Microsoft is a Monster

[mykalberta]

http://ctv2.theglobeandmail.com/serv...N/ctv-business

Revenue for the Redmond, Wash.-based company rose 31 per cent to $16.37-billion (U.S.) for the second quarter, with profit up 79 per cent to $ $4.71 billion, or diluted earnings per share of 50 cents. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had forecast a profit of 46 cents per share.

http://valleywag.com/347739/apple-re...-quarter-ever/

Apple reported record earnings today for the quarter ending December 31. The company had a net profit of $1.6 billion or $1.76/share on $9.6 billion in sales compared to $1 billion profit on $7.1 billion last year. Gross margin rose to 34.7 percent from 31.2 percent last year.

PC: Hey MAC, I heard you reported record earnings today for Q4 2007.

MAC: Yah we did, we are amazed at our company and our Leopard OS

PC: Yah you had 9.6 billion in revenue with a 1.6 billion in profit congrats

MAC: Hey thanks PC

PC: Its too bad we and Vista dwarfed you in profit. We had 2X your revenue with 4X your profit.

PC: Why dont you use Time Machine to go back in time until your company was better than ours.

MAC: Time machine doesnt go back that far.

PC: too bad, too bad.

[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

http://ctv2.theglobeandmail.com/serv...N/ctv-business



http://valleywag.com/347739/apple-re...-quarter-ever/



PC: Hey MAC, I heard you reported record earnings today for Q4 2007.

MAC: Yah we did, we are amazed at our company and our Leopard OS

PC: Yah you had 9.6 billion in revenue with a 1.6 billion in profit congrats

MAC: Hey thanks PC

PC: Its too bad we and Vista dwarfed you in profit. We had 2X your revenue with 4X your profit.

PC: Why dont you use Time Machine to go back in time until your company was better than ours.

MAC: Time machine doesnt go back that far.

PC: too bad, too bad.

Vista 64-bit is okay. 32-bit Vista sucks.

64bit XP Pro is where its at. Cranked to like 4gb of DDR2 PC6400...drool. Softsynths are fun.

[Flaming Choy]

Haha, that would make an awesome mock-commercial!

[Hemi-Cuda]

Vista is garbage, it's the Windows ME of 2007

there's a reason Microsoft is planning to release their next Windows version in '09

[SarichFan]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

Vista is garbage, it's the Windows ME of 2007

there's a reason Microsoft is planning to release their next Windows version in '09

What a load of crap that is... I've used Vista since launch. I could NEVER go back to XP by choice.

I had to upgrade my wireless card but that's it, i've had no complaints with Vista myself.

[Nehkara]

Originally Posted by SarichFan

What a load of crap that is... I've used Vista since launch. I could NEVER go back to XP by choice.

I had to upgrade my wireless card but that's it, i've had no complaints with Vista myself.

I also have very few issues with it. I don't see what all these "problems" are. It works great for me. I have Vista Premium 64 bit.

[McG]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

Vista is garbage, it's the Windows ME of 2007

there's a reason Microsoft is planning to release their next Windows version in '09

Yes...its called Windows 7 and sometimes Windows Vienna. Its part of their already published upgrade pathway.

[droopydrew19]

vista just seems to be a resource hog. My older laptopwith 1 gig of ram zooms running xp compared to my new (faster processor) with 1.5 gigs of ram and vista.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Originally Posted by Nehkara

I also have very few issues with it. I don't see what all these "problems" are. It works great for me. I have Vista Premium 64 bit.

+1

Vista Ultimate 32bit for 6 months now. I think a lot of Vista haters come from hearing about it rather than actually owning it. That and trying to get a 4 yr old computer to run it.


Comparing stock charts - you'd certainly want to be owing Microsoft stock, not Apple stock right now. Take that smug Mac Commercial guy.

[alltherage]

My vista is nothing special, but nothing to complain about. I didn't know windows 7 was coming. That's weak sauce.

[FanIn80]

I've been running Vista since the early stages of the first Beta.

After launch, I was running a retail version of 32bit Ultimate at home and 32bit Business at the office (I run the network there, so I got away with "early adopting.")

Nowadays, I run 64bit Home Premium at home with 4GB of RAM (I can't believe how smooth it runs!). I'm still using the same install of Vista Business that I installed a year ago on my main desktop at the office - which is amazing, considering I used to rebuild that machine every 3 months when I was running XP.

Needless to say, I've had very very very few problems (in fact, I can't even think of one to use as an example right now) with Vista. I tried to go back to my old XP Pro image that I have here at home, but that lasted exactly two days before I wiped it off and dumped my Vista image back on!

[I-Hate-Hulse]

For you guys on Vista 64 - are you running into many problems with drivers or apps?

"Vienna" will probably get delayed like Vista did. I'd say 2010/11 isn't out of the question. Time for a new rig by then anyways....

[Winsor_Pilates]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

Comparing stock charts - you'd certainly want to be owing Microsoft stock, not Apple stock right now. Take that smug Mac Commercial guy.

Yeah, but what about computers? I don't think most people who love Macs, love them because of stocks.

Is it really a surprise that to anyone that Microsoft is profiting more then Mac? A way bigger company with a way bigger market and range of products. And some of the smartest business people in the world behind it. Microsoft sure is a beast.

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

For you guys on Vista 64 - are you running into many problems with drivers or apps?

"Vienna" will probably get delayed like Vista did. I'd say 2010/11 isn't out of the question. Time for a new rig by then anyways....

No problems here. They've really done a number on compatibility... I have yet to find a 32bit app that won't install on my machine.

As for the drivers, as long as they are WHQL certified, they'll install fine whether they're 32 or 64bit. The WHQL thing might sound like a pain in the arse, but it just makes you pay more attention to the hardware you're buying. It's not that difficult for a company to get their drivers certified, and knowing they are certified makes me feel better about installing them anyway.

[llama64]

People who keep giving Vista heck these days are one of two people:

1) Crappy Windows Software developers
2) Ignorant people who heard that Vista sucked at launch and haven't bothered checking if that status has changed.

I've been using Vista on development machine for 10 months straight now. The first two months were pretty brutal. The system lasted about 4-5 hours without going down due to software incompatibility issues or bad drivers. Then, new drivers were released for my hardware that were compatible with Vista and I haven't had a major system crash since then. Vista as an Operating system is surprisingly well built. The morons who make programs for it took an extended amount of time figuring out that their hacks don't work anymore with the new security model and started spreading FUD all over the place. And gullible people bought it.

Windows ME sucked because it was an insecure mess of code. There is a reason MS dumped the Dos kernel in favour of the NT stack. Vista sucked because there was no device support at launch.

I just built a brand new PC based on budget components and used 32bit Vista (never going over 2gb of ram in this one). The whole build process from start to finish took about 1.5 hours. That's including setup of the system software, installation of printer drivers and MS Office. It was the simplest experience I have ever had. My opinion of Vista went WAY up after that.

Point is, if you're still walking around talking about how crappy Vista is, man up and try it. You will not go back to XP unless you rely on software that has yet to be made compatible with Vista. Why people think the OS should be compatible with everything is beyond me... It's up to the software vendors to make their products compatible with the environment!

Apple will never match Microsoft's profit margins mainly because they will never hold a massive IT contract for an international business. Can you imagine a bunch of Drilling Engineers trying to do their work on a Mac? It's kinda comical. It's like imagining the police force in Calgary driving a bunch of Aston Martins around as their fleet vehicles.

Apple is a consumer product. It's aimed at small businesses and the home user. And in this market, Apple has the better product. Good thing the market is starting to notice!

I still maintain that if you are going to buy a laptop, buy a Mac. Desktops are Windows territory though. Unless you want that bizzare all in one iMac thing.

[Barnes]

What's the point of this thread?

And seriously, Valleywag?

[llama64]

Originally Posted by Barnes

What's the point of this thread?

Waffles.

[McG]

Originally Posted by alltherage

My vista is nothing special, but nothing to complain about. I didn't know windows 7 was coming. That's weak sauce.

sorry but i don't see why. corporations need to know so that they can plan or delay deployments based upon what is coming down the pipe, including new features.

i have already seen some of the stuff coming in office 14, and most people aren't on office 12 (no office 13 btw).

i haven't seen any release stuff beyond 2010 though...

[jammies]

In the business world, backwards compatibility is important. That's why Vista sucks - a medium size business can have hundreds of applications, most of which now require a new version ($$$) or don't even have versions that will run properly under the new "security" model under Vista. While it is all well and good to say these apps are "poorly programmed", from the end-user's perspective MS is saying "here, I'm going to fix these problems you didn't know or care that you had, and I'm going to give you problems that you won't be able to ignore or fix, PLUS I'm going to charge you triple for the privilege!"

For example, I have a customer we'll call "Golf Course", and they have some custom software that analyzes golf swings via video, then outputs a customized report on your golf swing to a colour printer in booklet format. Under Vista, it won't

1. Install properly unless you hack the registry
2. Run at more than 1/2 the speed of the same app under XP.
3. Line up the printed pictures with the premade spaces in the booklet, no matter how you adjust the page/margins/picture sizes.

And that's just one application of many. It wouldn't be such a big deal except that it's starting to get so you can't even buy XP pre-loaded anymore, so all new machines come with Vista, and if your application doesn't work under Vista - well, what do you do?

What they should have done was write a companion XP emulator using either their VirtualPC tech, or something licenced from VMWare - and let people run their obsoleted XP apps in a virtualized, sandboxed environment that wouldn't break their security model. Then they could have charged $100 for Vista, and another $100 for the optional XP emulator, and everyone would have been happy. Instead, they charge $400 for what is essentially a locked down version of XP with DRM and pretty menus, which is a ******* joke.

[llama64]

Originally Posted by jammies

<snip>

Well, in theory I completely agree with you in that Microsoft completely flubbed up the licensing of Vista. The restriction on virtual installations was unnecessary and prevented a lot of configurations from working. Thankfully, MS wizened up and have lifted much the barriers to virtualization.

That said, your "Golf Course" customer should have verified that their mission critical apps could run on the new OS before they upgraded to it. They also should be leaning on the developers to get off their ass and fix the software to run properly on the new platform. The specs for Vista were out a long time before it was released.

Microsoft has catered to the notion of backwards compatibility for too long. This "requirement" has caused the Windows platform to stagnate while security vulnerabilities piled up. Same problem exists with Internet Explorer.

XP has had it's support window extended and is available for purchase everywhere. Most OEM manufacturers offer it for installation as well. Blaming Vista for poor IT planning isn't going to solve anything. IT is costly. Companies need to recognize this and plan accordingly. Placing blame on a new product for poor IT management isn't going to solve anything.