Posted on 10/04/2015 1:49:51 PM PDT by Swordmaker
I know the facts based on Apple's balance sheets, not their Market Cap. . . and Apple was never down "close to bankruptcy" nor was Market Cap significant since it just represents Wall Street's estimations based on rumors and hype of the value of its stock times number of outstanding shares. Unless Bloomberg is talking about their liquid assets, which have been reported as high as $2.6 Billion when they included short term investments. . . but those aren't "liquid" enough for these purposes. . . they are talking the wrong data. The value of the outstanding equities is irrelevant.
As I said, Apple just bought NeXT for $429 Million, after their lowest ebb of operating losses. . . which were caused by taking inventory write downs. At the time of the Apple/Microsoft lawsuit settlement, Apple was literally "weeks away" from that low point, but heading away and up from it, not toward and down into it, in that they were three quarters from it, a little more than forty weeks into their recovery from just two quarters of losses. This is history.
Had Apple continued their worst quarter spending and sales at the same level of losses, Apple had enough reserves on hand to sustain that level of operations for almost seven years before exhausting their reserves. . . without laying off even a single employee. . . which would never be allowed happen. Steps would be taken to prevent such events. Why do you think the BoD canned the CEO Gil Amelio and elevated Steve Jobs to Interim CEO?
A few years after the completion of the settlement agreement the court released the three interlocking sealed agreements and they are now available on Scridb for anyone to read. . . and they make quite plain what went down, which company won, and which company lost. The only thing excluded was the amount of the ongoing license Microsoft would pay over five years to use Apple's QuickTime IP (among others) that were involved in the suit.
Apple dropped MS Internet Explorer on the anniversary of the agreement, but few Apple users were using it, preferring Netscape, and Apple introduced Safari. Microsoft did continue developing MS Office for Mac beyond the agreement because it was quite profitable.
In any case, the purchase of the stock was not a "bail out" by any means.
Here’s some more information:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/592FE887-5CA1-4F30-BD62-407362B533B9.html
Apple made their comment with their re-re-re x 2 introduction of their iphone. Face it Apple has their pants around their ankles like the little Chinese kids that make their products.
The monster Surface Book seems to be the real story here. Apple has no new MBP on the horizon. Cook is too busy with rings, cars, and watches. Apple no longer has the best hardware on the market.
Even Microsoft is giving away Visual Studio now for indy developers. That makes the $2,600 Apple like price tag palatable for me.
OK....I get the picture...really I do....So let me sum up..
While I don’t seriously believe that the deal and the investment by MS was some sort of “altruistic act of compassion” as the writer of that piece uses as a strawman, I also don’t believe Apple was in total control and financial harmony.
The truth is usually in the middle.
Apple aficionados always frame the arguments as some gigantic long term completion between the giant MS and the upstart Apple operating systems. So how could this actually be true when at the time Apple had around a 5% market share!
If Bill Gates wanted to, he could have put the full weight of MS behind a effort to relegate Apple to the dustbin of history which is essentially what Apple aficionados claim was actually happening but Bill Gates was so shifty and evil that he was doing it in a way that could not be discovered by regulators.
It’s all a very interesting bit of fiction and it makes for great Hollywood movies, (that I have not watched) :-) but I think reality tells a slightly different tale and it’s not nearly as dramatic or exciting...
IMO, if you must connect these dots to some sort of internecine warfare, you would be better served to look into the fact that while both companies had their own individual issues, one thing they had in common was regulatory at the time (the government) so making peace on a few partnership issues was great cover for the fact that Apple needed that 150M immediately.
Microsoft saw it as a opportunity to form some bridges of partnership for marketing reasons and the so called operating system war was a figment of the publics imagination and that of Wall street.
Just as the so called “Browser wars” was more of a government interference regulatory issue then it was a Netscape-Microsoft street fight.
A little off topic, but what I find amusing is that Netscape actually did survive to become the most prolific browser on the planet!
It formed the basis of Google Chrome and is in Android OS.
Just my humble opinion...
And it achieved this without the protection of government regulators who have and currently are continuously breaking things in the business world for the sake of fairness...
I think it’s safe to say that without some new service or capability that consumers of smart phones do know they need yet, the smart phone revolution is coming swiftly to it’s maturity.
It’s also safe to say, that companies engaging in the marketing of these devices really have to fight hard when the device genre matures by using value added services and whatnot to enhance sales..
So let’s all drink to the next BIG thing.....
I’m of the opinion that everything that can be invented has now been invented.
Maintenance, support, and derived technology is the wave of the future.
The next generation of would be inventors has no clue. The next really big thing as far in the future.
Ummmmm......I would take some issue with that....
All you need to do, (it's still early) is look at the past. If you do, you will see the most obvious moves done by the largest firms, Microsoft, Google, and Apple and you can make a observation..
All of them, over the past ten years, have exhausted large amounts of investment capital into one or more particular venues...and the two big ones are entertainment and in Googles case, transportation. IMO, VR will be one of the next big things, and of course the automated transport devices. There is a understated reason why MS got into gaming some time ago, and as for Apple, they are so secretive that it's difficult to say what they are pouring cash into right now but one can speculate that they will be directly involved in one or more of the two things I mentioned. Apple likes to come in late....so....(contrary to the aficionado version that claims they are at the forefront) I think it's worthwhile to keep a eye on the Chinese R&D and some of the small unlisted startups in the US and Europe.
IMO, It's clear to me that VR will become the new consumer cocaine for a variety of different needs that they don't yet know that they need to have..
VR is already in the books. Maybe not at a consumer price point but it’s done.
I’m referring to something really new, unheard of.
Well......frankly speaking....there has not been any “never heard of” inventions that are a consumer item....Everything has been heard of or aspired to by someone, somewhere..at sometime..
If these things had not been heard of or imagined, then they must have just appeared out of nowhere...or fallen off a turnip truck..
BTW, VR is very far from done....it’s just in it’s infancy. The applications extend far and wide and are not just related to gaming.
To make a consumer product pipeline work, you need billions of potential customers and at least millions to begin with..
It’s only beginning...
Robotics and more particularly self controlled autonomous machines are also off the drawing boards.. In fact several governments are now arguing how to regulate their use.
But this too is in it’s infancy.
Just for a example of what I am talking about...insofar as “unheard of”.
Would you say, that if tomorrow someone announced that they had the first prototype faster than light spacecraft, it would have been unheard of?
Certainly unheard of things to the general population, but obviously known to the inventor.
The Computers, Airplanes, and to some degree Automobiles were completely unheard of 20-30 years before their invention. Discoveries like DNA, and Medical advances were just there for the taking and don’t count.
How about a time machine?
The propulsion system would be unheard of.
These were imagined long before their actual inventing.. Long, long, long before..
Unless they announced it later this afternoon.
The problem is NEVER with Apple. It’s always with the meat in the seat. This is Apple’s problem.
On the other hand, an automatic update on Win10 last night changed the way I logged in without giving me so much as a peep of warning.
Now they want you to log into your MS Account, which logs you onto your local computer.
Essentially, MS hacked me. I tried logging on with my pwd until I noticed my email address above the pwd prompt. Logged in with my MS Account creds and it let me into my computer.
In essence, they changed the locks on my house last night without telling me they were going to do it.
A pox on both houses. They are both making some idiotic decisions of late. I’m coming up to speed nicely on my Raspberry Pi. I also here of a nice little Surface clone recommended to me by an MS insider. He’s emailing me a link.
Nearly every invention of consumer as well as military devices have at one time been imagined, even described and drawn on paper by someone at sometime..
There are exceptions and these are mostly byproducts or spinoffs of the original tech.
You misunderstand what win10 is doing..
Upon loading win10, you now have a MS cloud account. That account is accessed via your Microsoft windows password you created.
You computers OS is now all functionally based on the cloud account..
At first your login changed to the windows password...At some point when the OS is certain that you are the user (primary administrator) it will allow you to substitute that password for a 4 digit code or PIN.
You can then login with 4 numbers..
My boss is out today, I can go all day. /h
Of course something must be imagined before it is invented. To me unheard of implies an accomplishment. That’s my line and I’m sticking to it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.