Microsoft Passes Apple to Become Most Valuable U.S. Company

[Khedron]

This is the iPad Pro. The low-end iPad is the iPad 9.7" or even the iPad mini. Sure the mini is outdated, but it is the "low-end" iPad.

What laptop has 8 cores for $800?

1 core to run the current app. 1 core to sell your personal information to advertisers. 6 cores that will never be used and would overheat the iPad if they ever were.

 

[aevan]

Apple hasn’t been “Apple” since Steve Jobs died

Apple became the most valuable company under Tim Cook.

 

[uroshnor]

The source article is fake news. Microsoft did not pass Apple in value. The figures quoted in the article are based on incorrect calculations of the number of shares, and that means they were off by about 30-40 billion dollars in the comparison of market cap. It’s since been retracted.

Given the source has exhibited persistent anti-Apple bias, and this milestone is somewhat significant, they got a story out that fits their narrative, rather than get their facts right before they published

 

[ConfluxNZ]

For a few weeks now, I’ve been following the comments across many articles on MacRumors. A consistent theme I’m seeing is that - like me - most people appear to finally be fed up with Apple’s greed and hubris.


I’ve been a customer for more than a decade and have got to the point where I strongly believe the current product lineup is a complete mess. Apple have introduced many choices in order to 1) compete at the lower end of the market; 2) increase prices on the yearly flagship device(s); and 3) increase ASP. However, what this has resulted in is too many choices, too many compromises between devices, and far too much bifurcation. It’s confusing for the everyday consumer and frustrating as hell for us tech / Apple enthusiasts.


Compounding this is the fact each new product has very little differentiation from last year’s product, making upgrading even less appealing. This year’s XS is a perfect example - what exactly is its headline differentiating feature over the X? Live portrait mode?


I’m really hoping to see a drop in unit sales and overall revenue for Apple through the next 6-9 months. They could really do with a slice or 4 of humble pie and it might just be the rude awakening they need to rethink their product and pricing strategies.

 

[TheFluffyDuck]

Cant wait for another price hike to keep same profits now every single one of their product markets is saturated, plus the new proposed import tariff. I love apple but not 3-4x the price of a similarly specked machine, Which is where we will be at within 5 years.

 

[Winni]

“Oh no apple is doomed, Bill Gates has actually won!!!!!”..

It’s just a number, doesn’t mean much.

Really? On this forum, it meant the world while Apple was still #1...
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It'll go back and forth between Microsoft and Apple until Amazon overtakes them both and stays there

Oh, has that statistics changed again? In the last news that I ready, Amazon already was a trillion dollar company. "Fame's a fickle friend, Harry..."

 

[R.P.G]

agree with me or not..This is called Success. who would have thought about innovation from microsoft. who remembers first iteration of surface..

 

[tdream]

[doublepost=1543318230][/doublepost]

Sucks you can’t afford it! Go to dollar tree, I’m sure there are plenty of off brand phones you can get for cheap.

Apple is never entry level. It’s a premium brand like Gucci, Canada Goose, or Mercedes.

If you can’t shell a measly $749 for quality, get a Honda Accord!

Bought a Moto G6 for £130, 5.7 inch 1080p dual sim with sd card and headphone jack. Screen is amazing, almost 1/10 the price of the top spec iphone. Does 95% the same thing.

Even rich people like good deals even if they don't like to show it.

 

[jtm77]

If you were starting to invest in stocks, why would you buy AAPL now? Their profits are largely based off iphones which is now/becoming a mature market. They currently do NOT have another line of products/services that can overtake that importance. Personally in the long run in the above scenario buying AAPL is a poor decision as it's a stable or no growth company. They'll continue to make profits but I'm not sure they'll expand much at all. The market typically only rewards growth or growth potential both of which AAPL seemingly lacks.
This is coming from someone who owns AAPL stocks.

 

[Rogifan]

Apple ended the day with a higher market cap than Microsoft. Mods can you update this headline to include the word briefly like other sites have done?

 

[javanni]

In Italy the pricing situation is even bleaker than in the US.
I have a good job and a good salary and but I am stuck with the iPhone SE, because I'm not willing to shell out half of my monthly salary for a new XS. It is just crazy.

 

[Fly360]

Apples biggest problem right now is the media.

 

[Phone Junky]

 

[Spankey]

These comments also drive me crazy. Do you know for a fact that Apple is excluding NVIDIA cards just to smite you users that need it? Or could it POSSIBLY be some sort of strained business relationship? Or could it POSSIBLY be that NVIDIA cards kept failing and needed recalls? Or could it POSSIBLY be some sort of contract with AMD?

Seriously, AMD cards are not THAT bad. It sucks if your workflow needs CUDA, but you should probably get a Windows computer anyway if it does. If the concern is gaming, people GREATLY exaggerate the issue. If you believe what people here would say regarding AMD and NVIDIA, the MAX you can get on ANY game on AMD would be 5 FPS just because it is AMD. Even if the game is Terraria or a 2D game.

Guess what? My friend and I were playing a game of Heroes of the Storm. He used my 5K iMac with the Radeon Pro 580. He was able to play at native resolution (the full 5K resolution) on Max in Windows and still have 60+ FPS. On an AMD card. GASP!

How does macOS only excel at Final Cut Pro? I have Adobe After Effects still on subscription and a Windows PC with a GTX 1080. I do not see ANY difference between CUDA and running on my 5K iMac. So my macOS excels at After Effects too. Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer beat the crap out of Photoshop and Illustrator. So my macOS excels at graphic design as well. Logic Pro and Garageband beat the crap out of the Windows equivalents. So my macOS excels at music creation too.

Visual Studio on Windows beats the crap out of any other programming environment, so Windows is good in that regard.
Gaming on Windows (even on Mac hardware with AMD) beats the crap out of macOS, so Windows is good in that regard.
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Um. It is different in 2018. The "cheap and affordable" iPhone is the iPhone 7 which Apple still sells. It is $449. If you want current technology, it will not be "cheap and affordable". The $750 is the "cheap and affordable" of the current technology. Which it is cheaper than the Xs and Xs Max

These comments also drive me crazy. Do you know for a fact that Apple is excluding NVIDIA cards just to smite you users that need it? So Nvidia was lying when it said it provided drivers to Apple for approval?

Or could it POSSIBLY be some sort of strained business relationship? Because Apple has never had a strained relationship with Samsung.

Or could it POSSIBLY be that NVIDIA cards kept failing and needed recalls? Even if this were true, we are talking eGPU’s and drivers.

Or could it POSSIBLY be some sort of contract with AMD? Could be. I’m sure it is as far as installed hardware goes. If that’s the case then yes, Apple is smiting users who prefer to use another hardware “accessory”.

So you played Heroes Of The Storm. Did you play Doom, Forza Horizon 4, Battlefield 5, Overwatch at 5K or at all?

I also said Apple is losing me on the desktop. I can use GarageBand on an iPad and a laptop. It’s still not enough for me to boot into Mac OS on my desktop.

Fanboyism and lack of reading comprehension drives me nuts!

 

[tito2020]

Incoming price increase to make up the gap!

Will say it agian surface is the best no matter what the critics say.

 

[1050792]

Hahahaha! That’s hilarious to those of us familiar with the history!
[doublepost=1543292762][/doublepost]

Since when is tens of millions of anything—including iMacs and Macbooks—“tiny”? The real issue may be that Apple prices its peripheral appliances and accessories—which aren’t necessarily proprietary—too high when affordable alternatives exist.

Oh I forgot Apples 10 million Macs were bigger than Microsoft's 90% market share. My bad...

 

[barmann]

Apple became the most valuable company under Tim Cook.

Let's keep in mind that randomly picked stock value numbers don't tell the whole story .
Apple is not by any means a strong company, they completely lack depth and a diverse product line .

They play the quick profit, no foundation game based on offerings that already are outdated, and on a crude business model that is being successfully challenged by law makers of virtually any country outside the US .

Really powerful companies might not have the same net value on paper - but Samsung, Hyundai, Daimler etc. dwarf silly little outfits like Apple .

 

[I7guy]

One only has to open their eyes to see that Apple has raised prices.
Currency strength of the dollar has also hit Apple sales.
How do you spin an increase in ASP if prices are not rising, considering unit sales are stagnating

Better margins vs higher prices.

And can you tell me how much apple raised their prices and what that even means? The iphone 7 is selling for less than the iphone 5 in 2012. While the Xs max is out of sight. Of course that phone has lots of new technology in it.
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Except the fact that competition back in 2012 was nowhere near where it is now.

Doesn't change the fact of the MSRP though.

 

[Spock]

Yet back than Apple was almost going bankrupt. So I guess being more modest in pricing while relentlessly focusing on delivering value helped not leaving money on the table.

For the third time, this was after Steve Jobs came back, after the iMac and the iPod. Apple was on a good note and moving up. This was not the pre-Steve Jobs era. Those days weren’t even funny. This was 1996 before Jobs.

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[I7guy]

You forgot one thing. The range between $649 to $849 was for the top of the line. In fact the iPhone 4s was still in play at $400's. So yes, they have largely increased the pricing while the phones got larger 🙂!!!!

Anyone with unclouded brains can easily see this. Apple since SJ died has been playing prices against their customers while removing value out of their products across the board.

1) Not updating Mac mini for years and years,
2) Not updating Macbook Air for years and years.
3) Not updating the iMac line regularly.
4) Simples things like removing the Target Display Mode (TDM) from the iMac line. As a owner of a MacBook Pro I was going to buy an iMac for my kids and when found that this feature was removed I simply did not.
5) No updates to Mac Pro lines for years and years.
6) Swapping ports in the Macbook Pro line for expensive dongles and cables.
7) Airport line could be made a really interesting connected home solution ... but they ... well they did not updated it.
8) iWorks simply stalled. Actually they removed features (value) from it.

Meanwhile ....

1) iPhones got better yet significantely more expensive (nice product)
2) Apple Watch appeared and got better. Waiting to get really popular to hike the prices probably (nice product). They seam to be getting more expensive.
3) iOS got better yet more expensive die to devices price increase.
4) iPad got better yet significantely more expensive.
5) They have built huge palace for themselves. And a loads of mini palaces, sorry stores, across the globe.
6) Customer support got much better.

There is little innovation in making things better yet more expensive. If better and more expensive was the rule of progress how much we would be paying now for a computer? $200.000?

iPhone won peoples hearts because it was actually better than the Nokia Comunicators, Palm's ... so on and so forth yet the same or less expensive. And was way, way more advanced than the "$200" smartphones of the time. Now that is value!!!! That is what put Apple in the position they are now!!! TC strategy is simply eroding this perception that inspired rags to richies.

So throw an ad-hom in, because your opinion piece can't really counter the facts of the MSRP in 2012 for the iphone 5. Macs are a totally different value proposition than iphones 😉

 

[antonis]

Oh oh and also. Windows 10 Enterprise. Now includes Candy Crush Soda Saga and Xbox. So your employees can play games instead of work! Even if you used Powershell to remove them, they still come back when the next big update hits 🙂

I've heard that PCs have functioning keyboards, though. For years. Imagine that.

 

[I7guy]

Revisionist history. 649 to 849$ were off contract prices throughout the world. On contract you could get an iPhone 5 baskcally for less than 100$. Todays off contract prices are a lot higher as are the on contract prices.

Revisionism is when history is rewritten. Citing an little known fact is not revisionist.

If one were to buy a phone off-contract, that's what one would pay. Today there is no off-contract, on-contract pricing. There is financing or not financing by the carriers.

But the price was the price in 2012.

 

[Spizike9]

This is what happens when you year over year increase your price a very significant amount.

 

[dilbert99]

Better margins vs higher prices.

And can you tell me how much apple raised their prices and what that even means? The iphone 7 is selling for less than the iphone 5 in 2012. While the Xs max is out of sight. Of course that phone has lots of new technology in it.
[doublepost=1543322424][/doublepost]
Doesn't change the fact of the MSRP though.

I've already explained it to you.

 

[Awesom-0]

Thing is... Windows 10 install base is a bit lower than iOS install base. If Apple’s iOS update would delete people’s personal files with no way to recover, we would have riots in Cupertino.

Hasn't OsX had data loss problems every couple of years? And everyone here says that you should of backed it up.