I had a moment of enstartlement (note to auto-correct: I made up the word, okay?) the other day. I get a lot of vintage/retro computing videos in my YouTube feed — I realized how odd it was that Apple was one of the few (only?) 8-bit computer companies still around. And around in an impossible-to-ignore kind of way.

But only just barely missed going under back in the late 1990's.

What a strange timeline.

> Even Amazon, which deals with physical objects, doesn't really make anything.

Echo, Kindle, Blink and Fire TV product lines would beg to disagree.

And there's presumably some amount of liasing/branding/QA/etc. that goes on with suppliers of AmazonBasics, Amazon Commercial, and other house lines.

And anyway surely warehousing & distribution is just as much a 'real' (=traditional? physical?) company activity as running a factory?

Maybe I am missing a point, but both Amazon and Microsoft have devices that they manufacture and distribute. While they may not be profitable at the price they are sold they provide value to customers that isn't conjured from air. Additionally they also sell access to data services, while the data may not by physical, the data centers are physical objects that are designed and built by both AWS and Microsoft.

I get what you’re saying, but I think what you’re describing as the “realness” of a company is just the sustainability of its competitive advantage. Which is a good metric to understand their long term financial position and susceptibility to market changes and layoffs. Others are pointing out that yes MS and Amazon make physical things, but we all know those aren’t their core business - that’s beside the point.

Tech companies are largely “interface” providers - they simplify the interface between a human and some other thing. Twitter simplifies the interface between one human and all other humans on Twitter. Microsoft enhances the interface between one human and other humans within a company. Amazon simplifies the interface between humans and retail goods, and AWS simplifies the interface between humans and scalable compute and storage.

Apple simplifies the interface between humans and personal compute, which is the entry point to all of the above (although the relationship with Microsoft is obviously more complex than that). So Apple is just further up the tech value chain, where transient effects are softened and delayed, and where competitive advantage is less easily displaced. Twitter is really only protected by network effects. Microsoft is protected by lots of UI/UX implementation moat and strong vendor lock in. Amazon is protected by others’ ability to scale physical logistics, AWS by backend and interface development and also lock-in. Apple is protected by all of the above plus hardware engineering, and the hardware is an especially difficult one to catch up with or copy.

I believe you are undervaluing the demand for cloud, e.g. AWS and azure. Companies that "make things" use these services extensively. AWS and Azure are the quintessential shovels during the gold rush.

But even by your flawed definition of "making things" Amazon counts, because of Kuiper, Fire Devices, and Echo alone.

I would grant that Amazon's Graviton is an actual thing, but that's pretty new. I would put the Fire and Echo devices in the same bin as their branded USB cables, i.e. "we put our logo on some stuff out of Shenzen."

I get that AWS services are a real thing made possible by other real things, but it's also essentially a branded software layer on top of a lot of open source stuff. Over-simplification, sure, but there are enough third-party services that ape enough of the AWS API that I think of it more like a Dell than an Apple.

It is ridiculous to say that you’re not a real company if you don’t make physical things.

I can’t imagine you seriously believe that.

By that logic Amazon is a vastly superior company because they make more products than Apple. Amazon makes its own hardware and products: Alexa, Kindle, Ring, etc. They have ground and air fleets. Amazon holds majority marketshare with online web services...

I don't think this 'real' sentiment is best used to describe Amazon.