How does microsoft own part of Apple?

[Pistol Pete]

How does microsoft own part of Apple? stocks? hmm cause i have heard this from mac haters before and i watched "pirates of silicon valley" last night.

Thanks,
Peter

 

[mklos]

Well back in like 1996, Microsoft bought a bunch of Apple shares to keep them up and running until they were able to run on their own. Part of that agreement was for Microsoft to keep developing Mac software as well which is still going today. I believe this is when the MacBusiness Unit was formed at Microsoft. I don't believe it was formed when MS starting making Mac software in the first place.

Currently, Microsoft doesn't own Apple in any way what so ever. Apple bought back all of those shares ages ago. Microsoft has absolutely no say in what Apple does. Mac haters always bring this up, but obviously they're clueless about Macs. Apple can more than run themselves today with over $7.5 Billion in cash reserves. They're getting back to where they were in the very early 90's when they had almost $12 Billion in cash reserves.

Don't let anyone fool you. Steve Jobs owns like 68% of all the Apple shares, so he's the primary share holder, not Bill Gates.

Apple can survive without Microsoft today, and Microsoft can survive without Apple. In fact, if Apple were to open up its OS to normal PC's, then Microsoft would be in a crap load of trouble IMO....

 

[treblah]

Don't let anyone fool you. Steve Jobs owns like 68% of all the Apple shares, so he's the primary share holder, not Bill Gates.

I thought Jobs sold most of his stock in the 80's to buy Pixar and form NeXT

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=AAPL

 

[Sun Baked]

Don't let anyone fool you. Steve Jobs owns like 68% of all the Apple shares, so he's the primary share holder, not Bill Gates.

The SEC would require disclosure of this, but this is what they list in the last 10k

Security Ownership of 5% Holders, Directors, Nominees and Executive Officers
Name of Beneficial Owner
	  	Shares of Common Stock
Beneficially Owned(1) 	  	Percent of Common Stock
Outstanding 	 
Private Capital Management, Inc. 	  	20,457,156 	(2) 	5.10 	%
Steven P. Jobs 	  	5,060,002 	(3) 	1.26 	%
Fred D. Anderson 	  	2,672 	  	* 	 
William V. Campbell 	  	100,502 	(4) 	* 	 
Timothy D. Cook 	  	5,903 	  	* 	 
Millard S. Drexler 	  	100,000 	(5) 	* 	 
Albert Gore, Jr. 	  	10,000 	(6) 	* 	 
Ronald B. Johnson 	  	1,355,903 	(7) 	* 	 
Arthur D. Levinson 	  	201,600 	(8) 	* 	 
Jonathan J. Rubinstein 	  	161,087 	(9) 	* 	 
Avadis Tevanian, Jr. 	  	1,501,252 	(10) 	* 	 
Jerome B. York 	  	30,000 	(11) 	* 	 
All executive officers and directors as a group (16 persons) 	  	10,203,443 	(12) 	2.51

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Microsoft bought $150M of non-voting shares in Apple in 1997 after a court settlement, and made a commitment to continue to develop Office for the Mac in all foreseeable future. This saved Apple, who were in a financial pinch at that time, since the switch from 68k processors to PowerPC and release of clones had decimated the company.

Then Steve Jobs came back, the original iMac came out, Mac OS X was introduced and the iPod was released, and today Apple has several billion dollars in cash. Microsoft has sold their shares, with considerable profit, a long time ago. And all was well.

Then came the Intel announcement...