Nice catch from MacDailyNews: as of the close of market today, Apple is worth more than Microsoft and Intel combined. And some tasty claim chowder on this Bill Gates quote from June 1998, regarding Steve Jobs’s return to Apple as CEO:

“What I can’t figure out is why he [Steve Jobs] is even trying? He knows he can’t win.”

According to Wolfram Alpha, using their mean market caps for the entire month of June 1998 (it was a volatile month amidst the boom), the Wintel combination was worth $339 billion, vs. $3.5 billion for Apple. Put another way, Microsoft and Intel combined were worth 96 times more than Apple then. Since then, you get this.

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[From Apple vs. Wintel] via daringfireball

JP Teti:

The iPad only does less than a regular computer to us geeks. To
everyone else, it does more. This is what Motorola and Google and
Samsung and BlackBerry and everyone else, with the sole exception
of Apple, do not get about “open” computing.

Astute analysis of the iPad to regular folks.

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[From More Open]

I know a lot of people who would get along better with an iPad than a regular computer

A new report claims tablet sales will more than triple next year, but says Apple will hold on to its dominant position with the iPad, jumping from 14 million units in 2010 to 36 million next year.[From Report: iPad will grow 250% in 2011 at the expense of PCs]

I shall probably have to get one after the version 2 model comes out around March.

Apple’s stellar fiscal fourth quarter results continue to break records for the company. It sold 14.1 million iPhones, and its $20 billion in revenue topped one of Microsoft’s best quarters ever. Now, according to market research firm Strategy Analytics, the iPhone has catapulted Apple past both RIM and Sony Ericsson to make the company the fourth largest mobile phone vendor in the world.

Apple’s sales of 14.1 million iPhones was enough to capture 4.3 percent of the global mobile phone market for the last quarter. That’s double the roughly 2 percent market share the company managed this same time last year.

Despite the boost in ranking, however, Apple still has a tough road ahead to move into one of the top three positions. Nokia is still the global leader with 33.7 percent market share, while Samsung grabbed 21.8 percent and LG held on to 8.7 percent. All three of those vendors still sell millions of feature phones in addition to smartphones, though sales of those devices has been slowly waning as smartphones increase in popularity.

But Apple doesn’t plan on backsliding, either. “We’ve now passed RIM—and I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future,” CEO Steve Jobs boasted during Apple’s most recent quarterly earnings call.

Read the comments on this post

[From Apple passes RIM, now number four cell phone maker globally]

The naysayers appear to have been wrong again.

#stories There are people who make some serious bread from the App Store. Matt Rix, the creator of the wildly popular iPhone game Trainyard, is one of them. Here’s how he did it, starting with his sketchbook. More » [From The Trainyard Story, or How To Make a Smash Hit iPhone App [Stories]]

Interesting reading. And it’s a good game too

Apple is now the biggest US PC maker if you read between the lines of the latest Gartner and IDC PC sales data. This is why Apple’s announcement of new Mac OS X features next week will also be the point when AAPL defines the future of computing. read more [From With iPad, Apple is the biggest US PC maker]

The categories have always been broken.

So good that in 2006, they predicted that Windows Mobile was poised to take over the industry and attract the most developers.

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[From How Good Is Gartner at Predicting Smartphone Market Share?]

That’s a hoot

In a surprising announcement, and after receiving countless criticisms by developers and users, Apple has announced that they “are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps” and “publishing app review guidelines.” More » [From Apple to Allow Other iPhone Development Tools, Publishes App Review Guidelines [Apple]]

I guess they think the app ecosystem is strong enough now that Apple won’t get blamed for poor software development tools from third parties. And they can say I told you so if it happens.

Apple’s iOS mobile operating system rocketed past the open source Linux this summer to become the third most popular Web browsing platform on the Internet.[From Apple's iOS tops Linux to become third largest browsing platform]

Maybe next year will be the year of Linux

Detailed list from Mark Gurman at 9 to 5 Mac.

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[From What’s New in iOS 4.1]

They are busy.