Microsoft Overtakes Apple as World's Most Valuable Company [Updated]

[Jumpthesnark]

Speaking of tech news, Google has sadly announced layoffs in divisions that make Fitbit watches, the Pixel phone and their voice-operated Assistant, among others.

Google Cuts Hundreds of Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions (Published 2024)

The company, which has been working to trim expenses, laid off employees who worked on core engineering, the Google Assistant product and hardware such as the Pixel phone.

www.nytimes.com

 

[WarmWinterHat]

It would to you if Apple was on top

I'd prefer if they weren't, same with Microsoft.

I'm pretty anti Silicon Valley having as much money, power and influence as they do. Apple is no exception.

 

[Jack Burton]

Love my Xbox and gamepass. MS can take my money there. Their elite controller/adjustable trigger solves specific issues my hands have with games, so they have my thanks and my $$$.

But I truly hate my PC and Windows 11. Been forced to use it all week. I built it at a time when Apple didn't really have any semi decent GPU solutions for 3d artists and before Apple silicon. My PC's GPU is still faster than any M series GPU... but at what cost to my sanity?

Win 11 is a Lovecraftian nightmare. The handy start bar weather widget is tied to an MSN newsfeed full of crap I don't want to see. Everything gets in the way, buttons are in odd places, nothing is easy to look at. Tiny settings we take for granted on the mac are weirdly obtuse on the PC. Windows desperately needs an enema.

Not to mention the thing pumps out HEAT when rendering. At least it's winter here and I can turn room heat way down.

I think using Windows for 12+ hours a day has convinced me to save my pennies to switch to a mac studio as opposed to getting a 40 or 50 series nVidia GPU.

But at least my old Wacom Intuos 3 workhorse still functions on Windows! I guess all that old cruft has one tiny upside after all.

 

[Len Banks]

Maybe if Apple didn't get so greedy with Apple One family pricing, people like me would have continued to pay for the service. Their increase caused me to cut my monthly Apple services spending by 2/3.

I also cut back similarly on some of the services due to the increase and perception of greed. Although that likely is not what is dropping them from #1 valuation.

 

[developer13245]

Mac revenue is down because people don't want expensive computers without upgradeable memory and hard drives.
iPhone revenue is down because people don't need larger phones with more and more camera lenses.

Apple is suffering from an extreme case of what I'm calling "innovation tunnel vision" which has caused them to loose sight of plain common sense.

 

[sw1tcher]

Gotta love the fanboys

Apple is number 1: congratulations apple, this is amazing

Another company becomes number 1: does it matter?

Cool theory.

It's not a theory. It's a fact. Just look at past MR posts about Apple's market cap/value and the replies and compare them to the replies here.

Read through the first page or 2 of replies. Not one was "Does it really matter?"

Apple Briefly the Most Valuable Company in the World [Updated]

Apple, Inc. was, several times today, the most valuable public company in the world as measured by market capitalization. Apple's market cap...

www.macrumors.com

Apple is $100 Billion Away From Becoming World's Only Trillion Dollar Company

Apple shares are currently trading for around $175, giving the iPhone maker a market cap of roughly $900 billion. The valuation puts Apple...

www.macrumors.com

Apple's Market Value Hits $2 Trillion

Apple's stock price is continuing to surge, and has risen over one percent today to push the company past $2 trillion in market...

www.macrumors.com

Apple Briefly Becomes World's First $3 Trillion Company

Apple briefly became the world's first $3 trillion company today based on market capitalization, which is the total value of all of the...

www.macrumors.com

Apple's Market Valuation Returns to $3 Trillion After Almost 18 Months

Apple's market capitalization has once again hit $3 trillion as the company's shares opened at $191.78 this morning, up just over 1%...

www.macrumors.com

Meanwhile, within the first 10 replies here, 3 are some variation of "Does it matter?"

 

[cableguy84]

Cook out

 

[ElectricPotato]

Macrumors is a breeding ground of this mindset. It's really embarrassing.

Somewhere, in an unidentified Apple store:

Supplicant: Forgive me Genius, for I have sinned.
Genius: 10 Hail Tims and flagelate yourself with an Apple microfiber cloth.

 

[arkitect]

Gotta love the fanboys

Apple is number 1: congratulations apple, this is amazing

Another company becomes number 1: does it matter?

Cool theory.

It's not a theory. It's a fact. Just look at past MR posts about Apple's market cap/value and the replies and compare them to the replies here.

Read through the first page or 2 of replies. Not one was "Does it really matter?"

Meanwhile, within the first 10 replies here, 3 are some variation of "Does it matter?"

Yeeees… but not all of us (speaking for myself and my own comment) are "fanboys"

A. I am not an exclusive Apple fan — I use some Apple products;
B. Far too old to be a boy… of anything! 🤣

I'm just a plain old techfan.

 

[iGeneo]

Short lived... Apple back at the top

 

[1129846]

Copilot is annoying, simply because they push it so hard in Windows and Edge. I have to use both at work, and CoPilot, ChatGPT and whatever Google offers is network-wide blocked at my company (hospital), so things in Edge just time out or load forever...

That sounds more like a configurations change that is need on edge. I wouldnt be shock if your IT department could easily fix the underlying problem of setting edge to NOT start CoPilot. Mix that with a little change on MS side to more CoPilot out of the required start up and waiting for it to time out.

Your IT department I bet could set it to return some failed code right off the bat instead of just killing the call and absorbing it.
It sounds like both an IT problem and a MS problem. IT in killing it incorrectly and MS for making it in the start up part and not letting it load outside of it.

 

[ronntaylor]

A bit premature. Apple is currently ahead Microsoft by ~$30-35B. Maybe wait for today's closing price. 🤷‍♂️

 

[mihighil]

Does it really matter?

It only matters when apple holds that position 🫠

 

[Ursadorable]

Honestly, I'm not shocked. Apple has lost that magical appeal to me after Job's passing. On the other hand, I despise Microsoft and their shady business practices and the extra garbage that has been shoveled into windows.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

That sounds more like a configurations change that is need on edge. I wouldnt be shock if your IT department could easily fix the underlying problem of setting edge to NOT start CoPilot. Mix that with a little change on MS side to more CoPilot out of the required start up and waiting for it to time out.

Your IT department I bet could set it to return some failed code right off the bat instead of just killing the call and absorbing it.
It sounds like both an IT problem and a MS problem. IT in killing it incorrectly and MS for making it in the start up part and not letting it load outside of it.

Possibly, I can send them a complaint. I don't work with IT, and unfortunately don't know anyone in the department, other than the guy who is assigned to my unit.

Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[1129846]

Microsoft are doing very well in the Enterprise field, the work they've done with Copilot is pretty awesome. It's definitely going to change how people do work day to day. I wonder if Apple will ever complete with Microsoft productivity suite and Enterprise Cloud services for the everyday business

I dont think Apple ever will really do that. Apple does not make enterprise grade stuff. Apple is at the end of the day mostly a consumer grade company and makes mostly consumer grade products. Just to be clear that is not a bad thing or anything negative. It mostly just stating a fact that Apple targets consumer side of things. There is a lot more money to be made their and honestly easier to get better margins on. Draw back to consumer side is it has bigger swings and less stable of a market. Enterprise grade is a much more stable market long term.

MS has almost always been more enterprise focus with some consumer side stuff. Just very different focuses at the company level. MS makes some great enterprise software and admin set ups that Apple honestly sucks at doing. The draw back to doing those enterrpise controlls on a machine is it makes the consumer side more complicated to do and Apple choose not to do it. Hence why IT departments tend to hate Apple. Apple makes it a lot harder to do MDM and network level security of employees machines and locking them down. It is possible to do just requires more work. It is also surprisingly easy to get around them on Apple machines. I have been at mulplie places they do a lot of lock down and due to me requiring admin rights on my account it is real easy for me to create a new account on the machine not controlled by IT with admin rights. Not something I could do easily on windows.

 

[No5tromo]

Gotta say, I got Apple hardware for everything (iPhone, iPad, MacBook, AppleWatch, AirPods Pro & Max) but when it comes to software Microsoft is essential, most of the Office suite, Outlook, OneNote, OneDrive, VS code, not to mention data analytics, enterprise and cloud solutions and all the recent AI integrations make MS a frontrunner in the software industry, IMO to a scary degree, MS is silently gaining way too much power.

 

[AeroEd]

Gotta love the fanboys

Apple is number 1: congratulations apple, this is amazing

Another company becomes number 1: does it matter?

Some of these ppl are crazy lol

 

[SactoGuy18]

Microsoft is making most of its big money now from services, especially Windows Azure data hosting. In fact, the very success of Amazon Web Services (AWS) is literally propping Amazon up.

 

[Motorola68000]

Matters not to me personally, but Apple has the feel of an empire at risk.

Been so much adverse publicity on multiple themes ranging from patent infringement to users genuinely getting weary of computers with 8Gb base and the horrendous upgrade costs from the base configurations. I've seen so many complaints from public and companies alike that I do hope it starts to sink in with Apple and lack of real innovation (with exception of Vision Pro), isn't encouraging more customers even from Apple enthusiasts.

8Gb is not equivalent to 16Gb and with Apple's avowed intention to focus on gaming, it will not be enough in the near future either, rendering the potential of obsolescence within a couple of years, and that's without any swapping damage that may occur.

This does have the feel of Apple starting to fall from grace with consumers, so its not losing its lead role as a multi trillion dollar company, it is what has caused that....CUSTOMERS - lack of.

 

[mrochester]

Naa, I don't care either way.

Truth be told, I'd prefer if the top several biggest companies weren't from Silicon Valley at all. Tech companies have WAY too much power and influence. That includes Apple.

As far as I’m concerned Apple has no such power; they are completely at my mercy and will be dumped the moment they stop making products i want (or the competition start making better products).

 

[TracerAnalog]

Microsoft are doing very well in the Enterprise field, the work they've done with Copilot is pretty awesome. It's definitely going to change how people do work day to day. I wonder if Apple will ever complete with Microsoft productivity suite and Enterprise Cloud services for the everyday business

I doubt Apple will ever want to compete with Microsoft software. Apples sells hardware, and its software and content services are 'only' seen as added value to that hardware. Market developments of the last 5 years has more or less forced Apple to start selling stand alone streaming services without needing an Apple device. But my guess is that that is as far as Apple will go.

 

[citysnaps]

Macrumors is a breeding ground of this mindset. It's really embarrassing.

Embarrassing? For who?

I suspect most people just read the story, shrug, and move on.

 

[Ctrlos]

Microsoft are doing very well in the Enterprise field, the work they've done with Copilot is pretty awesome. It's definitely going to change how people do work day to day. I wonder if Apple will ever complete with Microsoft productivity suite and Enterprise Cloud services for the everyday business

I'm not sure they need to when Pages >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Word

 

[coolspot18]

Does it really matter?

Yes, in some sense - Microsoft's success in AI recently means they have a lot of influence in the Enterprise space, which may also spill over into the consumer space.