In particular, by saying that X's profit dropped below Y's for the first time (without context of X and Y) suggests TO ME that X's profit dropped when that was not the case.
By "misleading," I meant that had I not known profit figures already, I would have assumed the title meant that Microsoft's profit had fallen. It means that the understanding it leads you to believe initially is incorrect, hence misleading.
"My height grew above Yao Ming's last year". Did I surpass his height last year or grow more during that period of time?
Edit: Before downvoting me, take a look at my comment history. I'm not your typical Apple fan/Microsoft basher.
None of this sounds the least bit shady to you?
To me, their decision to prevent iOS apps from getting content outside of its walled garden (and bypass the 30% fee) is much more anti-competitive than whatever Microsoft did.
I don't know if anyone downvoted you (I didn't). I just wanted to hear your opinion. I'd like to hear what you mean by 'shady', and what in particular about Microsoft makes it shadier.
I can make an OS X application and market it, distribute it in any way I wish. I can even use Apple's IDE, libraries, and compiler tools.
Why are you comparing that to the device OS (which by the way, Microsoft also implements a similarly restricted approach for in their Windows Phone Marketplace).
Everything from forcing hardware vendors to bundle their OS to forcing Internet Explorer installs to the infamous Halloween documents to their covert dealings with SCO & everyone else over Linux and patents.
Surprisingly, it still seems pretty hard to get the hardware I want without paying for a Windows OS I:
1.) Won't use, because I'd throw Linux on it. 2.) Don't need, because I already have several valid Windows licenses which are unused.
But yes, certainly some of Apple's walled garden/30% actions are alarming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_antitrust http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
And I for one LOVE the walled garden as it provides me with demonstrably higher-quality, malware-free apps that don’t just rip off someone else’s IP/icon haphazardly the way most Android apps seem to do. The walled garden does NOT prevent end users from installing web apps to the home screen, sans Apple approval. It is also NOT anticompetitive, unless you know something no one else does.
[1]: http://news.cnet.com/2100-7344_3-5172426.html?tag=nefd_lede
[2]: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Microsoft-Kee... and http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2004/03/62644 and more generically http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=465335
And Apple is using the same "open development initiative" approach in OS X.
I'm curious as to why you feel that "(Apple's walled garden approach) is much more anti-competitive than whatever Microsoft did" when Microsoft is pursuing the same approach in the same space.
Um... you are wrong. These companies are all suing each other, and Apple is known for creating patents for every little thing they do in iOS.
You wouldn't believe how much MSFT people are fixated on Apple despite having no direct competition between each other (except Zune Vs. iPod, but I would say it doesn't count). The fruit word and the fruit logo used to come up in almost every external powerpoint presentations/briefings five or four years ago, it was crazy. They are/were fascinated by Apple and lack any ability to even understand how they work and, of course, learn from them.
For some reason, I find it hard to imagine a keynote in Cupertino with a pixelated Windows logo in every slide. But I might be wrong.
I hear now they are fascinated by Google, now.
Research encompasses a lot of things at MS, from pure research labs in Redmond, Boston, Cambridge to online services and live labs. Microsoft runs perhaps the largest CS research organization in existence, when basic research is considered alongside product research such as Bing and Photosynth.
MSR grew to be so by the promotion of Nathan Myhrvold, and the buy-in he was able to get from Gates and Ballmer. It maintains itself by being able to collect a lot of talent, and keeping them interested. But like Lucent, it probably only survives as long as the company is growing.
"Bah, it's revenue that matters"
October 2010: revenue(AAPL) > revenue(MSFT)
"Bah, profit is the real metric"
April 2011: profit(AAPL) > profit(MSFT)
"Bah, basic research is where it's at!"
Most people I've talked to who worked elsewhere are shocked at how small the teams at Apple are.
I've always felt they spent so much on "research", in part, as a way to reduce their reported profits. Because Microsoft was notorious for mostly just copying what others did first (see Apple --- and yes I know about Xerox PARC), or acquiring/rebranding/integrating (Spyglass -> IE, etc.), and only a small percentage of so-called original/in-house stuff. When the original version of C# and .NET came out it was so hilariously obvious what they were ripping off at that time (cough-Java-cough), they didn't quite shave off all the boilerplate for those in the know. But They Capitalized Differently. Oooooh. ;)
On a related note, I once knew someone who officially worked in software R&D. And I noted they mostly spent a lot of time surfing the web and then parroting some sexy sounding thing they read about recently. Ironically (or not?) I think that's a not un-legitimate way, and certainly can be an effective way, to introduce new thinking inside a particular company, or introduce a new technology, like say as a pilot project. But to describe this process as requiring heavy spending (on software R&D mind you, not talking about hardware stuff) sounds ridiculous and an unnecessary money sink. Find a smart creative engineer. Take them off the leash. See where they go, what shiny nuggets they bring back. That's how you do practical software R&D, outside of academia. Doesn't require billions. Just brains, and it can be a side product of what your staff is already doing anyway -- if you have the right staff.
Additionally, whether some anti-competitive action benefits you in the short term is irrelevant because it often does. (For example, Microsoft "Bundling" IE led you to have free browsers) They are anti-competitive because companies are sacrificing short term potential to wall off their competitors, hence "walled garden."
I am sure that you're happy that Google was left hanging for a year and that an Android app was banned from the App Store. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373502,00.asp
And there are a whole ton of low quality apps in the iOS app store as well.
It's just a question of the degree of lock-in. And Apple is a master of lock-in: purchased apps for iOS and Mac OS X don't work anywhere else, FairPlay prevents movies purchased from iTunes from working elsewhere, AirTunes is locked via DRM to iTunes, things like MagSafe are protected with patents to maintain their profit margins, and so on.
I agree that Microsoft has done a lot of great research, and I hope that some day they can turn more of it into products. Alas, from reading the pub directory at llvm.org, for example, I get the impression that when something similar to Bartok & Singularity become products for real users they're going to come from elsewhere.
Time will tell, though.
I do love my Kinect.
After all, we need to nip it in the bud before even a seemingly innocent comment can set the precedent that Apple criticism is acceptable.
For instance, a customer can love the output of a supply chain, and abhor some part (or the implications of some part) of that supply chain. This isn't at all like a thermometer measuring temperature here.
The point is that Apple and MS both used the fact that vendors need them to make money (and while competitors for both exist, competitors yielded less likely return), and leveraged that position.
Microsoft got a lot of flak for just shipping IE with the OS, whereas Apple doesn't even allow alternate browser engines such as Firefox and Chrome on iOS.
Couple that with some capricious and silly rejecting or stonewalling of apps such as Google Voice and an Android magazine apps and I feel Apple is worse than Microsoft in asserting control over the ecosystem.
Oh, and Microsoft got flak because they were behaving in an anticompetitive way. Shipping your OS with only ine browser engine is usually no problem and only in very specific instances illegal.
Unless you're going to say there are only 15 people on iOS. In which case I will be seriously impressed!
Oh, and if you want an Apples to Apples comparison...I was there when the Server group merged with the Dev Tools group...and the merged group is maybe 300 engineers total (all of server was about 70 engineers...all told OS X and iOS combined only comes to something like 3000 engineers).
A fun little link: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=revenue+per+employee+at...
That sounds about right. For Win7 about 2500 engineers (1000 devs, 1000 testers, 500 PMs). I suspect WP7 is probably 500 engineers. So Windows + WP7 is probably right around the same number.
Interesting to think that in terms of products where Apple and MS compete directly, they probably have very similar headcounts. There's a mythology that MS is this huge beast that will crush you (at least in the past). But in reality MS ships 100+ different products. The company is spread a lot thinner than lay people might imagine.
http://www.pc-wholesale.com/networking-news-a-small-army-of-...
This sounds funny from my POV because I work mostly with startups now so I'm usually 0-1 levels away from the CEO. In the last 2 weeks alone I've ended up in F2F conversations with folks who I originally thought were some bizdev guy, perhaps a senior technical architecht, but no, turns out, that was the CEO. (... ", bitch." <--- per The Social Network) I was in a conversation the other day with a guy who was the CEO of a potential competitor, but at the time I didn't know he was the CEO, or that they were a potential competitor, and likewise in reverse. Funny stuff.
So yeah, this whole "flat company" with a mere 5-8 levels of hierarchy, makes me giggle. Back to my Terminal session, which this CEO considers his office. :)
(not criticising, just pointing out the humor of relative POV's)