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How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft
HughPickens.com writes James B. Stewart writes in the NYT that in 1998 Bill Gates said in an interview that he "couldn't imagine a situation in which Apple would ever be bigger and more profitable than Microsoft" but less than two decades later, Apple, with a market capitalization more than double Microsoft's, has won. The most successful companies need a vision, and both Apple and Microsoft have one. But according to Stewart, Apple's vision was more radical and, as it turns out, more farsighted. Where Microsoft foresaw a computer on every person's desk, Apple went a big step further: Its vision was a computer in every pocket. "Apple has been very visionary in creating and expanding significant new consumer electronics categories," says Toni Sacconaghi. "Unique, disruptive innovation is really hard to do. Doing it multiple times, as Apple has, is extremely difficult." According to Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson, Microsoft seemed to have the better business for a long time. "But in the end, it didn't create products of ethereal beauty. Steve believed you had to control every brush stroke from beginning to end. Not because he was a control freak, but because he had a passion for perfection." Can Apple continue to live by Jobs's disruptive creed now that the company is as successful as Microsoft once was? According to Robert Cihra it was one thing for Apple to cannibalize its iPod or Mac businesses, but quite another to risk its iPhone juggernaut. "The question investors have is, what's the next iPhone? There's no obvious answer. It's almost impossible to think of anything that will create a $140 billion business out of nothing."
Uh. They most certainly did NOT create the smartphone sector. And they sure as fuck didn't do it out of "nothing".
Now I admit, yes, Apple's been disruptive, in a good way, for the industry. But can we stop slobbing the Apple knob?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
"Unique, disruptive innovation is really hard to do. Doing it multiple times, as Apple has, is extremely difficult."
"Unique, disruptive innovation is really hard to do. Doing it multiple times, as Apple has, is extremely difficult." That's why Apple has had its share of failures..."
Additions mine. This is one fact that a simple google search would have shown. One may ask, are the authors of these pieces paid?
Microsoft sell to people who want to use computers without learning how they work.
Apple sells to people who want to look richer than they really are.
In reality, Apple is competing with the makers of fake jewelery.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
Technically if you adjust for inflation MSFT from 1999 still has the market cap crown. AAPL is likely to pass them later on this year.
From where I'm sitting, it seems like Steve Jobs is getting credit for Steve Balmer's profound and pervasive ineptness.
....but Steve Jobs has passed on.
Those that follow, are exactly that, followers. Neither Apple nor Microsoft has anybody capable of the vision thing.
My money is on the Next Big Thing coming out of the Maker movement.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
NTT had them in Japan.
Apple did make smartphones a mas consumer device, added more functionality, and made them easier to use than the others.
And there is their marketing - well, Jobs' - genius.
Jobs made the smartphones sleek, stylish and into a fashion statement and luxury product. Apple's market share is dwarfed by Android's, but Apple's profitability makes the Android people look like peasants.
Steve believed you had to control every brush stroke from beginning to end. Not because he was a control freak, but because he had a passion for perfection.
Errr, the two conditions may not be mutually exclusive, but perfection is in the eye of the beholder.
The company alpha can control every brush stroke to his complete satisfaction and still be mistaken in his vision.
Eased out of the company he started in a garage, I believe Jobs was just the right mix of had something to prove and accurate vision. Being a hands-on-every-stage individual often implies an inability to delegate to or trust coworkers, so it isn't always a successful way to manage.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Apple ships mid and low end tech today - at high commodity pricing. In that, it has won a battle, and its reward is very large profits. But aside from the media conglomerate driven apple store - and both reside largely in consumer/prosumer space - what is apple shipping? Its IPad sale numbers are falling. There are some harsh limits where Apple lives in a box it can't escape just like its users. It relies heavily on others being Mac friendly. The Mac server is an afterthought.
As for a computer in every pocket? No, not on your nelly. Apple have a long long way to go before its an apple that sits in everyone's pocket. It fundamentally hates the 'cheap market' - yet ships ram soldered into the board and disk not much better - stuff you see at chromebook sale level. And aside from the consumer based shop level, Apple is out of the big players the worst placed for cloud.
When it comes to future tech and cloud, Apple doesn't have answers. Its just the end device. While that continues to certainly make good sales money, it means that its potentially at the mercy of amazon, google, azure. Potentially. No one is going to drop support for good end client structures, but it means Apple will be forced to play nice with people it hates.
In the meantime, despite being at farce level in terms of windows - MS is making large steps with azure and the application stacks its working on.
That is precisely what a control freak is - someone who believes that things should be a certain way and refuses to compromise. Everything must bow down to the vision of that person. You can try to spin it as a "passion for perfection" but ultimately it's exactly the same thing.
Love sees no species.
Artificial intelligence / automation will almost certainly put up bigger numbers than that. As Gates said "A breakthrough in machine learning will be worth 10 Microsofts"
Both companies started in the world of garage built computers. They entered a field dominated by well funded business partners like IBM and DEC and showed that "toys" affordable to ordinary mortals could be fun and useful. Now Apple and Microsoft are today's IBM and DEC, and twenty years from now there will probably be new players in their place.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Apples customers pay more so they make more money. Desktops with Windows still dominate the market.
But do Apple customers pay more in the long run? It's still the case that Macs tend to just "work", no weird crashes due to bad drivers, Windows has come a long way in reliability, but I know in my office, the desktop support calls from Windows outnumber those for Mac, and we have about 5 times more mac desktops than windows desktops. By controlling the hardware and the software, Apple can provide the customers with a smoother experience, at the expense of flexibility - you can't build your own mac, or add new hardware to it... which is fine for almost all consumers.
But Microsoft is a software company which are plagued by piracy - non paying customers.
If Microsoft could get every Windows user to pay a license cost as low as the OS X cost - their revenue would overcome Apple:s revenue with ease.
Since it's nearly impossible to buy a PC without Windows installed (or at least a license to run windows), it's hard to believe that piracy is affecting operating system sales, at least in the USA. I know that China has a high piracy rate, but those users probably aren't going to buy a Windows license anyway. I know I have license keys for WinXP, Win7, and Win8 that are completely unused because the computer I wanted wasn't available without a Windows license (well in one case it *was* available unbundled, but the computer was cheaper *with* the license.
Microsoft still has a lock on the corporate desktop, that's where they have the most to fear from Apple since the consumers that use and love apple hardware at home want to use that same hardware at the office.
If you sum up the Microsoft sphere. Microsoft, Spotify, Netflix, Adobe etc and you will find them a lot larger. Include all "partner" companies and Microsoft becomes quite large compared to Apple.
How is Adobe part of the "Microsoft Sphere" when the likely sell more photoshop licenses for Mac than Windows? Likewise, why is Netflix on the Microsoft side when their product is cross platform?
I'm sure they are working up a neurocannula down there in Cupertino...the iJack
Without Steve Jobs Apple is just like Microsoft
No matter how you hate Steve Jobs, that guy is the one with the radical views
The world already got its walkmans for decades but it was Steve Jobs who knew he could do much better than the Sony Walkman (and all the copycats) and iPod was the answer
There were already smartphones (actually what was available before iPhone should not be categorized as smartphones, they were more like featurephones than smartphones) with the a-z keyboard on the keypad
It was Steve Jobs who moved the keyboard from the keypad to the screen
Let's compare Bill Gates with Steve Jobs
Bill Gates is from a very wealthy family, with a mother who knows people in high places
Steve Jobs is adopted. His birth dad is from Lebanon, and after knocking up his birth mother, abandoned his birth mother and went back alone to the Middle East
That is why Steve was put up for adoption because his birth mother couldn't bring up a son on her own
Steve Job's adopted parents are middle class people. Financially stable, but in no way can be compared to the wealth of Bill Gates' family
Bill Gates was enrolled into the first class university, and dropped out - he dropped out because he has no fear, after all, he got his wealthy family to fall back on
Steve Jobs didn't make it to first class university - there wasn't enough $$$ anyway. His 'university' is Reed College in Portland, Oregon
When Steve Jobs dropped out, he did not have a $$$ filled family to support him, he needed to find the money himself
When Bill Gates created Microsoft he could afford to rent comfortable office space and hire people --- Bill Gates got so much money that he could even afford to buy a program, called QDOS, from Tim Paterson
On the other hand, Steve Jobs started Apple with his pal, Wozniak, in a garage
Bill Gates' successful break was from his mom's link to IBM's hotshot
Steve Jobs' break is based on his ingenuity and determination
Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple once - and without Steve Jobs around, Apple Inc turned into a pool of Apple jam - they actually brought out a dud - the Apple Newton
Only when the Apple Inc was in rock bottom that they brought Steve Jobs back --- and promptly with Steve's Macintosh Apple rebound
Microsoft ? With or without Bill Gates Microsoft will still be Microsoft, because Bill Gates, unlike Steve Jobs, has little or no vision
On the other hand, Apple with Steve Jobs is a jar of Apple jam
Since the departure of Steve Jobs, Apple Inc hasn't come up with any new stuff that make sense - all it got is iteration of the same-old-shit, iPad and iPhone, that's all
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Microsoft still dominates the increasingly irrelevant and dying desktop PC market
Fallacy. The desktop is, and will remain relevant.
Fallacy. The PC market is NOT dying.
The PC market is in the midst of a correction.
Prior to the latest rounds of smartphone/tablet introduction, people were primarily using PCs in situations where a full-blown Wintel system was complete and utter overkill.
With touchscreen smartphones and tablets becoming more or less ubiquitous over the last 3-5 years, we're seeing people looking to replace their older desktop/media/laptop PCs with something, and finding that tablets and the like fit the need better and at a better price point than a full-blown desktop/laptop.
Additionally, in business, we're seeing virtualization starting to make inroads into reversing the trend of moving from centralized resources to localized resources.
As noted, modern Wintel hardware is GROTESQUELY overpowered for most office productivity uses. And in lots of businesses, servers are wasting massive power on idle cycles. On top of that, the support costs, even with dedicated personnel, can be astronomical.
So, instead of dropping a $500-1000 system on everyone's desk, they're virtualizing. Users get a thin client or RDP into a terminal server and work from there.
This way, the business can lock down their platform, deliver only the software needed for the business (saving them money), and allows them to be more agile, since they can set up an office pretty much ANYWHERE, so long as they have internet connectivity.
Now, neither the virtualization market, nor the smartphone/tablet markets have hit critical mass yet. So there's likely to be a bit more of a drain from the desktop PC market for a bit. But it'll eventually peter out and the PC market, while smaller, will still be there. Additionally, it'll allow PC manufacturers to better utilize their resources to deliver products that fit their new market. Rather than shotgunning product all over the place.
So, anyone who's trying to sell you the "The PC is dying" line, basically doesn't know what they're talking about.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Dammit, please. I watched the touchscreen market, via DigiTimes, for years. The geeks in Taiwan who were carving the niche for ATM touchscreen displays were the top of the touchscreen pyramid. Apple was buying IPods (pods not pads) from Taiwan contract manufacturers, who would show other "cool stuff" they had. Apple saw it quickly and wrote software and gets a lot of credit, but designed Taiwanese inventions into it. I was told the small firm Apple claims did it for them in Vancouver was from the Taipei outfit.
Apple basically did to Taiwan what Bill Gates did to IBM. Which is great, I have no problem with it, but please give Terry Gou and Simon Lin (the Jobs and Gates counterparts in Taipei) some credit for what happened. They are the reason the Samsung vs. Apple patents go nowhere - its because Taiwan geeks made the hardware. It's less the invention of the hardware than it is the licensing fees. Control of the licensing fees is what made Gates and Jobs, and that's largely a legal play. Again, fine, but it just pains me to see the actual engineers ignored.
Gently reply
There were cell phone based payment systems before iPay, but now the point of sale terminals are going to finally happen. I think apple Pay is going to be a huge money maker as it becomes wide spread. It's timing is interesting. Credit card makers in the US are on the cusp of rolling out chip and pin and merchants will need to upgrade their point of sale terminals. . No one is excited about this mandated cost since analyses have shown didn't change the total amount of fraud (in the long run), it just shifted it from in-person fraud (where the chip works) to internet sales. However, apple pay, which does work, can just slip stream right along on the mass pos changeover without imposing an extra cost the merchants were not going have to pay anyhow (for chip and pin).
Second, this year at least, apple appears to have the best finger print reader. As motorola noted recently they left finger print ID off the new nexus because all the other vendors of the technology produce unsatisfactory finger print ID. It's either too many false positives or too many false negatives.
The challenge to apple pay of course is the market share of handsets. But as long as there are enough to make it worth making the NFC sensors compatible with Apple's bank authorization schema they will be in stores, giving apple a growing drip feed of cash.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
iPhone 4s was a $600 phone. Now you can get a much better device for under $50.
A $50 phone doesn't help if the current versions of applications don't run well on a $50 phone. Sure, applications from roughly the iPhone 4s era would have run well, but these applications have since been replaced with newer versions that expect beefier hardware to be available. (See Wirth's law.)
well it wasn't so shifty as that. Digital had IBM over a barrel for the OS. They knew Gates' OS code was purchased, but they wanted someone else to maintain it. They didn't really care about the OS as long as it could handle the basics. they thought the hardware would be the big seller. Gate's best decision was pushing for the OS to be non exclusive... letting Microsoft sell it too.
IBM never thought it would matter one bit of some home brewers could also run the OS...
It's not Harvard, but has a reputation as tough if slightly unconventional college. I didn't know Jobs went there, but I'm not surprised at all. Aside from that , pretty much agree with your comparison.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
My boss got us smartphones back in the Windows CE days, because he's a huge geek like the rest of us. The problem was that while work was willing to pay for the phone part the data was WAAAAY too expensive so we didn't have that. Combine that with lackluster wifi availability and the fact that you had to manually turn it on and off because it drained battery out of range, and we didn't end up using the "smart" portion much. Not because it was too hard to use or any of that BS, but because there just wan't the ability.
Now, data is cheap, and my phone auto roams on and off of wifi, and work has complete wifi coverage. So I use my smartphone often for its "smart" features. It is always on data of some kind and like you, I never get near my cap, particularly because it is usually using wifi.
That is the biggest thing that changed and made smart phones useful to me, and others I know. It because affordable and practical to use the smart features. Data is something that is an included feature in most phone plans these days. $40/month can get you a line with some data.
Another thing that changed is just the progress of technology mainly the processors. Before switching to Android I had a Blackberry, which I loved, except for its slow CPU. Due to the excessive amount of JavaScript and such shit on most websites, browsing with it was slow. Not so much waiting for data, but rendering. However I not can browse whatever I want, my phone has a very high power CPU in it that can deal with all that shit, so it isn't too much slower to load a page than on my desktop.
Touchscreens and such weren't the thing that changed it for me. I still liked Blackberry's real keyboard + scrolly ball interface. It was having an affordable data plan plus a processor capable of handling the BS of the modern web.