William Goodall's Blog

Apple surpassed Microsoft two months ago as the world’s most highly valued tech company, and is now challenging the Redmond giant on another key metric: In a blowout third quarter, AAPL posted record revenue of $15.7 billion, which should be close to or exceed what Microsoft reports Thursday. [From Apple Is the New Microsoft, Part 2]

That would be two out of three. How long until Apple overtakes Microsoft on profit too?

Later

Next quarter then

There is no joy in Redmond Microsoft got some more bad news today: Intel is porting Android 2.2, née Froyo, to the x86 architecture.… [From Intel preps x86 Android for summer release]

I’ve never understood why anyone would pay for Windows when Linux is free and OS X is better.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews For weeks, pundits predicted what happened today: Apple’s value exceeded Microsoft’s. While writing post “The Windows era is over” early this afternoon, Apple’s market capitalization was $227.95 billion and Microsoft’s $228.47 billion, or just $520 million separating them. By the time I posted, at 2:56 pm, Apple’s market cap was $225.98 billion and Microsoft’s was $225.32 billion.In the 20 minutes after, the two companies went on a roller coaster ride of sorts, with Microsoft failing to near $221 billion and Apple rising above $228 billion.For Apple, there has been dramatic change since stock markets collapsed in autumn 2008. Apple’s market cap was $88.68 billion on Oct. 2, 2008 and Microsoft’s was $228.35 billion on Sept. 29, 2008. Mmmm, do you see a difference? Microsoft hasn’t much changed, while Apple, boasted by surging share price, has rapidly gone up. About six weeks before the crash, on Aug. 13, 2008, Apple’s market cap was $158.84 billion compared to $254.83 billion for Microsoft.From one perspective, market valuation doesn’t mean much. It’s mitigated by several factors, including the number of shares publicly traded. But its symbolic significance cannot be understated, particularly considering the long rivalry between Apple and Microsoft and Apple’s near-death experience during the mid 1990s.Something else: Apple and Microsoft were founded about the same time and both companies played important roles launching the mainstream PC industry in the 1980s. But since 2000, Microsoft’s stock has been moribund. Apple shares started a slow surge around 2003, which the September 2008 financial collapse reversed. But throughout 2009, Apple shares rose and rose and rose. Apple shares closed at $100.10 on Oct. 28, 2008. As I write, Apple is trading at $248.15.A more meaningful comparison of the companies — at least as rivals — is revenue and profit. During first calendar quarter, [From Apple market capitalization tops Microsoft]

That’s symbolic. Remember when Apple first passed Dell? Now it could buy Dell with spare change

Harry McCracken, looking back at Microsoft Bob, 15 years after its release:

Analyst Charles Finnie of Volpe, Welty & Co. called Microsoft’s product a threat to the very existence of Microsoft’s competitor in Cupertino. “Bob is going to be another nail in Apple’s coffin unless Apple can somehow raise the standard yet again on the ease-of-use front,” he told the AP.

★

[From ‘Another Nail in Apple’s Coffin’]

We know how that turned out

Macs are often the black sheep in the many enterprise environments which have been dominated by Windows for nearly two decades, but the growing consumerization of IT is slowly changing that perception. Though Macs often have a higher up-front price than many business-class PCs, Macs are usually believed to have a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) due to lower support costs. A recent survey of IT professionals in large enterprise environments that have a mix of Macs and PCs overwhelmingly agree that Macs cost less than PCs to support.

The Enterprise Desktop Alliance, which seeks to make it easier to integrate Macs in Windows-centric IT deployments, surveyed IT admins from companies that made large deployments, including universities and government agencies. Responses included in EDA’s analysis include those from environments with a mix of Macs and PCs that had a total of 50 servers or over 100 Macs.

A majority of respondents said that Macs cost less in terms of time spent troubleshooting, user training, help desk calls, and system configuration. Admins generally agreed that costs related to software licensing and supporting infrastructure were the same between the two platforms.

Two-thirds of those managing mixed environments plan to increase the number of Macs deployed in 2010. Twenty-nine percent cited lower TCO as a “key reason” for deploying Macs. Almost half cited lower TCO, ease of support, or a combination of the two as leading factors in Mac adoption. User preference and increased productivity were considered important factors as well.

“As a greater percentage of enterprise applications become OS-neutral, the cost to support a more diverse hardware and OS mix will decrease, making Macs a more viable choice for a greater number of users who continue to demand them,” noted Michael Silver, vice president and research director at Gartner, in a recent report on PC trends. Macs tend to be popular among C-level execs, as well as with those in creative departments and developers (especially cross-platform developers).

Apple has historically done little to actively develop a traditional strategy to target enterprise deployment. Instead, the company tends to focus on consumers first, and lets individuals drive enterprise demand for its computers and mobile devices. It does, though, make continual small improvements that make it easier to integrate Macs, iPhones, and soon iPads into many corporate environments.

Read the comments on this post

[From Survey: Macs cost notably less to support than Windows PCs]

That’s a no-brainer! Pretty much every IT person I know makes sure their family members buy Macs so they don’t have to deal with support hassles.