iPhone OS 4.0 Initial Beta Hands On [VIDEO]
via youtube.com
@mikey_pants // Geek2.0, Apple fan boi, digital community manager, student of new media.
@mikey_pants // Geek2.0, Apple fan boi, digital community manager, student of new media.
by Chris Rawson (RSS feed) on Apr 2nd 2010 at 7:00PM
Apple and Walmart have been playing stock market tag over the past few weeks to see which company's market capitalization would be higher. At the time of this writing, Apple's market capitalization of $213.98 billion exceeds Walmart's market cap of $211.14 billion -- a difference of $2.84 billion. Currently, Microsoft and Exxon are the only US companies whose market caps exceed Apple's, with Microsoft at $255.75 billion and Exxon at $319.21 billion.
The overly simplified way of looking at it: Apple as a company is now worth more than Walmart, the world's largest retailer. Granted, market cap is only one way of gauging a company's financial worth, but considering the pile of cash Apple is sitting on right now, it doesn't seem like a huge stretch to say that Apple's economic worth is at least very closely represented by its position in the market cap rankings.
Some firms are predicting that Apple will eventually catch up to or surpass Microsoft's market cap. While there's currently a $41.77 billion dollar difference between the two companies' market caps, that's not a completely insurmountable gap. Get a load of this batch of perspective: ten years ago, Microsoft was worth in excess of $586 billion, while Apple was worth a relatively paltry $17 billion. In the same amount of time it took for Microsoft to lose almost $330 billion in worth, Apple's market cap rose by nearly $200 billion. No wonder Fortune named Steve Jobs "CEO of the Decade."
by Dave Caolo (RSS feed) on Mar 11th 2010 at 1:00PM
<!-- sphereit start -->On Wednesday, Consumer Reports published the results of its latest tech support survey. Apple was on top for both laptops and desktops, well ahead of the company in second place.
Consumer Reports asked 7,000 subscribers about their satisfaction with their computer companies across categories like problem solved, phone waits, phone staff and online support. Each answer was issued a point value, with a maximum of 100 points.
Among laptops, Apple scored 86 points. The second place finisher, Lenovo, accumulated up 63 points, for an impressive margin of 23 points. The rest of the leader board includes Toshiba (60 points), Dell (56 points), HP/Compaq (53 points), and Acer/Gateway/eMachines (39 points).
Apple scored even better with desktops, racking up 87 total points and leading the field in all categories. Here the 2nd place competitor was Dell which scored 55 points among the participants, a full 32 points behind.
Of course, fanboys like you and me are convinced of Apple quality. Now we have some good 'ol empirical data to toss at our PC-thumping friends and relatives.
[h/t to cnet & Jim Dalrymple]
