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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft is one of the most diversified companies in existence. Pretty much every business, every government and most consumers around the world are directly or indirectly paying them money for something, whether software, devices, consulting, cloud, data. On the other hand Apple's success for the last 15 years has relied on a single device. Now that the device is running into some issues (dropping sales in China, general stall in innovation, regulatory hurdles) their stock price is reacting accordingly.

Of course investors aren't rewarding them for an upcoming VR headset which is yet to be proven. Why would they?

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also people don't realize how local Apple is. In a lot of countries you can't even access their services which decreases the value of their devices.

But oddly enough one of those countries isn't China. Its weird how Google and Facebook can't do much their while everything from Apple works as well as anywhere else.

Because Apple is willing to play China's game. Google and Facebook's business models (ads) fundamentally don't work with China's government. They sell different products than Apple.

> Because Apple is willing to play China's game.

They are forced to by their hardware business model. Almost every entry point to the Apple ecosystem is through hardware and nobody can meet QC and scale of Chinese factories. Too much of a risk to block China and risk supply chain disruptions.

This comment made me feel unnecessarily old. It was only ~15 years ago that we went through all the drama of tech companies deciding whether or not they’d play ball. It’s not that Google can’t, it’s that they decided that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Apple decided otherwise. They’re very different companies selling very different things.

i was just thinking i haven't paid MS anything since i got my hands on "VXKC4-2B3YF-W9MFK-QB3DB-9Y7MB"

... then i just got an email receipt from my xbox gold subscription. curses!

I bet it’s not just Xbox, either. Maybe you’re not directly paying them money, but as someone commenting on Hacker News I’d sure bet you’re using at least one of GitHub, VS Code, NPM, or LinkedIn. And I’m sure they’re ultimately benefiting from that use!

Most folks would say "FCKGW-...".

What's the story behind your key?

ah that what i was looking for ... couldn't remember that key so just googled for windows 2000 pro keys

> Of course investors aren't rewarding them for an upcoming VR headset which is yet to be proven. Why would they?

In ~theory~ such an announcement would be priced into the markets since market capitalization is also dependent on future expected returns.

Maybe investors just don't think everyone will be wearing $3000 digital fisheye goggles in a few years.

Apple Stock Falls In Minutes After 'Vision Pro' Announcement"

https://www.barrons.com/livecoverage/apple-wwdc-2023/card/ap...

Also Microsoft is still selling HoloLens but for selected audience.

I’ve been following Apple for a long time and the stock almost always rises ahead of announcements and falls after. Pretty sure that pattern has existed for ~20 years.

Yep. Yet time after time “stock dropped after announcement” is trotted out as some sort of indicator of consumer sentiment whenever anyone is looking to start a silly flame war, because it’s convenient to temporarily ignore that share prices are already the result of 12-dimensional speed chess.

> On the other hand Apple's success for the last 15 years has relied on a single device.

That "single device company" makes just half of its revenue from iPhones. Recurring services revenue accounted for almost 25%.

How much of that other half would still be around if the iPhone was no longer a thing? Apple Care? App store purchases? IAP/microtransactions? Apple Pay? iCloud storage? Chargers? Airpods?

They can structure their financial reports however they like, but it doesn't change the fact that their entire ecosystem is directly or indirectly tied to that one device.

Fair enough, but Microsoft would be equally dead without Office and Azure revenue.

One way to think about this is that Apple isn't diversified enough. Another way to think about it is that Microsoft's long tail is a mess.

> Fair enough, but Microsoft would be equally dead without Office and Azure revenue.

Office and Azure make up half of their revenue, but their other revenue streams are actually different things, like Windows, gaming, LinkedIn, Bing advertising. It's actual diversification.

People forget that Apple of today probably wouldn't be around if Microsoft hadn't given them $150M to save them from bankruptcy in 1997[1].

With the introduction of IE in 1995 and its deep integration into Win95 and ruthless take-no-prisoners assault on Netscape, Microsoft was probably already aware that they were starting to resemble a monopoly, given Apple's poor sales and market share at the time. My personal take is that MS propped up Apple to help appear to have a competitor ahead of the Antitrust action in 2001[2].

[1]https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/steve-jobs-and-bill-gates-wh...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

>probably wouldn't be around if Microsoft hadn't given them $150M to save them from bankruptcy in 1997

I'm _pretty_ sure Apple could have gotten the money from elsewhere if they really had to. It's history now, so we'll never know for sure, but I'd bet that they could have found other investors if they really had to. People seem to think it's a black and white scenario - money from MS or death! But I don't think it ever was.

The 70's through 90's were littered with the corpses of computer companies that were outcompeted and never recovered - the IBM PC/DOS/Windows 3.x effectively killed not only the competing CP/M (8080/Z80) market for PC's, but outcompeted the Amiga, Atari ST, and of course the entire 8-bit market was obsoleted by the 16-bit 80[2]86. Apple's struggle to enhance MacOS to keep up (vs Win95/NT juggernaut) at that time are well documented. At least Apple still had some brand recognition, so maybe you are right.

I really don’t think that people “forget” that. You’re effectively saying “if Microsoft continued to be predatory and anticompetitive to the degree they were, there wouldn’t be [other option]”. What’s the point? Seems self-evident.

>Microsoft would be equally dead without Office and Azure revenue.

Would they? Microsoft also own other stuff they monetize like GitHub, Linkedin, X-Box, and a shit tonne of gaming IP inclusing Activision Blizzard, plus other things I'm surely forgetting.

Looks pretty diverse to me comapred to a company who's revenue stream is limited by the ammounts of walled garden phones it can sell and who's grasp over its walled garden can be regualted away by the EU waving their wand the same way they lost the Lightnig cable revenue stream.

Can Apple keep up this momentum in the long run and keep growing by getting people to buy more expensive stuff, or will they slowly loose steam and stagnate?

>Fair enough, but Microsoft would be equally dead without Office and Azure revenue.

They were already on a bit of a shaky nail for a while when they relied only on Office and Windows, but their shift to the cloud (and resultant cuddly Embrace of Linux) has paid off well for them, so overall a smart move on their part.

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