Oh yeah I remember when Microsoft lost its antitrust trial and we all only use Internet Explorer and Windows now
RIP in peace Apple and Linux
RIP in peace Apple and Linux
If they had been able to monopolize the web to just IE compatibility, what impact might that have had? Could Chrome and Webkit have taken off?
Well, maybe, but I can at least see a good case that things could have been much different.
Chrome took over because it was heavily advertised on what was already the most heavily trafficked site and it was bundled with other downloads.
WebKit “took off” because Apple by then had the resources to port over another open source project and it came with iPhones. It’s still a relatively non contender on the desktop.
They have done this kind of thing before: https://www.justice.gov/atr/memorandum-opinion-us-v-microsof....
Firefox/Chrome are yet another clear example where Microsoft could have completely unraveled anything they did by making it unworkable on the dominant OS Windows.
Microsoft also kept the main pro software suite running on Apple's garbage OS and then ported it to Mac OS X, just to try to stave off the antitrust proceedings, further helping Apple claw its way back.
Microsoft and Adobe basically saved Mac OS and Apple, allowing Apple to bounce back a few years later.
Microsoft invested a whopping $250 million in Apple. Apple already had secured a $4 billion line of credit and didn’t become profitable until losing billions more. The $250 wouldn’t have saved Apple.
Also, Apple turned around the next quarter and bought PowerComputings Mac assets for $100 million.
And Office was not charity project for MS, it made a hefty profit. Also it was much easier to convince corporate buyers to buy Office if they could use on Office Suite across their entire organization - even for those hippie Mac users in the corner
Office for mac may have been profitable, but it may have been more profitable to not allow Mac to have it.
And how is it not trivial? Can you show me a timeline that Apple would have been bankrupt without the extra $250 million?
Also do you realize how much more MS made on an Office license than a Windows license?
If windows had not allowed office on Apple computers then Apple computers would have been less successful. Market share on hardware matters more than profits on software.
And yes market share on hardware is important, look how badly Apple is doing now with only 13% of the global market share in smart phones…
Apple’s hardware market share is huge when considering the wealth of customers. Apple makes most of its money by forbidding sharing access to its customers for software these days.
One reason that for example that Pepsi was spun off from Yum brands was that Pepsi executives had a hard time selling into large franchises because companies didn’t want to send money to competitors.
> Apple’s hardware market share is huge when considering the wealth of customers.
“Words mean things” - “market share” has a definition.
> Apple makes most of its money by forbidding sharing access to its customers for software these days
Are you just making stuff up now? It’s really not hard to look at Apple’s financials to see that “most” of Apple’s revenue comes from hardware sells and not services - where App Store revenue is included.
Market share does mean something specific, but you chose to specify which market, and that wasn’t the important one, so your definition was not useful.
Most of Apple’s revenue comes from the hardware sales. But the hardware sales are very expensive. Even at 110%+ markups. The App Store sales is by comparison basically free. The majority of Apple’s contribution margin is coming from sources like that. Which is doubly toxic because this is only due to Apple forbidding competition against itself on its hardware.
Assets = liabilities + owners equity
This formula is like high school finance.
When Microsoft bought $250 million in Apple Stock, the Assets increased by $250 million and the owners equity increased by $250 million.
This is simple double entry accounting.
When Google pays Apple and Microsoft to be the default search engine, you still add the payment to Assets and owners equity.
When you borrow money - say the same $250 million - you still add $250 million to Assets. But then you add $250 million to liabilities.
You notice that in all three scenarios that Assets increase ?
By that simple equation, “Assets” increase by three methods to “fund” the company - through the regular course of business, someone buying into the company and via debt.
Again this is simple Finance 101.
> Most of Apple’s revenue comes from the hardware sales. But the hardware sales are very expensive. Even at 110%+ markups. The App Store sales is by comparison basically free
Now check your math against the publicly available breakdown of revenue and the overall profit and see how nonsensical your math is.
> Market share does mean something specific, but you chose to specify which market, and that wasn’t the important one, so your definition was not useful.
So which market share are you making up to make your comment logical?
> Which is doubly toxic because this is only due to Apple forbidding competition against itself on its hardware.
Are you really saying that Apple has no competition in the phone market??
When Google pays a fee to other companies it becomes revenue. Revenue is a temporary account and does not feature in the balance sheet. Retained earnings does, which is revenue - expenses - distributions. This is all tangential to the point that the majority of funding for a company at any given time is likely debt and contributed capital. Apple is over 80% debt funded. Retained earnings accounts for less than 0.1% of Apple’s funding.
I have passed the CPA exam so consider if you really think you’ve got the upper hand here.
> Now check your math against the publicly available breakdown of revenue and the overall profit and see how nonsensical your math is.
Products sales: 61B. Products COGS: 39B. Gross Income of 22B
Services sales: 21B. Services COGS: 6B. Gross income of 15B.
Consider then that the vast majority of their supporting expenses including 7B in R&D go towards their product (which is the hardware and OS) and I think you’d find this easily supports what I’m saying. It’s closer than I thought though.
> So which market share are you making up to make your comment logical?
The most important one. The US.
> Are you really saying that Apple has no competition in the phone market??
No, you just didn’t read.
When Google pays Apple 18B to be the default search engine, it goes in two accounts. It’s recognized as revenue and it goes into owners equity. That revenue is then used to fund expenses. Just like when equity is injected into a company, it is used to fund continuing operations.
And the only reason that Apple has any debt is because in a zero% interest rate environment, it made more sense than to have to repatriate earnings.
Revenue is not owners equity. It is an income statement account. It eventually feeds into net income which can eventually flow into retained earnings, which is part of owners equity.
But nobody calls things a “revenue funded company”. There’s a huge difference between a 6% stake in equity and a 6% source of revenue. And that shows because again, Apple’s retained earnings account is < 0.1% retained earnings. Even if, yes, they pay the bills using money they earn.
If I need to fund an initiative - I could do it one of three ways - income, debt or equity. Is that not an accurate statement?
How many companies now “fund” their compensation with a mixture of income from their business and equity. You’ve been stretching definitions this whole conversation to make it fit your initial wrong statement.
This entire conversation started because someone believed the old wives tail that Microsoft saved Apple by investing $250 million to pro it up or to “fund continuing operations”
Accounting
I’m not really interested in continuing this, but it’s irritating having you write so confidently while making basic mistakes
Finance: “Finance is a broad term that describes activities associated with banking, leverage or debt, credit, capital markets, money, and investments. Essentially, finance represents money management and the process of acquiring needed funds.”
This is exactly what we are talking about? Would you not call the “process of a acquiring needed funds” - funding?
Would debt, income and equity not be the three ways of “acquiring needed funds”?
You're conflating the modern post-iPhone Apple era with the one before.
Apple customers weren't greatly exceeding Microsoft customers before. Every manager up to exec level had a Windows desktop or laptop and possibly a Windows "smartphone".
The MacOS market wasn't inherently much higher in per-capita value than Windows.
[1] Or for modern day companies and inflation, even $1bn.
If you have a company that has 95 PCs and 5 Macs, it helps a lot to say “we are the one neck to choke across your entire enterprise”. It’s helping you sale 100 licenses.
Could any company today that cared about big enterprise go in today without having a Mac solution? The Mac is still a small share of the enterprise market.
It was still a signal. Signals matter, especially when a company is in distress.
> And Office was not charity project for MS, it made a hefty profit. Also it was much easier to convince corporate buyers to buy Office if they could use on Office Suite across their entire organization - even for those hippie Mac users in the corner.
I didn't say it was a charity project and your interpretation is far too lenient for Apple. First of all, Microsoft definitely did NOT have any problems selling Microsoft Office after at least 1995.
Secondly, that "hefty profit" was peanuts for Microsoft. It wasn't a "move the needle" type of investment for them.
They did both those things purely because the DoJ made Gates sweat.
You also don’t seem to remember that it was also to settle the Quicktime lawsuit where Microsoft actually used Apple’s copyrighted code. This was separate from the dumb look and feel lawsuit.
They did both those things to settle a lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company
most interestingly after Satya Nadella took over from Lord Balmer. they started investing into FOSS and Linux, they absorbed github, Xamarin (FOSS .Net), created WSL/WSL2 which now pretty much works, because for heaven's sake, the munny is in managing the cloud and in providing the workplace desktop productivity suite, not the base OS or infrastructure software...
anyhow.
Novell, Balmer and Microsoft was quite a ride.