Fly Navy said:
How much of Apple does Microsoft own, 25%? Wasn't that to save it from tanking in the 90s... yeah....
Not quite there, speedy. If you care to do the research (and you probably don't), you can look
here
and
here here to see that MS has perhaps, at most, a 0.0046472% ownership in Apple. The only stock in Apple that MS owns is through a holdings firm called Private Capital Management (PCM).
Here's some interesting math:
PCM’s holdings in Apple
p = 6.280%
Microsoft’s holdings in PCM
m = 0.074%
Apple’s holdings in PCM
a = 6.280%
Microsoft’s holdings in Apple:
p * m = 0.0046472%
Apple’s holdings in Apple:
p * a = 0.394384%
As for the $150M in Apple shares that MS bought in the mid to late 90's--first, they were
non-voting shares, hardly constituting true corporate ownership, but rather value ownership. Second, it wasn't merely to "save Apple from tanking" (yes, they struggled in the mid-90's--very poor management), it was primarily to maintain viable competition in the marketplace, so as to stem the anti-MS/anti-monopoly sentiment so prevalent at the time. Examine the issues surrounding MS at that time. Third, MS sold off all of that stock about 3 years ago.
Just thought I'd point out your little fallacies here...
Now I'm
not a Mac zealot, just a very happy Mac owner. I've been computing since the days of MS-DOS 6, and I've been through just about every iteration of Windows there is (except WinME), and various flavors of Unix, including Solaris, BSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and a few Linux's, so I'm pretty sure that my opinion on OS's is about as objective as possible (and like religion and politics, there's really no such thing as objectivity in 'puter choices, right?). I bought my first Mac 2 years ago for college when I got STA-21, and I've gotta say, I'll NEVER buy anything but another Mac. I love my little powerbook, and I'll just keep upgrading my Linux PC to use as a file server.
Fly Navy said:
Interesting note: Mac people say Microsoft stole the GUI from Apple. Wrong. It originated with Xerox.
Ah, the Mac zealot's anathema. Won't touch this one. This one's alot more complex than you give it credit for, but that's not really germane to this thread--come to think of it, neither is this whole Windows vs. Mac discourse.
Thread split anyone?
