Love it or hate it, you have to be impressed with Apple. Yesterday in the New York Times there was an article (I read on my Ipad last night) that Apple passed Microsoft as the number 1 tech company. This was annotated wed when Apples market cap of $222B exceeded Microsoft's $219B and also Google's at $151B. To me the amazing part of it all is I sincerely believe it is 100% attributable to Steve Jobs. When that guy's gone, so is Apple.
I remember talking with my Dad a few years ago about the concept of breaking up Microsoft because it had become too powerful. As I recall I was an advocate at the time. As I reflect on that I think it was simplistic and ill-informed position to take. Even the largest of companies can be supplanted; sometimes it just takes the market to shift to make it happen.
For Microsoft the market just moved out from under them. They tried hard to keep people thinking the PC is the center of the universe. But the market is much stronger than even the largest company.
For Apple, they chose to pull the market toward their idea of what it should be by producing devices that people covet. I'm actually not an Apple fanboy, I really don't like OSX and it only runs on one PC in our house of 5 or 6. However, we do have 8 or ten apple devices in our house, amazingly. Some sucked like AppleTV, but the vast majority work pretty well and at the end of the day, you want them. I don't want Windows 7 or my Dell desktop.
Emotion is a strong propellant. For Microsoft they harnessed emotion on the negative side. People became so frustrated with their products that when Apple opened the door for consumer electronics no one even wanted to try a Zune. By contrast Apple sold the vision of personal empowerment and being you. People not only bought one Ipod, they bought nine. When Apple decided to innovate the cell phone, people bought in hoards even though you can't actually make a phone call on it.
No need to regulate Microsoft, consumers are regulating it just fine.
what fascinates me is that I don't think that either Apple or Microsoft could have followed the trajectory or achieved the success they did without the other one.
Posted by: rando | 2010.06.01 at 12:48 PM