[seiji]

To march out some old tropes: Apple makes money by delighting users so they will continue to buy products. Google makes money by tracking users, forcefully if necessary, and abusing their advertisers. Microsoft makes money out of legacy ties these days—they don't deserve to continue existing.

[oneeyedpigeon]

That comment is just ridiculously biased - you might have a good point, but it's hidden behind the opinion. For example, one could just as legitimately counter with "Apple makes money by developing a desirable brand and overcharging on hardware" but that wouldn't fit your spin, would it?

[mstolpm]

The Apple lock-in only works as long as the users are happy with their (maybe limited) choice. Apple needs their customers to upgrade to new devices every few years.

[tomp]

How is it overcharging? It's true, their devices are more expensive than the rest of the market, but nothing on the market comes close to Apple's quality and usability. Simply said, they have no competition, so they can set their own price - and while the customers are paying it, it's not overcharging.

[oneeyedpigeon]

RAM?

[caycep]

Everytime I configure a dell to something equivalent to the analogous Apple product, it comes out about even or about 10% more...and in a hideous plastic casing.

[vacri]

Some rebuttal tropes:

Apple makes money by making toys for the wealthy. You have to be middle-class or higher in an advanced economy to use their system, in real terms. In comparison, Google lets anyone use basically all of their stuff for free. As long as you can get online in some form, Google welcomes you, no matter how poor you are or where in the world you might be or what hardware you use. Google also doesn't force you to relinquish control of your environment, whereas Apple has a big ruler it smacks your knuckles with if you don't do things The Apple Way.

Microsoft doesn't deserve to continue existing? Perhaps you should talk to large businesses, then. What are they going to use, because it's only Microsoft that's talking to them. Unix has a love affair with the backend in business, but it's really only Microsoft that's giving them what they want in the full stack. Compare to Apple, who points at the laptops and says "Hey everyone, look how cool we are", at which point business says "oo, cool. So what enterprise tools do you have?"... at which point Apple runs off into traffic, giggling like a mad four-year-old.

[TheOtherHobbes]

>You have to be middle-class or higher in an advanced economy to use their system, in real terms.

True for Apple PCs (except for the Mac Mini, but most people don't buy those.) Especially true for MacBooks.

Not true at all for iPhones which are available on very affordable plans in all developed countries, and are ubiquitous, even for users who are nowhere near middle class.

Microsoft is in transition. The idiocy that was Windows 8 all-but killed the Wintel desktop PC market. The server side is healthy, but desktop Windows is looking very shaky indeed.

For better or worse, Jobs deliberately moved Apple out of Enterprise. We can argue about why, and we can argue whether or not it was a good decision. But Apple decided to focus on consumer computing - which strengthened the consumer brand and freed up development resources, if nothing else.

MS is still trying to slide into all kinds of niches. It's succeeding in a few, but failing and flailing in many.

Nadella will likely be more focused than spaghetti-at-the-wall Ballmer, so we'll have to see how that works out.

Azure isn't solid enough as a cloud service yet - too many outages. Server is looking good. Office is kind of old and boring now, but still does what it does.

So what can MS offer modern startups that they can't get better and/or cheaper elsewhere?

[seabrookmx]

You clearly have no idea how many enterprise web applications and data centers run on .NET. I will agree Microsoft's legacy is allowing them to limp on in the consumer space, but many companies, new and old, are moving to a MS stack for enterprise due to the great developer experience and seamless integration (not unlike Apple on the consumer side).

How much of the internet is served up by OS X?

[thrownaway2424]

Yeah I remember the time Google walked up to me on the street and shoved my face into a billboard. Those assholes.