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BREAKING: Microsoft Proposes Yahoo! Takeover at $31 per Share (44 Billion $ Takeover)
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Why doesn't Mac sell their OSX to DELL, HP, Lenovo?
Seriously what is their excuse? Seems to me, they have a great product that has a monopoly only on their physical architecture. I have read that you can manipulate (hack) so it will load onto a PC.
Seems there would be a demand, look at me. I am a convert, but to be honest I came over to play on both sides of the fence with Bootcamp.
Why is it that Office Mac still is a big seller?
How comedoesn't come out with an Office Suite to stamp down all the other wannabees as well as MS Office.
Your question is a bit off topic since we are talking about M$ and Yahoo, but here it goes:
Apple makes the hardware and software to work together and to Just work. Apple limits the video cards, audio chips, etc to a set they are comfortable they can support.
Other hardware manufacturers use a much larger set of hardware, mostly for the best price that can do the job. This would mean many millions of possibilities that would have to be supported by Apple with drivers and general support when a user has problems.
Last but not least it would kill their hardware Mac business and put them in direct competition with Microsoft at price points that would generate an all out war. Apple prefers to sneak in by the backdoor and gain market share slowly and prefer to have much higher markups than DELL and others.
While DELL sells a lot more computers than Apple, Apple stock valuation is higher than Dell by a long shot.
Apple does not want to sell to the unwashed masses with such a diverse number of hardware differences, their support cost would be thru the roof and they would lose money or have to raise the price of the OS significantly if all they sold was the OS and not computers.
I can only guess that you want OSX in a cheap build machine because of all the options it opens to you and for gaming, however that is the main reason why Apple does not sell the OS. They don't want to support all the possibilities and all the associated support calls. Besides Apple loves to sell hardware at decent markups.
There is little price difference between a Mac and a DELL if you match the hardware components exactly. Apple offers you a quality system that is just going to work with the OS and they also provide the best customer satisfaction and the best customer support. Selling just the OS would kill all of that.
Office sells well because people want to use the same software that they use at work. With Bootcamp and parallel, they can use the same exact copy under windows if they want. However there are a lot of other alternatives that are free or are offered by Apple but people prefer to use the same tool as at work. While we make a big to do about how some of those tools and in some ways superior to Office, the bottom line is that people are too lazy to learn something new and don't want to take a risk that there maybe an incompatibility between what they use at home and the Office software they use at work. You and I may try new things, but most users wont.
Most users just do email, browse the web and listen to music, for them they could use Linux and a cheap machine, but they lose out on the games and the support. Besides they would need to take the time to learn something new and they are just not willing to do it. Over long periods of time people try Linux and Mac OSX but is in relativly low numbers and over very long periods of time.
The Xbox project has lost $6bn over 8 years. I guess the definition of success is open to interpretation.
You are welcome.
BTW XBox 360 came out at a price point that lost them a lot of money on each sale with a recoup on the games. I thin (could be wrong) that now the box is in the black by a small margin as price of the components have come down. They made it a success by underpricing the device below cost and by having good games. M$ has the cash to loose and still come out ahead at the end.
Their Zune player is probably another example, but I can not be sure. Profits after a long series of sales. Vista is another long term money maker, while a lot of users downgraded to XP, sooner or later they will go with Vista.
I don't think everyone here wants Microsoft to disappear it's just that we don't want them to own absolutely everything.
Apple and Google are pretty much the only two companies stopping that from happening.
Not very likely to happen anytime soon (M$ disappearing). M$ is the big winner in my opinion due to corporations. They buy the bulk of the number of PCs with some flavor of windows or another. My corporation for example has about 90,000 desktop windows machines, since people want the same as work (in general) that also represents about 40,000 more home computers running windows, in total that 130,000 windows licenses due to a single company decision to use windows as the desktop.
Apple would need to do several things in order to compete with windows and have a chance at the desktop:
1) Let corporations know what they plan in the future. Apple is very secretive, companies like to plan for upgrades to hardware and software 3 to 5 years into the future.
2) Provide a second source for the systems. Corporations do not like a single source that may extort them with price hikes in the future or with exorbitant support charges in the future. Companies like to be able to calculate their Return on Investment (ROI) from year to year.
3) Tools to lock down the systems so users can not install software that is not blessed by the company
4) Scalable way to monitor and controls all the Macs while minimizing the personnel to support them.
5) Scalable way to push patches to all the desktops, preferably automatically with zero support issues after the patch. Be able to select which patches get push out.
6) Volume based discounts on the hardware and software.
7) Corporate wide plans so the corporation can roll out software to giant numbers of desktops at a substantial discount without worries of using up all the licenses. For example: Say 1 mil dollars for OSX Leopard upgrade to install in as many Macs as they could have even if it is 5 mil Macs.
8) Preferential support for software and hardware, and a say on the priorities Apple gives to enhancements and fixes for the future.
If Apple was willing to do that (which is not) Macs would have 70+ percent of the market in 5 years time.
Excellent.
With regards to #7.. isn't this the case with osx server already? (unlimited liscences)
Yes there is an unlimited version for server but not an unlimited for desktops. Personally I would merge the two but I don't run Apple. It would be nice if everyone could learn how to administer a server without having to spend another 500 to 1000 extra. One OS to rule them all, hehehe.
Correction: I never read the user agreement for OSX server, so I am not sure if you can install them on desktop and or on unlimited number of desktops. I seem instead to remember that you can install it in a single server and provide access to an unlimited number of users which I think is what Apple intends. Again not sure.
I don't mind if Microsoft buys Yahoo. As long as they only make minor changes to their services (maybe just graphical changes) It will still be the same great Yahoo.
My only concern is Yahoo Mail. It's my main email provider, and if it turned into hotmail, I don't know what I'd do. (except NOT going to Gmail.)
My only concern is Yahoo Mail. It's my main email provider, and if it turned into hotmail, I don't know what I'd do. (except NOT going to Gmail.)
As Gmail now provides both (pop and imap) for free, Gmail is a good solution to the best of my knowledge.
What do you get from Yahoo email that you do not get from GMail besides push mail which Gmail could but does not implement?
BTW with this merger..... I see Google implementing push mail in the future to better support the iphone and other handheld devices. But just a guess on my part.
Microsoft can buy Yahoo!. It won't affect Google as they are already years ahead of both in search technology. This proposed takeover will only create more useless (matter of opinion) products that Microsoft will try and force upon people. Besides, its going to be at least 1-2 years before we see any joint products come out. I wonder how Bill can use this to force the Tablet PC form factor onto people. I'll stick with Google as my home page on my Macs (in any form factor), Google Maps on my iPhone and iPod Touch, and Gmail over Yahoo! mail or Hotmail.
The point of a public company is to make money for its shareholders.
Only one of these two companies is doing that.
Your arguments would be valid if Microsoft were privately held, but since they choose to be public, their number 1 priority is their shareholders and their shareholders are not happy.
What else do you want them to do? They are making money hand over fist, expanding faster than Apple (Naimfan's post noted about revenue, I'm speaking about profit ATM) while still being a much larger company. Just because the public won't push up the price of stock doesn't mean they're doing anything wrong. Sure, Apple's stock has been crazy over the past couple years, but it's lost, what, 40% of it's value in a month? And I own it.
Umm... Google poses a lot bigger threat to "owning everything" than Microsoft could even dream of. Take a Read at this or this
"The ads attacking Google and its “server farm” were a prelude to what may be Google’s next frontier: the mobile-telephone business. There are almost three billion mobile phones worldwide, and Schmidt expects a billion more in the next four years. If the phones use Google software to sell advertising, Schmidt thinks that over time it is “mathematically possible for Google to become a one-hundred-billion-dollar corporation.” Two vital markets are television, which is “easily attainable,” and mobile phones, which are “more personable” and more “targetable” than most advertising. To achieve this goal, Google would need to claim ten per cent of all global advertising, which now amounts to just under a trillion dollars."
"He remembers a day in 2002 when he walked into Page’s office and Page started to show off a book scanner he had built. “What are you going to do with that, Larry?” Schmidt recalls asking. “We’re going to scan all the books in the world,” Page replied. Eventually, Google began to do just that."
You must be talking about Microsoft then. Microsoft has more money than Apple can dream of. Microsoft makes more money than Apple could dream of. Microsoft's profits were more than 3 times the amount of Apple's. Microsoft's profits grew at a 79% rate (Faster than Apple's) Microsoft just had their best quarter ever. So, why exactly would their stock holders not be happy? I bet you Apple's stockholders couldn't be happy enough [Hey, I said it right - right?] to have Microsoft's revenue and profits.
Apple is not the end all be all of growth.
Also, I like how people point to Microsoft's individual products profitability to judge how Microsoft (as a whole) is failing.
Xbox: People do not understand how the gaming industry works. It is common practice to sell the consoles for less than it costs to manufacture. They tend to make that money up towards the end of the console's life when manufacturing starts to make them a profit. However, Microsoft cut the Xbox's life short and instead focused on the 360. Why? Because Microsoft does not depend on one product to make a profit. They can literally throw billions of dollars at their products and invest towards their future.
Zune: The Zune has been out for a little more than a year [right?] In that time, it gained a supposedly 10% market share in hard-disk mp3 players (Considering that was the only kind they made). Microsoft was willing to cope with the costs to gain the market share first. They worry about profit later. Why? Again, simply because they can afford too. Now Microsoft aims to do that again with the flash based zunes. And frankly, I think they will because they are guarenteed to throw billions of dollars at their products until they succeed. And When Microsoft products do succeed, they bring in a ton of profits. They know this.
And FYI. Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division (Which includes Xbox and Zune) did indeed turn a profit. They even posted a 3% growth last quarter. Correct me if im wrong, but Microsoft has NO "failing divisions" The closest you can get to that is the Entertainment and Devices Division which brought in half a billion dollars in profit. Not Bad.
Please refer to the stock chart I posted a couple of pages ago and you'll see the answer to that question is very obvious.
Wait, I'll make it easier enough and post it here:
LINK1
Hey, Microsoft doesn't even outperform the S&P500. How pathetic is that?
LINK2
There's a big difference between making money and shareholder profit. If Microsoft doesn't manage the profits you brag about well, it will show up in the share price (and it does).
Well... linux flavors can help suck up the leftovers...
I don't want M$ to go away. I just want them to simplify their stuff and for God's sake write something into whatever is their administrator function that will make it tougher for virus-flaunters and spyware mongers to vandalize or hijack the machines. It can't just ALL be about market share that the M$ OS systems are the ones get attacked so effectively all the while.
Should probably stop this rant right here because I don't currently use a machine that runs Windows or Vista...
BUT: I don't like corresponding with friends whose machines run that stuff because all it takes is one unapplied patch on their end and blam, my email address is hijacked off their machine (again) and two days later my ISP is busy bouncing back spam spoofed from me to the whole planet, geez.
So finally I got a Yahoo setup, so I could keep that stuff farther away from me. So now M$ wants to buy YH... Wow I am really thrilled.
When speaking of investments, a 3 month window may as well be a 3 second window. If you're going to try and time the market in 3 month increments, you'll have just as much luck playing the roulette wheel at the nearest casino.
Sure, one can pull narrow numbers out of the air to prove whatever point they'd like, but only a fool would argue Microsoft stock has been a better investment than Apple's over the vast majority of the past 10 years.
Yes, I understand the relatively short time that is. However, it was just to disprove the various statements of how Microsoft is dying/dead and your statement because it seems some people on these forums can only comprehend things in relation to Apple itself.
You Statement:
"The point of a public company is to make money for its shareholders.
Only one of these two companies is doing that."
It's almost not worth responding to you. You are judging a company's strengths and weaknesses based on the stock market! I'm just emphasizing that with an exclamation point, because you still seem to not get it. Microsoft is not wholly responsible for how the public views the stock. The point is that they are doing better business than Apple. There, simple sentence. Deal with that how you want, point to an abstract number governed by public opinion. I mean, need I point out the 500 examples of stocks that were riding high before the tech bubble burst that weren't solid companies? Stock price does not dictate business acumen or performance.
YH saying NOT SO FAST...?
Now there's reports (reuters) say maybe Yahoo will push back and try to hook up with Google as a way to put off M$. Interesting, gotta read more about that in the morning!!
Now there's reports (reuters) say maybe Yahoo will push back and try to hook up with Google as a way to put off M$. Interesting, gotta read more about that in the morning!!
Yahoo + Google = The Most Monopolistic Company that never lived. That would never be allowed by the U.S. let alone E.U.
Besides, Yahoo and Google overlap on almost every single thing they do. How would they merge?
I wouldn't shed a single tear if msft keeled over tomorrow.
Fingers crossed eh.
However great and profitable people think msft are, the reality is that their future is looking iffy, they may have just had their best quarter yet, but they will be overtaken in the next few years.
The mobile biz will be what eventually dethrones msft, their monopoly will be stripped practically overnight.
And will come as quite a surprise to most people by the looks of it.
Fingers crossed eh.
However great and profitable people think msft are, the reality is that their future is looking iffy, they may have just had their best quarter yet, but they will be overtaken in the next few years.
The mobile biz will be what eventually dethrones msft, their monopoly will be stripped practically overnight.
And will come as quite a surprise to most people by the looks of it.