Why Apple Won’t Take Over
Browsing around the web a few days ago i came across a post where some guy that claimed to be a “nerd” was talking about how Apple is taking the world from Microsoft. To me a nerd is someone that loves all technology and respects everything in that field where as everything on this person website was bashing Microsoft. I don’t think that Apple is any shape yet to try to take to much away from Microsoft. It hasn’t been that long since Apple was in deep financial trouble and Microsoft bailed them out. Its a fact that people will always hate the person in control such as Microsoft is right now. Apple fans are accusing Microsoft of having there hands in everything when in fact they want Apple to be the same. If the day ever comes when Apple is has big as Microsoft then it will to be hated much like Microsoft tis now. The reason i don’t think Apple will ever been in Microsoft shoes is that they don’t market there self like that. Apple don’t market there self to appeal to everyone. Apple appeals to high tech collage grads and wanna be programmers, not to the no body sitting in there house like Microsoft has done. Apple wanting to have the million dollar reputation will be the reason they will never be as big as Microsoft. Another reason they will never be as big as Microsoft is Steve Jobs. This man is at the bottom of the scum ladder and it don’t take much digging into his past to see this. Apple had enough of it and already fired him one time and in there desperation they hired him back and although he has brought the company along way in the past few years he has also been in trouble constantly with everyone else for his work tactics. The man stabbed everyone he ever knew in the back to be where he is today which proves he is after the money not a happy customer like the commercials have you to believe. I don’t hate Apple at all in fact i think they make the best looking equipment you can buy, i don’t think all of it is better that the competition but at least it looks good. i think there is a place for Apple, just like i think there is a place for the other companies. People do need to realize that Microsoft didn’t get to where they are today because they suck and make a bad product. Just because you don’t like a product like Vista don’t mean other people don’t find it useful. I for one have never had any problems running Vista. So the next time you want to bash a company like Microsoft or any large company take a little time to realize that just because they are large don’t mean there a bad company. If it wasn’t for Microsoft we wouldn’t be no where near where we are today with computers, and you wouldn’t even have your Apple computer that you love so much.
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April 29th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
m8 you don’t know what you are talkin about
April 29th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
its very easy for you just to say i don’t now what im talking about. But if i don’t then why don’t you tell me how it really is. All you have to do is look at Apples stock and there gross profit over the last few years. Compared to Microsoft it really hasn’t went up all that much, plus Apple only markets them self to higher class of people which narrows there market also. Its very hard to make your company grow when you market yourself to a small group of people. Plus there latest OS release was a big failure. Which is kinda funny with how much they made fun of vista. Problems that was solved years ago in there OS showed back up in the new release. If Apple does want to be as big has Microsoft which i don’t think they do because they want a certain share of the market not all of it…. They need to work on there OS’s also, and at least not point out vista’s flaws win you got a crap load yourself. To get to know Steve Jobs a little better you can always read “iCon” which is his biography. I knew i would get alot of bad comments from this so i did my homework. So when you say ” you dont know what your talking about” and leave, just kinda means your mad that its true.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
I guess you haven’t noticed that Apple Stores are filled with people who are switching to Mac from Windows. Mac is winning. Deal with it.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
I never said that Apple wasn’t gaining more customers.. I believe i even said they was in the story. And i could care less who is the bigger company because i use apple for what they are better at and i use windows for what they are better at. And as i stated above Apple’s market isn’t really that great so apparently there stores aren’t “filled”
I also work in a store that sells Apple and PC so i think i know about the sells.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:52 am
You want to know how it really is? English is not my mother language but I’ll see what I can do.
I agree that corporations are more likely to be resented when they grow bigger and stronger, because the decisions the company makes will affect more people, from customers to developers, business partners or competitors. Ten years ago, the number of Apple customers was dwindling, only a few tens of millions of Mac fans were interested in the company. The rest ignored it or derided it. Nowadays, Apple is a media darling, constantly in the news, and is engaged in global advertising campaigns. The products, especially iTunes, the online store (over 50 million customer accounts) and the iPod (about 150 million units sold), are used by everyone and their mother; even the Mac user base is expanding. Apple is engaged in all sort of new activities: developing its own retail chain, developing software for Windows (iTunes, and now Safari), negotiating with record labels, Hollywood movie studios, mobile network operators around the world, etc. To sum it up, Apple is growing and branching out, and is more likely to piss some people off: ombudsmen, environmental organizations, consumer electronics retailers, record labels, iPod accessory makers, all sort of people who couldn’t give a damn about Apple ten years ago…
Nonetheless, it’s better to be “hated” than ignored. Corporations can handle this –see Sony, Microsoft and the like– or they wouldn’t survive in the first place. And it’s worth it, executives and investors want their company to thrive, even though it’s demanding at times, instead of quietly stagnating in a dark corner of the market. You take Microsoft as an example. Sure, some Mac fans will always hate Microsoft, without a good reason most of the time, but Steve Ballmer is not crying himself to sleep.
I don’t know if Apple can be as big as Microsoft, but their financial troubles are long gone. It happened more than ten years ago, in 1997 Wired magazine listed “101 ways to save Apple”, and Michael Dell famously stated that if he was Apple’s CEO he would just give the money back to the shareholders. Apple has now exceeded Google’s, Hewlett-Packard’s and Dell’s market capitalization. Who would have thought that possible in the late 1990’s? At the moment, Apple is valued at about 57% of Microsoft’s market value according to nasdaq.com.
http://quotes.nasdaq.com/Quote.dll?symbol=MSFT&symbol=AAPL&symbol=GOOG&symbol=HPQ&symbol=dell&mode=stock&multi.x=26&multi.y=4
Apple’s stock and profits over the last few years hasn’t went up all that much compared to Microsoft? You must be kidding. In case you didn’t notice, Microsoft is the bigger company but Apple’s stock price is growing way faster than Microsoft’s.
http://quotes.nasdaq.com/quote.dll?page=charting&mode=basics&intraday=off&timeframe=5y&charttype=line&splits=off&earnings=off&movingaverage=None&lowerstudy=volume&comparison=on&index=&drilldown=off&symbol=MSFT&symbol=AAPL&selected=AAPL
Apple’s revenue and net income is growing faster, too:
Revenue 2003-2007 in millions:
AAPL: 6,207 | 8,279 (+33%) | 13,931 (+68%) | 19,315 (+38%) | 24,006 (+24%)
MSFT: 32,187 | 36,835 (+14%) | 39,768 (+8%) | 44,282 (+11%) | 51,122 (+15%)
Net Income 2003-2007 in millions:
AAPL: 57 | 266 (+366%) | 1,328 (+399%) | 1,989 (+50%) | 3,496 (+76%)
MSFT: 7,531 | 8,168 (+8%) | 12,254 (+50%) | 12,599 (+3%) | 14,065 (+12%)
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=107357&p=irol-SECText&TEXT=aHR0cDovL2NjYm4uMTBrd2l6YXJkLmNvbS94bWwvZmlsaW5nLnhtbD9yZXBvPXRlbmsmaXBhZ2U9NTI4NjAzNSZkb2M9MSZudW09MzY%3d
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/reports/ar07/staticversion/10k_fh_fin.html
The Mac can’t appeal to everyone, mostly because of decisions made by Apple in the 1980’s and 1990’s. These questions were settled long ago, Microsoft won the personal computer market with Windows 95. But the situation is not as black and white as you suggest, Apple is not only addressing niche markets anymore and in some instances Apple products can appeal to about everyone. The iPod has become synonymous with digital music player. As of late, the iTunes store is the #1 music retailer in the US according to NPD. Besides, Apple is one of the most valuable brands and one of the most talked-about companies in the world. How more mainstream can you get?
Jobs is reputed to be a a total control freak and an a-hole, Ballmer is no saint either and is an alleged chair thrower. I’ve read some stories about Bill Gates, too. He’s an aggressive businessman, some competitors and the Department of Justice had objections regarding Microsoft’s business practices. He knows a thing or two (or twelve) about programming. If you give a presentation about some project you’re working on, you’d better come prepared. He won’t cuddle managers and employees, if you can’t defend your ideas, he won’t hesitate to rip you to shreds. We all have an opinion about Jobs, Gates or Ballmer, even though we haven’t met these guys. We know about their public image. Is it fair and accurate? I don’t know, it must be part true/part urban legend. I wouldn’t judge an entire company nor speculate about its performance based on these stories. Especially based on the “iCon” book, Jeffrey Young didn’t do any original research whatsoever, he was just recycling old press articles. I remember a passage about design and the Jobs family discussing about buying a washing machine. It was lifted from a Wired interview from 1996. The entire book is like this. I wouldn’t call this hatchet job on Jobs a well-informed portrait, but with the iPod craze it was set to be a big seller.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:01 am
Steve Jobs was under investigation just a year ago for stock market fraud. I don’t see a link to that in your comment. So there problems wasn’t 10 years ago, they was 10 months ago. And from the charts above Microsoft made over double what Apple did last year, like i said. And Apples income is increasing greatly every year, like i said. So what was the point of your comment?
May 1st, 2008 at 3:59 am
I completely agree with the main point here that Apple will never have as much market share as Microsoft. Games and business are and always will be the domain of MS and their lead in those markets is not going anywhere. And I say good. MS makes a pretty good product, though there are some issues here and there. But same with OS X. Nothing’s perfect.
Up until last year, you couldn’t get me to try a Mac, though my family did own one nearly 20 years ago. I now own 3. What sold me on Apple? I gave up gaming because I knew I wasn’t going to have time for it in law school and it was getting too expensive. Apple switched to Intel. And my MacBook was actually $100+ cheaper at the time than the HP laptop with the exact same specifications.
Anyway, there are a couple of points you brought up that I’d like to discuss.
I think that Apples do appeal to everyone–except for the price. For me it was the higher productivity, resell value, and huge library of actually useful programs that sold me. For my parents, it was the ease of use. For my girlfriend, it was the support for writing programs like Scrivener and StoryMill. For one of my friends, it was X-Code. And for my cousin it was Apple’s pro software, specifically Logic Studio. Honestly, unless you’re a gamer or you can only afford a really low cost computer, I really haven’t found a person who wouldn’t be suited to use an Apple.
Also, your last sentence should be switched around. Apple brought the home PC to the “masses” while MS was still involved with BASIC on kit computers. Yes, MS perfected the OS in the 90’s and early 00’s, but Apple still gets credit for being first. MS should thank Apple for creating a home computer market in the first place.
So what do I think about this business of Apple taking over? In the short term (2 years), MS will maintain it’s stranglehold on enterprises while Apple will make gains in the consumer and (very) small business markets (thanks to iPhone penetration and PC gamers making the exodus to consoles). Once Windows 7 arrives, it’s anyone’s guess. That OS could very well be mind blowing, but given the enterprise-centric spin on Vista, I think MS will start to pull away from the home user and concentrate on the corporate environment. Linux, of course, will stay stagnant for years to come–short of some major changes in how the community operates.
Honestly, I prefer Apple to have less market share. Less users means better security (malicious coders don’t care if they can’t do max damage to the largest target possible) and better support from Apple.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:26 am
i agree total. I do prefer apple to have the less market share also and i do refer them to not be no where as big as Microsoft because a large company like Microsoft cant be perfect and anytime you have 90% of the market you have a bigger chance to mess up than someone having 10%. With Apple being smaller it allows them to focus more and pay attention to detail. When they get large like Microsoft they will go cutting corners to save money. I love both Apple and Microsoft a great deal (cant stand Linux though) how anyone can put down Microsoft though i have no idea. I know there not perfect but wow Apple sure isn’t either. Another thing you said i would like to talk about is about how Microsoft markets there self with more products which they do. It will take more to overcome Microsoft than just a desktop and software. Apple sold a few million iPods and everything thinks Apple is taking over Microsoft, which is crazy. Microsoft is a great company and for there size have held together really well. Some companies do great on a large scale and others don’t. For now i think Apple just needs to focus on making a great product and leave Microsoft alone for now. Another thing is that with Steve Jobs countless finical trouble and investigations im not sure he is the best man to lead them to a Microsoft sized fortune.
Thanks so much for your comment look forward to hearing from you more.
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:25 am
Stock Market Stock Prices Mutual Funds…
I didn’t agree with you first, but last paragraph makes sense for me…