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thenerdal

macrumors 65816
Oct 14, 2011
1,051
1
Heck, Microsoft itself was purchased from another company.

Mrs. Gates (Billy's mom) basically bought her trust fund baby a computer company that wrote the precursor to PC-DOS. Not only that, from her charity activities (she was from one of Seattle's oldest banking families), she knew someone who sat on IBM's board of directors and got Big Blue to look at Sonny Boy's operating system (which would eventually become the primary OS of the IBM PC).

Well, Junior took the ball and ran with it until the EU and US DOJ started poking around for antitrust practices. Mama Gates told Sonny Boy to loosen the purse strings, not be such a tightwad. By this time, he was wise enough to listen to Mom and she was the initial executive director of the Gates Foundation.

Bill Gates is a very important philanthropist, but let's not hide anything. Microsoft had a chance because his mom made some very strategic moves early in her son's professional endeavors.

That's not true.

----------

Unlike Google and Microsoft, they don't need to buy very many things out because they are creative. Microsoft, for instance, bought Office from another company. Google bought Motorola Mobility.


Actually, Microsoft didn't buy Office.
 

lilo777

macrumors 603
Nov 25, 2009
5,144
0
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A405)

No more Sammyflash

You are being naive. Anobit does not make flash and neither does Apple. Merge two companies not making flash memory and you get what? No flash memory. You need FABs for that and only Samsung has those (and spending $5..10 billion dollars annually to update those). Spending $500 million these days just buys you some patents and that's what this purchase is.
 

thelookingglass

macrumors 68020
Apr 27, 2005
2,138
629
Uh, no.

The point is that Microsoft was built by acquiring another company. That's totally relevant to the topic, particularly because the commentor I was replying to was talking about Office which didn't exist at the time of Microsoft's founding. Office is a hodgepodge pieced together from code mostly purchased from outside sources (which actually provided the better components, like Excel).

I have no bitterness about Microsoft/Gates success. Why should I? It's not like I was shut out of deal because Mama Gates stepped in and showed me my hat. A s a matter of fact, I was actually quite complimentary of Bill's more recent endeavors. Heck, most of my jobs have come because I knew somebody. I never said that having connections was a BAD thing.

I was just pointing out that Microsoft wasn't built from scratch. Far from that.

I don't work in high tech anymore. Money isn't the only great thing in life. I make far less today than I would have had I stuck in high tech, but that was my deliberate choice.

In any case, I make more the 99.9% of the people on this planet, even if I don't make the median income for a college-educated American of my age.

YOU are the one who needs an attitude adjustment.

He should've known better than to argue with a lawyer (I think you're a lawyer, IIRC). :)
 

blue22

macrumors 6502a
Oct 15, 2010
505
18
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Hopefully this will be the first significant step towards a lasting peace in the Middle East. ;)
 

Kaibelf

Suspended
Apr 29, 2009
2,445
7,444
Silicon Valley, CA
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Hopefully this will be the first significant step towards a lasting peace in the Middle East. ;)

Doubtful. I seem to recall stupid posts against "Zionists" in the initial story about this purchase. Some people just can't help but apply stupid religious conflicts to a forum full of people who don't give a damn.
 

AlphaDogg

macrumors 68040
May 20, 2010
3,417
7
Ypsilanti, MI
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Hopefully this will be the first significant step towards a lasting peace in the Middle East. ;)

Ever been to Israel? One little company being bought out by Apple will not create peace in the Middle East. I won't say what will, because I don't want to start a political debate.
 

inkswamp

macrumors 68030
Jan 26, 2003
2,953
1,278
Heck, Microsoft itself was purchased from another company.

Mrs. Gates (Billy's mom) basically bought her trust fund baby a computer company that wrote the precursor to PC-DOS. Not only that, from her charity activities (she was from one of Seattle's oldest banking families), she knew someone who sat on IBM's board of directors and got Big Blue to look at Sonny Boy's operating system (which would eventually become the primary OS of the IBM PC).

Well, Junior took the ball and ran with it until the EU and US DOJ started poking around for antitrust practices. Mama Gates told Sonny Boy to loosen the purse strings, not be such a tightwad. By this time, he was wise enough to listen to Mom and she was the initial executive director of the Gates Foundation.

Bill Gates is a very important philanthropist, but let's not hide anything. Microsoft had a chance because his mom made some very strategic moves early in her son's professional endeavors.

Go here and read #6. Oh hell, read the whole damn thing. Sounds like you need it.
 

marcusj0015

macrumors 65816
Aug 29, 2011
1,024
1
U.S.A.
I think this means that apple has a true desire to make all of their products flash based - and only flash based - in the coming years. Hopefully this will mean that we will start to see larger capacities at smaller prices, but I hope that Apple doesn't take a cue from the MB Air and start to install flash memory on the motherboard. Hopefully this isn't another step in Apple's attempt to make a machine that is completely closed for the user.

Dude, Apple SHOULD put Flash on the motherboard, for faster access and more importantly that way a HDD/SDD could be installed.
 

arcite

macrumors 6502a
Apple buys companies that they see can add value to penetrating new markets and growing mature markets without adding heavy overhead and debt taken on by larger acquisitions.

Sorry, but you want to buy out Kodak? Go right ahead. It's a dump full of debt with very little useful IP.

There is a good 50 large corporations in similar shape. Have at them.

LOL why are people modding you down? :rolleyes:
 

gnasher729

Suspended
Nov 25, 2005
17,980
5,565
You would think with the amount of cash they have, they would purchase more than just 'a few' small business'.

Why would they? Any acquisition has a huge cost beyond the money paid; the company has to be integrated, you have to make sure everything keeps running smoothly because you don't want the important people in the company jump ship, and so on. Apple is very careful only to buy companies that can directly contribute to improving Apple's business. And there are not many of them.


I gotta wonder how cheap the labor is in Israel to make this a good option.

Or maybe I'm missing something

You are missing something. What counts isn't how cheap the labour is in Israel, but how good their universities are.
 

ModerateFKR

macrumors member
May 10, 2011
79
0
I gotta wonder how cheap the labor is in Israel to make this a good option.

Or maybe I'm missing something

You certainly are. This surely has nothing to do with labour costs, but everything to do with IP, as usual in these cases. And why would labour costs be low in Israel?
 

currentinterest

macrumors 6502a
Aug 22, 2007
676
638
I believe this company has technology for greatly improving the reliability and efficiency of flash memory allowing one to get better performance from less expensive memory. This keeps costs down without sacrificing performance. The acquisition will pay for itself many times over; it is not just about patents.
 

blue22

macrumors 6502a
Oct 15, 2010
505
18
lighten up...

Doubtful. I seem to recall stupid posts against "Zionists" in the initial story about this purchase. Some people just can't help but apply stupid religious conflicts to a forum full of people who don't give a damn.

Ever been to Israel? One little company being bought out by Apple will not create peace in the Middle East. I won't say what will, because I don't want to start a political debate.

Relax, it was just a joke.
 

ModerateFKR

macrumors member
May 10, 2011
79
0
Go here and read #6. Oh hell, read the whole damn thing. Sounds like you need it.

I have and I find it rather sad. Take just one prime example:

"2. Steve Ballmer’s disparaging remarks about the iPhone were completely off-the-mark.

No, they really weren’t, not at the time he made the comments which was several months prior to the iPhone actually being released—well before anyone knew the final feature set. And in fact, Apple validated his primary criticism (the exorbitant price) a mere month after the iPhone’s release with a wholly unexpected and somewhat controversial price drop.

Let’s make no mistake... blah blah blah... he was absolutely right about the iPhone."

Absolute rubbish, and here's why. This is a transcription from the video of what Ballmer actually said:

"500 Dollars, fully subsidized! with a plan! I said, that is the most expensive phone in the world. And it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good email machine. Now, it may sell very well or not. We have our strategy. We've got great Windows mobile devices in the market today. You can get a Motorola Q phone now for 99 Dollars. It's a very capable machine, it'll do music, it'll do internet, it'll do email, it'll do instant messaging. So I kinda look at that and I say, well, I like our strategy and I like it a lot."

In answer to: "How do you compete with that though? He's sucked out a lot of the spotlight in the last few weeks because of what happened at MacWorld, not only with the iPhone, but also with the new iPod. How do you compete with that with the Zune?" Ballmer replied"

"Right now. Let's take phones first. Right now we're selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year. Apple is selling zero phones a year. In 6 months they'll have the most expensive phone by far ever in the market place, and let's see, you know, let's see how the competition goes."

He then babbles on about the Zune having 25% of the above $249 market share, which we now know is utterly irrelevant because a few months later the Zune was killed.

Now, let's look at that. "500 Dollars, fully subsidized! with a plan..."

Yes, Apple did reduce this a few weeks after launch. Why? They didn't need to charge the top end for the iPhone because it was so successful they were going to recover their outlay much sooner than anticipated.

But what are we paying for the top end models today?

Right, let's look at:

"...it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good email machine."

In what sense is that true? The iPhone is the most popular choice for consumers and business customers - when they are allowed to choose. But Ballmer was actually attacking the interface, not the product here. This is the very same interface he eventually had on his own phones - a few years later. So what we have is a man incapable of recognising something that will work, even when its time has come, never mind sufficient time before, in order to innovate and develop the technology himself.

Next, as if to prove this point, he says: "...I like our strategy and I like it a lot."

Well Steve, it stinks.

Then, "...Right now we're selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year..."

No. No they are not. Microsoft was selling Zero phones a year. Other companies were selling millions of phones with Microsoft's [OUTDATED] licensed software on them. And that's a huge difference. Selling a license nets income from OEMs too lazy or too dumb to develop their own software. Selling the device, if that device is superior and actually commands a 4 or 5 times price multiple of his example Motorola Q phone [whatever the hell that is], represents a very different kind of business proposition altogether. It means genuinely significant bottom line numbers - so much more than mere market share that translates, in real terms, into low cents in the Dollar profits.

It's only at the end that we see the deer in the headlights reality that is Ballmer's life:

"Apple is selling zero phones a year. In 6 months they'll have the most expensive phone by far ever in the market place, and let's see, you know, let's see how the competition goes."

BAMM! We did. And not for the first time this clown is eating his words and following Apple into the marketplace, years and years late with virtual copies of the very products he so energetically criticized when first presented with them.

The lesson here is simple. If your mouth is producing more hostages to fortune and viral video moments, than your brain is producing good ideas, it's time to retire. And anyone quoting this so-called mac using geekshovel guy in a vein attempt to debunk the facts, really needs to check the facts first.
 

MrNomNoms

macrumors 65816
Jan 25, 2011
1,156
294
Wellington, New Zealand
Are there any Anobit patents on this technology to be had in this acquisition? If so, it could give Apple a real price advantage for flash storage in the coming years. See this great article's explanation...

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2011/...y-apple-is-investing-in-flash-ram-technology/

It would be nice for the person who wrote the article what RAM actually means instead of throwing it around like some sort of buzz word to give the unsuspecting audience the impression he actually knows what he is talking about. Btw, SMB 2.1 is in Windows 7/Windows 20008 R2 and SMB 2.2 is already in the Windows 8 developer preview so I hope Apple is on the ball when it comes to delivering updates.
 
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Thunderhawks

Suspended
Feb 17, 2009
4,057
2,118
It is, but not with anything widely commercially available. OWC sells a few expensive replacements for the previous model. It is starting to feel like Apple is limiting our choices even more.

Why would Apple want everybody to tinker around inside their products other than memory chips?"

They sell several configurations regarding SSD size etc. and if they don't offer what YOU want, you either have to find a different solution around their limitations or another product from another company.

It's the way they want to sell their products, so why complain?

I bet 90% of Apple consumers buy their machines and never do anything to them other than software updates which pop up automatically.
 
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AppleMacDudeG4

macrumors member
Apr 16, 2011
81
0
Good move

This is a good move on the part of Apple. By having a company making the flash memories for them, they will not have to worry running into supply issues or having to spend time negotiating on prices.
 

Mr. Retrofire

macrumors 603
Mar 2, 2010
5,064
518
www.emiliana.cl/en
Pretty soon Apple is going to make all their components themselves.

Not really. But innovative flash memory products reach the customer base faster, if one company controls the entire process (design, manufacturing, ...). A good example are SandForce-controllers. Only a few SSD companies use them, which makes them expensive.
 

Thunderhawks

Suspended
Feb 17, 2009
4,057
2,118
I gotta wonder how cheap the labor is in Israel to make this a good option.

Or maybe I'm missing something

The percentage of labor in that manufacturing process is insignificant.

It's the brain power Apple was after. They don't pay 400-500 million to get forklift drivers.
 
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