This guy is completely wrong. Why is he being upvoted? First he claims Microsoft spread itself too thin. Then he claims it's important for Apple to be cross-platform with its apps.

Microsoft's desktop market share was around 95% in the late 90s. It about 90% today. The owned the business app suite with Office then and they own it today. They did get arrogant with IE and stopped innovating once they destroyed the competition but, depending on whose numbers you use, they still have half the market.

The consumer world changed with mobile and Microsoft didn't innovate quickly enough. Google is the one who took their place with 80% global market share.

Apple still has relatively few products for being the world's biggest company. They do need a few more products.

Microsoft's "mistakes" are part of what made it the unstoppable juggernaut it was through the 90s and into the 2000s. They are the same "mistakes" that have helped Apple to acquire the largest single stockpile of cash since Crassus.

People keep writing obituaries for Microsoft. Would that I could die in such a fashion. I would love to be the kind of failure that's netted tens of billions of dollars of profits per year for decades.

'Microsoft's "mistakes" are part of what made it the unstoppable juggernaut'

Microsoft's first mistake was when IBM signed a non-exclusive contract to supply the Operating System for the first IBM Personal computer. should have read the small print :)

"Microsoft Litigation"

http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107...

I'm pretty offended that my 2 year-old IPad Air is gradually being effectively bricked by Apple. I'm staying with IOS 7.0.3 on the thing because first I heard that IOS 8.x.x more or less bricked performance, and now one can't even install 8.x.x. As a result, no more app updates, and both Safari and Chrome crash left and right when confronted with the latest script kiddy HTML because no more app updates without an OS update.

In contrast, one of my PCs from 2011 still runs Windows 7 just fine modulo the occasional kvetching to embrace the wonders of Windows 10. By all means be like Microsoft here.

Ditto for my other PCs running Ubuntu 12.x

And I'd be less risk averse if I could go back to 7.0.3 if indeed the thing got bricked, much like installing a late build of Android 4.x cyanogenmod rescued my Nexus 5 phone from bricking, but there's no way back if I go forward so the real answer for me is to extract all the data and switch to a Cyanogenmod friendly tablet minus the mostly useless Google services (increasingly by design i.e. since when did Google Maps need social push notifications? Yesterday, apparently when I got one).

Apple? Never again. The IPad Air is the first and last IOS device I ever own.

Apple music is on Android FWIW.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.andr...

At extreme risk of getting modded, how is this cute analysis (with a click bait headline) front page material?

I felt it was reductive and silly, and flagged it. So I agree.

You're missing the point that people primarily buy Apple's products because their great looks, performance, and the status they bring them. Even if Apple's apps are all crap, people are not going to switch to Samsung or Nexus.

One source gave Apple phones 41% vs Samsung 27%. So its not a sure thing. Samsung could cross that gap with good marketing.

Samsung is already hammering the marketing, thats why they are as high as they are.

>You won’t find Apple Music on Windows.

Must be dreaming then, just last week I was using my Apple Music subscription on iTunes for Windows!

This doesn't work.

If all apps (except Apple apps that no one likes apparently) are available everywhere then why switch ever?

Also learning new apps is part of the switching cost. Rebuying paid apps and in app purchases is another.

This is an argument people have made since the T-Mobile droid and it hasn't worked so far.

If for example you use all Google apps, then it's better integrated in a different platform. So it's a slight advantage to then switch so things like OK Google will update Google Calendar instead of Siri updating Apple Calendar even though you mainly use Google Calendar on your iPhone.

> The problem was that each attack was fought on the Microsoft playing field. Each product kept users within the Microsoft hardware ecosystem. The competition didn’t have that limitation. Firefox, Facebook, Chrome and the iPod emerged as dominant solutions because they served users across devices: Mac’s, PC’s, and sometimes Linux systems.

That's just not true. Firefox stole IE users because it was actually innovative. (IE never had tabs, Firefox 2 brought that to us.) Then Chrome stole Firefox 3 and IE users, because it had all the same innovations, but it wasn't bloated, it felt faster and smoother. It had practically nothing to do with Linux or Mac.

Actually, Opera was the one to invent tabs. Does someone remember why Firefox took off while Opera never managed to come out of its niches?

Free marketing, by every linux advocate ever. Chrome overtook in a similar manner, by getting free marketing on Google.com.

Have a look at the main UI, should be self explanatory: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/Opera_7.02.pn...

Except it looked like this when it came out with tabs: http://i.imgur.com/ms0RsfB.png

And on top of that it was skinnable and customizable to a degree no other browser has matched since.

Until they dropped it with the transition to a Chromium base, the "tabs" in Opera was full blown MDI.

Yep, and it is awesome.

Need to research and compare a bunch of sites at once? Throw the tabs into a window of their own and tell the window to tile the tabs.

One of the reasons i still stick with Opera 12.

Did you really not see the gigantic banner ad in the middle of the main UI? Opera tried to monetize the browser in that way for years.

Much like Android apps that offers a choice between ads and paying to make them go away. Opera was initially for pay only, much like Netscape Navigator. IE was the really odd one out by being offered for free (and why Netscape pulled Microsoft to court over antitrust charges).

Opera introduced the banner after Mozilla was formed and started offering first a rewritten Netscape package (these days called Seamonkey) and then Firefox (after some back and forth about naming).

For one thing it's not open source and never was.

> IE never had tabs, Firefox 2 brought that to us.

Excluding wrapper software for IE, like NetCaptor, and the Amiga browser IBrowse, Opera brought tabs in 2000, and Firefox took until 2002 to offer them.

Firefox has, until Chrome came about, had the best marketing team though.

When I saw the title, I think it was going to be about how they deal with security.

Says someone who clearly doesn't have much money invested in iOS apps