Moreover, I don't know if anyone ever dreamed Apple would surpass Microsoft in market cap (for all you "Main Street" people, it essentially means how valuable a company is - basically stock price x # of shares).
Is the Redmond curtain crumbling? I think the obvious answer is, YES! Not that I'm necessarily excited, however: there are a lot of good people at MS and I truly respect them for their hard work and dedication. But the hard fact is that innovation waived bye-bye to MS years ago (or was it the other way around?) and MS has been reeling ever since Vista (at least).
Will Gate's empire come tumbling down tomorrow morning? Definitely not. But take a look at the dual (really one composite) future of computing: mobile and cloud. If you ask the perhaps-biased tech news how well MS is doing in these two areas, I guarantee you they will say, "Poorly, very poorly."On the whole, mobile innovators right now = Google/Apple. Cloud OS innovators right now = Google. Advantage, Google(?)
Apple's got the cool factor going for it (still), but once Steve Jobs has another health failure or Apple stops being predominantly the "Stick-it-to-the-man, put-a-yuppy-sticker-on-your-car, and I-only-wear-a-black--turtleneck-and-jeans" 5% market share competitor, I don't know how much farther it can go.
Like I say, Apple's market has always been, IMHO, the self-proclaimed "avant-garde" (though the iPod, iPhone, and iPad were all trailing devices, not market pioneers) who are willing to pay a 25% premium for looking cool/feeling smarter about themselves.
Google's used to being a market dominator and not a niche player (think of the verb "google"). Yes, Apple owned mp3 players in the aughts (00-09), but it hasn't owned anything else, and the future of computing, cloud/mobile, will by necessity be open (there're just too many players and no one's been able to establish a MS stranglehold - Android is open source, after all).
Remember, kids, "Don't be evil." I just hope Big G still holds to this motto (many say it doesn't currently) once it's taken up MS's mantel as the world's preeminent computing power.
5 comments:
If I didn't know better, I'd say you want a career at CNET writing a blog.
That picture is priceless. A true gem! A diamond in... the rough.
Don't get too hung up on the cloud. As Muggle technology loving Arthur Weasly says - "never trust anything if you can't see where it keeps its brain." Likewise many businesses and users may never be fully comfortable puting everthing into a big brother cloud that will one day become Skynet and hit us with Judement Day.
So enjoy your MS software and soon to be 500 TB flash memory drives. For now I'll settle for a mere 2TB and no cloud to keep my memories safe. From both Google and Gilderoy Lockhart.
CNET. You know what they say, "aspire higher." http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=%22aspire+higher%22 (You'll relish the first hit.)
Love the priceless line.
The cloud.Ah, yes, Dumbledore. "The old argument."
It's a little difficult to grasp just how serious you're being about this, (excellent work in bringing my namesake in, btw), but here are a few thoughts, just in case you are (remote though it may be):
Banks and credit cards. Namely the latter. Do you realize how many human eyes and fingers handle your credit card or banking info on a weekly, if not daily basis? Do you still sleep at night!?!
For more on apprehension, though this video is a bit dated (2 yrs.) and talks about apps for education, it has some really solid points. Please watch, starting at 3:30 - 5:10 and from 6:09 to your concern's content: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRYRbPCHTck
Oh, and since it's my role to um, as your thoughts have been on football, proposition people to use Google services, check out this site (2 min.) www.gonegoogle.com/#/company-name to see how much PCP Evaluations could be saving (w/assumptions included for each calculation) by going Google. Think how much more time you could spend, doing the "good stuff," instead of messing around with contextual nonsense.
Finally, though your Skynet analogy does really hit home for me, I think it unlikely that the friendly, fluffy cloud, will mutate into a liquid-molten alloy, slaughtering innocent victims, any time soon.
Yes, all of that was paid for by Google ads.
I think that they are both going to have back problems. Look at their posture.
Posture? :-/
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