transient in the high-tech world. Screw up one generation of products, and you're history.
Unless you are IBM. IBM has been a major player in the high tech world since before WWII. There are only a handful of companies worldwide that have been major players in any industry for as long or longer than IBM has been a major player in high tech (there are a couple who have been around much longer than IBM)..
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Silicon Valley businesses are hardly typical of day to day businesses though are they. Walk into any corporate/government office and count how many Macs you see.
Actually, it's marketing, not usability. The Sandisk Sansa from the same era was much more usable than the iPod, and had features that the Apple didn't, like FM radio and MicroSD expansion ports, in addition to being mountable as USB mass storage. While it's personal opinion, I also found that the menu options on the Sandisk were more easily navigated and made more sense to me... in the end, it wasn't usability/features that caused the iPod to catch on, it was marketing. There were *much* better options available on the market, at a fraction of the cost.
The former master previously dethroned by their apprentice is now the master!
I did quite well buying Apple stock. Didn't do as well with my Dell stock, but that's why you diversify.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Corporations want to be treated as persons, with all the rights of individuals. Well, with rights come responsibility.
If an individual person had done for the Nazis what IBM did, he would have gotten the death penalty at Nuremberg and hung.
Why is IBM still doing business?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yours is the only correct response. Yes, we have to evaluate corporations based on what they do and with whom they do business. They cannot be given a pass just because they are profit-driven.
Who knows what MS and Apple would have done in regard to the Nazis. But it is worth remembering that not all corporations decided or sought to do business with them.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is market cap based. 'Value' is the closest word for that. It doesn't directly indicate cash on hand or how much debt they hold. It doesn't indicate directly how highly viewed among potential clients they are. It indicates the perceived value of IBM by stock market participants. This translates well to their ability to borrow and *usually* indicates a healthy company with positive cash flow/good standing with their customers.
While IBM is doing well enough at creating and selling goods and services, but they get a bit *extra* credit with stockholders by using a large chunk of their income to buy back stock rather than do other things with it.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Actually, downturn markets are great for companies like Apple, as their success in the last couple years should demonstrate. You see, in times like this, people cannot afford or feel they cannot afford real luxury items: vacations, expensive cars, bigger houses, pools, early retirement, so on. But people still like to treat themselves to a luxury. Apple is right in the sweetspot for this: pretty much everybody with a job can afford an Apple product or two, and they will sacrifice other things to get one just to feel like they have luxuries.
It is called the lipstick principle. You can read about it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/fashion/01SKIN.html?pagewanted=all
The features and menus made more sense to you because you are a *nerd*. 99% of the public is *not*. I bet you could figure out how to change the blinking "12:00" on your VCR within 30 seconds.
The last two came with MagSafe power connectors.
Which are a female dog and a half to find replacements for should they break, or to find external batteries for. For a very long time, Apple flat-out refused to license its patented MagSafe connector to a maker of external batteries. In fact, one company bought authentic Apple power supplies just for the authentic MagSafe connectors and soldered them onto its external batteries, and Apple still sued.
is getting away from pure commodity parts. They've been using some of their enormous pile of cash to fund manufacturing processes they like (unibody aluminum) and to fund fab lines in return for first dibs on their output (flash RAM - Apple has a significant fraction of world capacity contracted).
Other manufacturers have had trouble competing on price with Apple lately (which is a switch) because Apple has the best price on parts and processes.
Apple will have its hands full exploiting its current markets for the next year or two, by just making the obvious updates (iPhone with 4G and iPad with retina display, both likely next year), which should buy them enough time to create the next shiny object for our enjoyment.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Am I bothered? Do I look bothered?
Are you disrespecting the house of Cooper?! Art thou calling my mother a pox-ridden wench?! Art thou calling my father a goodly rotten apple?!
Here's the actual numbers, but I stand corrected, there actually was one year that revenue dipped (2009):
Date / Employees / Revenue
June 30, 2011 90,412 $69.94B
June 30, 2010 88,596 $62.48B
June 30, 2009 92,736 $58.44B
June 30, 2008 91,259 $60.42B
June 30, 2007 78,565 $51.12B
June 30, 2006 71,172 $44.28B
June 30, 2005 61,000 $39.79B
June 30, 2004 57,086 $36.84B
June 30, 2003 54,468 $32.19B
June 30, 2002 50,621 $28.37B
You are incredibly odd. I'm talking Star Trek/Lord of The Rings cross-over fan fiction odd.
Your name is rather appropriate. My recollection is the Sansa first started appearing around 2006. By my math that is 5 years after the iPod so I don't consider it part of the same era.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Part of that is that neither IBM nor Apple have been under DoJ supervision for the last decade, which tends to put them at a bit of a competitive advantage when it comes to pushing for growth. MS got slapped for going for other markets beyond Windows and Word. Granted they were going at it in an anti-competitive manner, but MS historically has only known how to grow via those sorts of sleazeball tactics.
That's a BS argument because MS tried to get into a lot of markets after the anti-trust agreement like Xbox, Zune, Bing; and they haven't done very well not because of the supervision but because they sucked at selling directly to consumers.
That being said, Apple did have the good fortune of having a decade where the DoJ didn't believe in antitrust regulation where they were allowed to engage in questionable tactics to grow their business.
Again BS. Apple didn't have DoJ supervision because they weren't convicted of monopoly abuse. Being a monopoly is not what got MS in trouble. Abusing that monopoly was their problem. Apple by all accounts has the highest marketshare of MP3 players. They never got in trouble with the DoU because they didn't strong-arm their partners against their competitors like MS did.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The concern with MS for many shareholders is their stock is stagnant and they don't seem to have a plan for the future. IBM is growing and they do have a long-term strategy. Part of that strategy was getting rid of their PC business 5 years ago. Some people didn't like that but in retrospect, it was clear that while generating a lot of revenue, it wasn't going to be very profitable. With MS, they seem to be rushing in late to every buzzword that comes up and throwing lots of money at ventures that don't bring in much money.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
No what he's saying is that for most businesses, they don't need the latest Office and their current Office may work for the vast, vast majority of their workers. As for Windows, Vista really hurt their image but Win 7 is good upgrade from XP. But they lost revenue in the meantime as companies skipped one OS upgrade. As for ERP, my understanding is they are still dwarfed by SAP and Oracle and Infor. As of 2010, they lost market share in ERP but gained in CRM. However they are at 3% and 7% respectively. MS only does well in the small business market. The middle and large enterprise are owned by others.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Haven't owned a VCR in over a decade, and the last one I owned, I just had to tune in to the TV Guide channel and press a button on the remote for it to set the clock on its own. :)
Also as the prices of computer hardware goes down and Windows prices go up, it's harder for someone to pay $100 retail for Windows if they build a computer for $400. OEMs also will have issues because they are being squeezed on margins as it is.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Yes, many companies felt they got burned by SA. I don't know if any companies complained or got discounts on Win 7 but I'm sure that the SA contract had an escape clause that gave them an out when Vista wasn't ready.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
MS still makes lots of money and profit. But that's not the concern. The concern is they don't seem to have much of a long-term strategy. They have had major stumbles. Their stock is stagnant. IBM has surpassed them in cap because investors think that IBM has a plan for the future.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Of course this could all change again.
Now for another good buzz word.... cloud computing.
Microsoft is already hosting Exchange, Office, and SharePoint online. They and other product providers can directly provide the service now... reducing the need for IBMs.
It's just another possibility.
Actually, Macs are so common in Hollywood that I bought a Macbook Pro and use BootCamp to run Windows on it so I can work comfortably in either environment. I paid more for it, but I don't regret it. It's like being bi-lingual, especially at delivery time. If you ever visit any production, and I do mean *any* production, you'll find so many Macs you'll start to wonder if their marketshare is really only ten percent.
Your use of the term 'real work' is misleading. Whether you're sending emails, entering into spreadsheets, or building complex 3D models, it's all work that has to get done. Downplaying it by calling it 'real work' is the same sort of elitist bullshit that earned Apple fans their reputation.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
You're exactly right. Market cap changes rapidly over the years and says mostly something about how "hot" or fashionable a company is a certain time, not about how profitable or anything else really. Ars Technica had a nice article about this a while back and mainly says you can't measure a company by its market cap at all.
But still... think a few years back. If someone would have said to me "In about 10 years IBM will be worth more than Microsoft, but Apple will be worth more than both of them" in 2001, I would have laughed at that person.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
I'm sorry, this reply wasn't supposed to be attached to this post. It was actually meant as a reply to this.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Silicon Valley businesses are hardly typical of day to day businesses though are they. Walk into any corporate/government office and count how many Macs you see.
Just went to a Forest Service meeting in Juneau, Alaska. All of the laptops with only two exceptions in a crowd of 30 government employees were various flavors of MacBooks and one iPad.
Hmmm.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
IBM has greater sales than Apple; Apple has higher profits. Exxon-Mobile dwarfs them both in sales and profits.
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Comparisons like that - between companies in entirely different sectors - aren't just invalid, they're retarded.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Looks like I stand corrected too and retract.I am not a troll, but rather I see bad signs and a less powerful mindshare wise from 10 years ago while clients refusing to upgrade. MS has more and bigger competitors now in many areas. I am surprised actual sales growth is occurring, as Asia is mostly pirated and life cycles are much longer than a decade ago. I wonder where its new revenue is coming from? I know they sell sharepoint and a few other newer things but Id ont know how much they cost.
http://saveie6.com/
I had a dilemma last fall.
Mac or PC. Like I mentioned above I worked for the Anchorage School District, so I was inclined to pick a mac. I checked them out and borrowed a ibook from work to play with for a weekend a head of time to see if I could get used to it.
I did not like using it after 10 minutes. I kept having to click the menus and it was hard to find things. Macs are so click dependent on the menus. I do not know if I am used to Windows or if the explorer shell was simply better?
Anyway I compared. An Asus PC was on sale for $700 and only 15% slower than the $1600 iMac. CHEAP!! ... right? Well, shoot need a monitor. I found a 24 inch HP brightview with 1:10,000 contrast and 2 ms delay for $379. Ouch. Now I need wireless? Found netgera powerline ethernet adapters $90. Keyboard and mouse? $125. Yes I went expensive because I wanted high end. Add them up? That is $1350
Cost savings only $150. The Mac does have wifi and probably an even better monitor. But lacks blu ray, HDMI, Windows, and Office. If I want to install Office and Windows the cost is now $2,000! Not to mention I can't install a hauge pauge card for TV later on.
So, my exwife explained it as you want one to last for 5 years, but if there is a problem you need to upgrade it. My PC is lasting pretty well except that the USB cable on the keyboard is dying and it is noisier in which I plan to replace the PSU and fans soon.
http://saveie6.com/
They are opening up in all but large companies.
Macs have much lower TCO than PC counterparts and are more reliable and secure. Sharepoint and other proprietary software is holding Windows in but that is rapidly changing. Newer demand for VPs to access IE 6 only intranet sites are causing many companies to update. Updated intranet sites which work with IE 8 more than likely will work with Safari too.
Many business internet sites now support Safari as well as IE for supported browsers so this is changing. Apple is still too scared to support business and that is a shame. Small business owners use Macs a lot outside and sometimes inside the US where they do not have legacy requirements.
As things move to the cloud Windows will be less relevant. Small business is where it is at
http://saveie6.com/
Here is what the school gets.
You setup the macs and walk away and they will work for a very long time. TCO is important as they do not have the budget for a large and compentent I.T. department. They get special macs that cost $800 that are not available to consumers. The equilevnt is a $1200 imac. 30% discount. Educational software is mac based still so compatibility is not as important. Powerpc macs are harder to get infections which add more bonus and costs.
Macs are really good in that when they get obsolete they graceful degrade in performance. They last longer for simple tasks which means longer life cycles than PCs.
Punk teenage kids who try to bring in worms to put up goatse.cx and meatspin on the desktops find life harder on macs. Yes, they really do that and think its funny.
Also it is much easier to add a child account to a school network for non-IT users. I substitute taught, and the principal just added a new child as they enrolled and the account rolled per mac at the school. All their settings and work files went with them. Pretty cool as IT would not feel comfortable giving an administrative Windows server password to an administrator, but it is different in an Apple network.
Macs have wonderful benefits and are cheaper than wintel pcs with support staff and reliability.Anchorage school district just this year finally pulled the last 2003/2004 eMac and upgraded. That is a very long time those machines lasted
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That's a BS argument because MS tried to get into a lot of markets after the anti-trust agreement like Xbox, Zune, Bing; and they haven't done very well not because of the supervision but because they sucked at selling directly to consumers.
It's not BS, they did try, but they had to take into account the restrictions and scrutiny that came with being supervised. The Xbox, is a poor argument to make, they did well with that one in large part because it was separated enough from their monopoly that they had room to maneuver.
Again BS. Apple didn't have DoJ supervision because they weren't convicted of monopoly abuse. Being a monopoly is not what got MS in trouble. Abusing that monopoly was their problem. Apple by all accounts has the highest marketshare of MP3 players. They never got in trouble with the DoU because they didn't strong-arm their partners against their competitors like MS did.
Strong-arm their partners? You mean like how Apple refused to license Fairplay to any other hardware manufacturer so that anybody wanting to use the ITMS had to either buy an iPod or had to go through the inconvenience of burning and ripping a disc, hence getting a lesser quality of product.
But, no, it's not like Apple would ever strong arm the competition like that, no siree.
As for the lack of conviction, it's hard to get convicted when you're never put on trial. It might be that Apple engaged in perfectly legal behavior, I doubt it, but it somewhat waters down the point when the DoJ isn't enforcing the law.
I think what they do is run ahead to first place, declare victory and stop. By the time they notice people passing them, it's too late to get going again. You don't design v2 when someone else releases something, you start designing it the moment v1 is finished. Especially in this market.
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So they pay about the same for hardware as a commodity PC and get OS X on it? Ok, that's a pretty good deal.
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I think the simplicity of Macs from the beginning was what inspired schools to use them, particularly for junior grade kids. It wasn't just a case of the money.
The history of Apple getting into schools is long and nowhere near that simple. It was a case of money, time to market, competition, inertia, vendor lock-in, and possibly corruption (depending on how you define it.) And yes, simplicity was a factor.
Apple made deals with school systems to purchase Apple ][ back in the late 1970s, and got them in schools long before IBM arrived with the IBM PC. Being older, they were cheaper and less capable, but because they were the first exposure to computers for a lot of kids, those kids fell in love with them. And it happened long before Macintosh came on the scene. When the IBM PC came around, Apples were already in many schools.
I remember a discussion with my dad in 1979, where I thought that Apple was going to be the primary computers at work too, because they were already so widespread in schools. Having seen IBM's corporate marketers in action, he said "you have no idea how IBM's marketing team works. When IBM enters the market, they are going to completely dominate it. They play hardball." And he was absolutely right.
Then came the PC. IBM's market strategy for the PCs was simple: target the Big Corporations of America, because they have big budgets and lots of IBM hardware already, and IBM was interested in their higher price tags and huge volumes. IBM had done business this way for decades, and were really, really good at it. Sure, they wanted to sell to the home market, but it wasn't their primary focus. The idea was to get PCs in front of everyone at work in hopes they'd go home and buy a PC for home use. IBM PCs remained the choice for Corporate America, mostly because their IBM reps sold them the PCs as "business" machines instead of those Apple "toys". IBM had long been telling their corporate customers "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", back when IBM's primary threat were the mainframe clones by companies like Amdahl. They continued to repeat it to sell the PCs. And IBM sales forces had golden measures of persuasion. (Let's just say you really missed something if you never personally witnessed it.) And here, IBM won, hands down. PCs absolutely dominated the corporate market.
But the home market wasn't that simple. Lots of homes had kids who wanted Apples like they had in school, so there was a divide between Mom and Dad, and Junior and Sis. Not really seeing much of a difference for themselves, many parents went with Apples at the recommendation of their kids. Remember, at the time, buying home computers was completely new territory for families, and these were very big ticket items for most people. From this, the marketplace learned that education was a driver of primary importance for making computer purchase decisions at home.
When IBM realized they weren't dominating the home market, they applied their business experience and figured it was price point. They introduced the PC Jr. It bombed, because it turned out that the price wasn't the dominant factor. It was a very confusing time for them, especially as the clones entered the market about this same time. They came out with the XT, and the AT, and while businesses were buying them, home users were less interested. For one of the first times in their history, IBM was out of their element.
Later, as the first Macs arrived, the school districts who had contracts with Apple saw them primarily as an upgrade, even though they were an entirely new architecture. The concept of a graphical OS was certainly part of the sale, but I'd bet most of it was inertia - we bought from Apple last year, we'll buy from them again this year. (School board members are elected officials, and are certainly not hired based on intelligence.) Nothing wrong with it, but again, Apple was courting them as heavily as they could while IBM remained focused on the businesses who h
John
The eMacs and education edition iMacs are not sold at the store. They are more limited and have slower graphics and lesser icore5 processors than the ones you see at teh Apple store for consumers. But yes it is still $200-$300 more. If it costs someone $75 to $100 an hour to fix it pays for itself over 2 - 3 years
http://saveie6.com/
Some of the numbers and reports are grossly overblown. For example, there is an estimated 409 million PCs sold in 2011 vs 20 million tablets. If each tablet sold constitutes a lost PC sale (which in the vast majority of cases it doesn't.. It's in addition to a PC, not a PC replacement), it would be hard to notice the impact. You would see PC sales increasing at a measly 10% per year rather than it's normal 14.8%.
It's a trend, and it may have an impact in 3-5 years, perhaps, but that day isn't today. It also shouldn't be ignored, and it appears that Microsoft isn't ignoring it (Window 8 being largely a tablet friendly enhancements). Time will tell.
I don't think your comparisons are quite right. Zune/PlaysForNow weren't around when the iPod first came out, in fact it took many years for Zune to come out after MS finally saw that people wanted MP3 players. In fact, MS was soooo slow and late to the game that they only brought out the Zune shortly before the MP3 market starting collapsing, due to the rise of smartphones that could also easily act as MP3 players (like the iPhone), and which came with enough flash built-in to make consumers not want a separate MP3 player device.
Back when the iPod first came out (1999?), MS was nowhere to be found, except maybe with some odd WinCE phones with very limited memory. However, there were other players on the market from other companies. Remember when the iPod first came out, there was a Slashdot article that famously called it "lame", in comparison to the existing competition. Unfortunately, I don't even remember who the competitors were any more. Archos maybe? Obviously, the click-wheel was such a hit that it gained popularity very quickly, despite only having a Firewire port (WTF?).
iPhone was a slightly different story as I recall it. At the time, the only other smartphones were Crackberries and some other horrible Windows phones (running WinCE I think). Both of these, IIRC, didn't even have actual touchscreens, but really stylus-screens, as the UIs were pretty similar to desktop Windows and were designed around using a stylus, and weren't very easy to learn. iPhone was a bit of a revolution, in that actually was easy for someone completely clueless to pick up and use, and didn't require you to fool around with a stupid stylus. Android and Windows Phone came along quite a bit later, copying this.
Quite true. Silicon valley businesses have more people who are smarter about computers than most businesses. And they choose Macs. Interesting, eh? Maybe it's that powerful Unix underpinning, and all the amazing dev tools that run under it. Or the desktop tools. Well, of course, both run at once, so maybe it's both, eh? Or maybe it's the lack of a need to worry about virus software. Or the insanely great multiple-monitor support. Or maybe its the fact that a Mac can simultaneously run one or more sand-boxed Windows VMs in windows (or on multiple monitors, or both), and so covers the whole Windows ecosystem as well as the Mac ecosystem. Or maybe it's because smart computer folks consider total cost of ownership instead of just the purchase price, thereby determining the actual cost of owning a computer. Or maybe it's the fact that those claiming that they can put together an "equivalent" machine for the same, or less, money are actually completely full of shit, and Macs are actually a far superior value as compared to Windows PCs, not just over time, but also as an initial purchase. :o)
Nah... on second thought, I'm sure Ma and Pa Kettle's budget purchase of a "Dude, you're stuck with a Dell!" is the better choice. After all, they've brought us "Dancing with the Stars" and "Faux News." How could they be wrong?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Granted they were going at it in an anti-competitive manner
I think that is more of the problem. MS hasn't innovated anything -- they wield their patent portfolio and extort or steal technology and/or revenue. And the biggest selling point they offer in non-windows products is compatibility with Windows which is their monopoly anchor. Other companies, such as google, are innovating and providing better products. Compare bing results to googles, compare Picasa to Windows Live phots, compare gmail to windows live. The MS products seem simple and primitive compared to the google products. So what does MS do instead? They extort patent royalties for patents they are not even willing to disclose.
My 2 cents .. YMMV
Strong-arm their partners? You mean like how Apple refused to license Fairplay to any other hardware manufacturer so that anybody wanting to use the ITMS had to either buy an iPod or had to go through the inconvenience of burning and ripping a disc, hence getting a lesser quality of product.
There is a difference in Apple not licensing a DRM they invented to anyone and MS hinting to Intel that if they developed a Java VM, MS would strongly favor AMD in the next version of Windows and telling OEMs that if they installed Netscape that their Windows prices might rise. The problem with your argument is that Apple did not have partners in their DRM; they did it on their own.
But, no, it's not like Apple would ever strong arm the competition like that, no siree.
Read carefully and process what I said. How is it strong-arm the competition by not licensing or partnering with them? Did Apple ever reach out to third parties? Did Apple ever go to any of their iPod/iPhone case manufacturers and tell them not to make cases for Samsung or HTC or Motorola or their licensing fees would rise? That would be analogous to what MS did.
As for the lack of conviction, it's hard to get convicted when you're never put on trial. It might be that Apple engaged in perfectly legal behavior, I doubt it, but it somewhat waters down the point when the DoJ isn't enforcing the law.
If you have a specific complaint other than their refusal to license their DRM which they have a right to do, I'd like to hear it. Netscape and Sun had specific examples of wrong doing by MS which they presented to the DOJ.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
...and now they could be enjoying the rapture of Windows Phone's one percent market share. after having sold their soul to the devil to get there like Nokia is doing.
What the hell?!?!?! Talk about FUD and misinformation!!! It's almost 1.5% of the market share (of WM's total 3%). C'mon!!!
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StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!