[recoiledsnake]

>So, they made in a year something around what Apple makes every quarter just from iPad sales? That's the rosy sign MS's "Servers and Tools" business is doing OK?

That's their server and tools revenue in a quarter, not a year. In your rush to compare it with an irrelevant and totally unrelated figure you've taken leave of facts and reality.

Why not compare the yearly figure now with how much Exxon makes by selling gas and then conclude the Server and Tools division is not doing okay? I mean that's what you want to conclude right?

[coldtea]

>That's their server and tools revenue in a quarter, not a year. In your rush to compare it with an irrelevant and totally unrelated figure you've taken leave of facts and reality.

Haven't taken out any facts -- the parent poster (you?) didn't add it was a quarter result in the first place. And the "X% up from last year" didn't help.

That said, it's totally unrelated only in that the end product sold is different. People still compare companies based on their revenue all the time -- including totally different beasts such as IBM and MS, or, indeed, Exxon and Apple. If you want to measure relative strength it's quite insightful.

>Why not compare the yearly figure now with how much Exxon makes by selling gas and then conclude the Server and Tools division is not doing okay? I mean that's what you want to conclude right?

No, I want to conclude that MS, and their enterprise sales specifically, which was once the huge behemoth of the computing industry, makes a not that impressive revenue compared to other players.

It might even be their best revenue ever. It still is worse compared to what they made vs what other companies made a decade or so ago.

In other words, the point I tried to make, maybe unsuccessfully, is that they might be billionaires, and they even might more than ever, but whereas once they used to own the town, now there are several other billionaires around, including some multi-billionaires.

[recoiledsnake]

Okay, I agree, Apple and Google rock and Microsoft sucks.

So how is all that related to the article idea's and the OPs point about the FUD on HN about .NET dying? Is .NET dying because Apple makes more money selling iDevices than Microsoft's Dev tools?

Lets be upfront here about the topic being discussed, is it "Where is .NET headed?" or is it "Does MS make less money than its competitors and therefore sucks?"

[coldtea]

>Lets be upfront here about the topic being discussed, is it "Where is .NET headed?" or is it "Does MS make less money than its competitors and therefore sucks?"

It's not about sucking or not. It's about if it's as a big player as it used to be, or if the wind got sucked out of it's wings, and now is on decline mode.

Nobody said anything about "sucking" or that it will die financially tomorrow. It might still be around 2 centuries later.