Filed under: Apple Corporate, Cult of Mac
Bill Gates: man in the bubble.
You've heard about the Apple bubble, right? The prevailing belief that Apple's stock is overpriced and about to explode? Turns out there's definitely a Microsoft bubble, too. Different kind, though. One that surrounds Bill Gates in his day-to-day role at Microsoft.
Microsoft employs a technical assistant dedicated to deleting Mr. Gates' email. "It is a corporate policy not to make a permanent record of Bill's works...The job duties of the technical assistant require him to delete email files from Mr Gates' computer weekly." Apparently this directive appeared after the recent US Government antitrust case, where many emails showed Microsoft's anticompetitive policy.
Still waiting to get to the Apple punchline of this whole post? Turns out that in a (non-deleted) 2004 email, a senior executive told Gates that if he didn't work for Microsoft, he'd buy a Mac. Which shows that you really can find good people for senior management. It also makes you wonder how many deleted emails discuss the preference for iPods over the Zune.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
tim said 2:41PM on 12-11-2006
my girlfriends brother is a high up at MS, he started there about 15 years ago as a devout mac-addict...now he follows his big paycheck if you know what i mean.
when i mess with him about how much better my computing life is than his, you can see a glint of his past life coming through where you know he wishes he were still a mac-head
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Mike said 2:53PM on 12-11-2006
Hey, this isn't just any old "senior executive". This is Jim Allchin!!! Ouch.
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Joel Snape said 2:53PM on 12-11-2006
Its not that surprising TBH, I attended the Christmas Lectures for A-level students held by Microsoft Research in Cambridge (UK) last year and one of the presenters was using a (at the time) new Powerbook to give his Keynote Presentation. Addmitidly he did work in a User Research Group and was a pshycologist by trade but it was still quite amusing...
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El Segundo said 3:03PM on 12-11-2006
An executive email deleter, eh? Now that's a job I could do.
Well, at least you can say that MS learns SOMETHING from its own history.
On the other hand maybe it's just learned to delete its own history.
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Jeff said 3:07PM on 12-11-2006
"The prevailing belief that Apple's stock is overpriced and about to explode?"
I think "deflate" would be a better description of what happens to an overpriced stock bubble. "Expode" denotes a stock that goes UP.
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tc said 3:07PM on 12-11-2006
can someone explain this mac bubble more?
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Edsel said 3:43PM on 12-11-2006
Microsoft has become the General Motors of the tech world. I say that with a heavy heart because MS was the spirit of my financial good fortune.
So, who becomes "Toyota"; Apple?
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clay said 4:30PM on 12-11-2006
I wouldn't say MS is the GM of the tech world, because GM has REAL competitors, of a similar size and customer base.
MS is SO absurdly huge, you can't say that Apple is the Toyota equivalent, or so on. I think Apple COULD one day get that big, but they have to decide to enter the corporate work space, and that means offering alternatives to Act. Dir., all the little server platforms, and so on. Their offerings are, by numeric comparison, pretty small.
It's a nice thing to imagine, though.
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ryan said 4:42PM on 12-11-2006
Wow, it would feel great to know that your job could be replaced by a vbs script written in 20min.
Oh well, let them waste the money.
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Hoover said 5:00PM on 12-11-2006
Not familiar with an Apple bubble. I am under the impression (from my broker and research) that Apple's stock is actually undervalued, in light of its assets and earnings. Oh well, what does Smith Barney know, anyway?
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Chris said 5:30PM on 12-11-2006
"Oh well, what does Smith Barney know, anyway?". In my experience not much. They recommended a buy for SUN when they were at their pek at $45. A few months later they were trading at $5. Analysts' recommendations can be overvalued too.
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tundraboy said 5:35PM on 12-11-2006
If you believe that Apple is the next Sony, that Apple will be the pace setter for the home entertainment electronics industry, that your stereo, radio, tv, cell phone, cable, camcorder, etc. (or more accurately, the future successors of those technologies) will all be running on an Apple-designed integrated platform, then Apple stock has still a looooong way to go.
I also believe that this will come about because an increasingly desperate Sony, who to this day has no clue how to write even half-way decent software, will eventually throw in the towel and totally embrace Apple's home electronics platform freeing it to concentrate it's energies on what it does best --hardware.
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Malfoy Roark said 6:32PM on 12-11-2006
There is no way Apple could ever be as big as MS. Apple would have to make too many changes Steve couldn't bare to make. For better or for worse, Apple doesn't play to WIN, MS does. That's why each company is where they are today.
Apple has a better chance of being bought by someone than ever stepping up to MS size.
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tundraboy said 6:56PM on 12-11-2006
MS's revenues for the last fiscal year is 44 billion. It was 36 billion two years earlier. Apple's latest revenue is 14 billion, it was 6.2 billion two years before that.
It is not beyond the realm of impossibility for Apple to catch up to MS revenue-wise in a few years. They will probably never supplant Windows as the OS standard but that's not the only game in town for Apple.
And to say that Apple does not play to win is a ludicrous statement. So exactly what was Apple playing for when it put a lock on the digital player market? Honorable mention? Brownie points?
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Liquidmark said 10:40PM on 12-11-2006
Well, Apple had been in a state of damage control from the late 1990's to early 2000's.
I'd say that they are in a stable position now and have been making a decent comeback. It's foolish to expect a company to go from less than 3% marketshare to top of the heap overnight (ESPECIALLY after getting thrashed for about ten years straight because of poor leadership). That didn't happen for Microsoft or the IBM compatible PC. Want an example of a company that doesn't play to win?
Look at SUN, Amiga or SGI...
THOSE guys didn't play to win. I mean, I actually have to search to hear something about them. I at least hear about Apple without even trying.
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Peter Kirn said 12:06PM on 12-12-2006
Can I hire someone to delete my emails, please?
Anyway, Jim Allchin blogs about this whole thing today. You have to remember, in 2004 Longhorn was basically a mess, and he wanted to emphasize a point. And I think he was telling the truth. Microsoft has worked very hard on Vista since then. I don't see anything that's likely to shake users from their well-deserved loyalty to OS X, but it certainly illustrates the difference between the MS OS effort in 2004 and the state of the PC in January 2007.
And, anyway, these Mac vs. Windows arguments are pointless. Apple isn't even trying to push the kinds of volumes the PC manufacturers do. That's the reason their market share number isn't budging. But, frankly, that's probably a good thing. Anyone here remember when Apple tried dumping volumes on the market and nearly wrecked the company in the early 90s? Apple's model is different; it's not about market share numbers, and it seems to be working. I'd just like to see more Mac-based revenue growth and not just iPod, but being on all cylinders on Intel Macs should at least give them a fighting chance.
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