[turtle_2]

Put a noose around its neck, huh? Jobs returned to Apple and changed its direction about 10 years ago. - Go to: http://finance.google.com/finance?q=AAPL - Click the 10 yr time frame. - Click the check box to add MSFT to the same graph. - Tell me again how bad of a job Steve has been doing, and how it hasn't meant anything to MSFT.

Now some more ycombinator specific points. When you get together with a bunch of web startup owners or attend a conference, do you see more or less macs than the overall market would indicate? Would you say there are more than 1 mac per 10 startups? Would you say that what startups are using, they are quite likely to support as they grow?

[boredguy8]

It hasn't. Microsoft's growth has remained relatively stable since it's growth from '95 to 2000. Apple has almost zero impact from '98 to 2005, which is where we start to see the stock perform well.

[krschultz]

Economics FAIL. -0.5% growth over 10 year is a loss of money because you are falling behind inflation. Based on their market cap Microsoft is shrinking at a rate of 2-3% a year in real dollars while Apple is growing off the charts. You can't say that the falling Windows brand is not a direct cause of that, and Apple's contrast with Microsoft helps that. Apple's growth has more to do with the iPod than OS X, but OS X has a lot more to do with Windows falling image than anything else.

[jimbokun]

MSFT price is essentially unchanged over the last 10 years.