If Win 10 actually works then Microsoft could be back in the game big time. That’s a major ‘If’ mind.

but there aren’t many bike companies making 18 billion in a quarter

No, but I am sure there are plenty of businesses making similar gross margins as Apple does – they just sell more stuff. They can’t reduce margins to stop themselves from ‘earning too much’ because a small reduction in sales would then be catastrophic.

I would be much happier if Apple started to invest £bn’s in developing their core material usage and pretty much develop a sustainable resource for their production methods.
As is I think Argentina is being supported by the raw material extraction for a lot of what Apple make (not sure about that comment but I think you get my drift here)

And yes, by buying their stuff I contribute to it all.. 😐

Just where do all those dead iPhones go?

http://www.enoughproject.org/

Apple are one of the better ones IIRC, but there can never be enough fairness in trade.

Just where do all those dead iPhones go?

Ebay?

I would be much happier if Apple started to invest £bn’s in developing their core material usage and pretty much develop a sustainable resource for their production methods.

To be fair they do more than many other tech companies:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/11070662/Apple-leads-the-way-on-reducing-environmental-harm.html

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/22/apple-climate-change-is-real-and-its-a-real-problem

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/25/apple-new-sapphire-screens-iphone-6-solar-power

http://www.apple.com/environment/

Source: Clicking Clean: A Guide to Building the Green Internet, May 2015, Greenpeace.org (PDF)

Just had a look at that Apple/Network Rail thing. There is more than 1 Apple device for each mile of track. What a load of bollocks.

To be fair they do more than many other tech companies

I find it hard to believe that graph include their suppliers.

It’s fairly easy for the richest company ever in a shiny office building in america to use electricity made from cow farts (or whatever the latest and greatest green fad is, separate discussion notwithstanding).

Less easy for their screwed down tin smelters in the back end of indonesia, who have a profit margin lower than the UK dairy industry.

“I dislike the fact that Apple has decided to build a cash mountain that is so big that it doesn’t know what to do with it.”

I agree. Money needs to go around for people to benefit. They need to spend it on something BIG for society. Some hard problem that will require a lot of people to collectively solve and implement.

That Greenpeace report is a bit iffy, it appears to take no account of number of data centers, for instance Apple only has 4 working data centers listed, compared to 15 for Microsoft and 20 for IBM. And without looking at IBM and Microsofts centers in more detail I assume in some cases that they are fairly old. So based on that of course Microsoft & IBM are going to come out worse. I think Google and Microsoft considering the number of data centers come out fairly well at 46% & 39% respectively. IBM have some work to do.

Meanwhile in Microsoft….

Gates has put his money where his mouth is. He and his wife Melinda have so far given away $28 billion via their charitable foundation, more than $8 billion of it to improve global health.

Yet Apple is seen as ace, Microsoft bad…

The Bill Gates foundation is not microsoft. It is financed by the personal fortune of Bill Gates. Time Cook isn’t worth anything close to the figures associated with Bill Gates (or Mark Zuckerberg) but he has been reported to be doing a similar thing with his personal fortune.

Yet Apple is seen as ace, Microsoft bad…

that’s Gates, not Microsoft…

Difference is that, generally, Apple have pushed somewhat innovative and quality products.

Microsoft have pushed substandard and/or derivative stuff for ages, they pretty much took over the ‘Nobody got fired for buying xxxx’ mantle from IBM.

That Greenpeace report is a bit iffy, it appears to take no account of number of data centers

It goes beyond just data centres though. It’s based on company policies etc as well (e.g. Microsoft gets slated because it is just buying carbon credits in preference to actually using renewable energy. Apple gets praise because it is aggressively deploying renewable energy, advocating it, publishing data and submitting to external audits)

The company scorecard summaries in Appendix 2 summarise it all nicely if it is TL;DR

Meanwhile in Microsoft….

I’ve a lot of respect for Bill Gates (these days) but he hasn’t been the CEO of Microsoft for fifteen years*

His personal generosity and philanthropy should not be mis-credited to the the company he founded.

* (since 2000, around the same time he founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).

Apple have pushed somewhat innovative and quality products.

Microsofts products weren’t innovative for their time?

Graphics, cases and marketing aren’t innovative- its merely clever packaging and marketing.

Jobs was good in different ways- yes the iwatch etc but the competition were all bringing out similar products. Apple’s USP was marketing and packaging.

When I bought my imac/G4 ibook etc over 10yrs ago Apple was mainly the preserve of designers who used apple’s for the design packages. Now everyone seems to have an apple seemingly with the same guts as everyone else. I’m sure at least one of my Apple laptop’s had a Toshiba hard drive.

Microsofts products weren’t innovative for their time?

let me turn that around – what Microsoft products were innovative for their time ???

If Win 10 actually works then Microsoft could be back in the game big time.

You need to do more than just work to win in the consumer devices game. Nokia phones ‘worked’ and just look what happened to them!

Nokia were primarily a hardware company and Microsoft are a software company so that isn’t a very good analogy.

If Win 10 works properly for Enterprise then they are back no question. Don’t forget Microsoft still have some pretty major divisions such as Office and Xbox, and if Win10 can tie them all together then they could be very popular again.

what Microsoft products were innovative for their time

Are you serious?

Just had a look at that Apple/Network Rail thing. There is more than 1 Apple device for each mile of track. What a load of bollocks.

They also have more than one employee per mile of track.

If Win 10 works properly for Enterprise then they are back no question.

What like Enterprise hasn’t use MS for decades? Windows and Office have dominated for the last 20+ years. It’s only in mobile that they’ve never had a decent proposition / or had any consumer attachment. Their problem is that the last few releases of Windows / Office have been change for changes sake and not really offered anything new in terms of productivity, hence they’ve not set the world on fire for some time. I don’t see anything in W10 which raises the bar in terms of productivity.

Are you serious?

MS are no different to Apple, they spend 20 years copying other people’s ideas (Office) and implementing the SW slightly better or giving it away for free (web browser). Very little real innovation in Windows or Office.

Microsofts products weren’t innovative for their time?
let me turn that around – what Microsoft products were innovative for their time ???

Been re-reading “Revolution in the Valley” (cuttings from early Macintosh memories, quite like it as used to develop on Macs in ah, 1985 to about 1995). Great tales of life in the early development days..

Or the ironing, they gave their browser away for free just to put Netscape out of business!

I’m convinced Apple is a bubble waiting to burst.

^This, but I cannot tell if that is me wishing Apple ill, or just a reflection of how many other bubbles have popped before. 😕

Graphics, cases and marketing aren’t innovative- its merely clever packaging and marketing.

It’s ancient history now, but did you somehow miss the iPhone?

Remember that this is what a state-of-the art “smartphone” looked like in 2007 when the 1st gen iPhone came out:

The iPod was pretty influential too!

There are millions of Apple devices doing important “mission critical” things across all of those sectors

Yes but most of them could pick up an Android/MS device and carry on as normal.

GrahamS Jobs was good in spotting an existing idea and running with it.

Touch screen phones were about long before. The P800 from 2002 for instance

I had a Apple PDA/Organiser from 2000 that was humungous and two-tone LCD.

Are you serious?

yes, apart from Altair Basic as highlighted in that letter above, which didn’t make MS the big bucks.

SQL Server – Sybase had MS do the OS/2 version and weren’t tight enough with their licensing restrictions

Windows NT – derived from OS/2 which IBM specified – Window NT fixed the bits that MS said they couldn’t do because they were too difficult

Windows – initially a poor shell over DOS, stayed like this for ages, not any good until they had to recruit people from Digital to write a decent kernel. Ideas from Xerox anyway, plus there were several much more sophisticated windowing systems around – GEM, Apple, the Amiga…

Loads of stuff derived from the Unix world – MS had a stake in the SCO for ages, presumably to protect them from IP issues.

where have MS led rather than followed?

Touch screen phones were about long before.

How many used capacitive glass touch screens, rather than the crappy old resistive flexi-plastic screens or a special stylus.
How many used gestures, multi-touch and accelerometers as part of the UI?

Jobs was good in spotting an existing idea and running with it.

I’m not saying the iPhone/iPod Touch came from nowhere – but at the time it was a pretty massive leap forward and definitely an example of innovation.

where have MS led rather than followed?

Only innovative thing I can think of is the 3D movement detection game thing, although I can’t recall it’s name!

I’m not saying the iPhone/iPod Touch came from nowhere – but at the time it was a pretty massive leap forward and definitely an example of innovation.

Apple are certainly very good at desigining User Interfaces, something MS is notoriously bad at.

Some things 🙂

None of them are as innovative as they claim, Apple and Microsoft have ‘stolen’ plenty of ideas from others. In US business you win by a combination of good marketing, wealthy backers, litigation and a bit of luck, Microsoft and Apple are no different.

Win 8 was very innovative, to the point where people didn’t get it.

Meh, IMHO, you’re just contrarian.

Kinect was very powerful, reconstructme/reconstruct.me is/was a brilliant demo of it [plus neat GPU processing].

EDIT – or do you mean none of the companies were innovative? In which case I would agree.

Metro is by far the best UI for touchscreen

Metro is by far the best UI for touchscreen

they may be doing some better stuff recently but how long and how many people do they have to employ before they start coming out with decent stuff ?

Incredible that the conversation* has got this far without anyone mentioning Jony Ive. Apple, or rather Jonathan Ive, have completely revolutionised the world of personal computers (iPod, iPhone and iMac/Macbook). These devices and their operating systems are examples of excellent design, and that is why they do well. All the marketing in the world, however slick, will never, ever make a poor design or product successful. Apple just happen to have the same skill in marketing that they do in product design and manufacture. Jony Ive, like Dieter Rams (look at Braun and Vitsœ from the 60s onwards) before him, understands how important good design is and he’s done a sterling job at applying design fundamentals to things that people use all day every day.

* I use the term loosely.

Some things

They look as though they were designed by an algorithm. That they are also intended to be disposable is also uncomfortably obvious, especially the bottom thing.

I didn’t say they were cute, I said they were innovative.

I’m not really a fan of Ive, terribly derivative. Kare OTOH…..

I’m not really a fan of Ive, terribly derivative. Kare OTOH…..

OK

Just on the whole “Green Tech” thing, thanks for searching that out, clearly I’m far too busy to use google 😆 (I am as it happens)

But I really was referring to the raw materials and the whole industries servicing the making of the products…

Anyone see that programme on the iPhone factory a couple of months back?

😯