Why Apple Used To Suck (And How It's Come So Far)

http://images.askmen.com/entertainme...5792-flash.jpg
Sometimes hell freezes over and pigs fly, and this was one of those weeks. On Monday,Apple became the most valuable publicly traded company in American history at $623billion. With that announcement, people everywhere ate crow with heaping portions ofhumble pie on top. I’ll admit it: I am one of those people. Even thoughI was a Mac fanboy even during the dark days before Steve Jobs came back, I recognizedthat the company was going nowhere fast, and I regarded switching to Windows as somethingof an inevitability -- like shrinking with old age or another sh*tty Paris Hiltontelevision show -- even though I never would have admitted it then. Whilepeople today are tired of hearing how great Apple is, the Apple of 1994 was hard to like.If you were a stockholder in 1997, its market cap of $2.3 was a death knell. The operatingsystem on Macs would crash so much, it was as if “locking up” was its centralfeature. If you had an errant font, you could crash 6-10 times a day while trying to getsome work done -- if your screen worked after being punched repeatedly. OS 9’smultitasking was so bad that all it took to stop the entire OS in its tracks was clickinga menu -- nothing else happened while you selected “Copy." Now, OS X crashes for memaybe once every six months and multitasks better than server-grade versions of Windows.If you would have told me then that Apple would become the most valuablecompany, I would have chuckled and hated you for taunting me. Back then, Apple possessedthe creative vision of a sleepy boardroom of suits and milked its existing creativeuser base with overpriced hardware. Trolls will joke that it still does that, but in 1994I paid nearly $7,000 for the Apple equivalent of a 486 computer with a 17-inch monitor.Today, Apple’s expensive Mac Pros are actually cheaper than the HP or Dellequivalent. Apple has managed to become more competitive while still maintaining highprofit margins and increasing market share, and, apart from the iPad, it doesn't claim amajority market share for any of its products. I guess that’s why Tim Cook, thesupply-chain magician, is now sitting in the big chair.Since those dark earlydays, it’s been impressive how Apple has pulled off numerous risky moves that werecentral to its success, but it didn’t do it alone. Mac OS X, the eventual guts ofiOS for the iPhone and iPad, survived partly because Steve Jobs persuaded Bill Gates tocommit to developing Internet Explorer and Office for it -- and porting it was a majorundertaking. That single-handedly kept Macs viable in offices, homes and dorms around theworld. I’m sure Steve Ballmer has punched an intern on more than one occasion overthat agreement. As Microsoft dwindles and possiblyfalters with Window 8, and Google sits a distant second place with $219 billion inmarket cap, not much seems to be standing in Apple’s way to more oodles of loot. Asothers have pointed out, it made $300 billion in the last year alone and that was largelyon the back of a phone that haters dismissed as “disappointing.” It is aboutto launch a smaller iPad and a TV set that could instantly change the cable and TVindustry. That’s a lot of lunches it could eat once it steps into the TVschoolyard.Steve Jobs didn’t live to see this moment, but, like withmost other things, he likely saw it coming. Anyway, if there is a heaven above,Apple’s stacks of cash will probably reach there by 2015, so we can personally thankhim for his part in building it. Continue Reading

http://www.askmen.com/entertainment/guy_gear/record-breaking-apple-valuation.html ]More...[/url]