Over 10 years ago, Microsoft plunked down $150 million to buy a stake in Apple. The share price back then (January 1997) was about $3.50. Today Apple is trading at $185. That’s around $7.9 billion in today’s money. Over the same period Microsoft stock is up about 50% (including it’s near 10% rise today). I imagine Microsoft ditched that stock long ago – there was even talk at one time that they might have shorted Apple on the day that they bought it to hedge any risk. Folks have even been saying recently that if, instead of buying a 5gb iPod on the day it came out, you’d bought the same value of Apple stock, you’d have over $10,000 today (looking at the graph, even if you’d bought in 2001 when the iPod came out, you’d still be sitting on 18 times your money at least!). Apple’s certainly on a tear – it’s now worth more than IBM and more than Intel.
Today, the day that Leopard comes out, I finally upgraded my workaday Windows laptop to Vista – I’d been running Vista under bootcamp on a MacBook for a while but it wasn’t getting much exercise. I started the upgrade with trepidation – the rumours about it being a difficult install are rife. They weren’t kidding. The first install trashed my PC and left me no option but to reformat and install from scratch (the approach everyone who’d already done it had recommended in fact). This worked smoothly. Restores from backup went fine. Only one driver crapped out on me. All of my software works. And my PC appears rock solid stable and fast – which is better than it was the day before.
I’ll be installing Leopard on the Macs in the house over the weekend I imagine.
you must be bored, then what, a linux install, re-booting the microwave or re-soldering the toaster?
dude…if you even knew me a little you\’d know that linux is several huge steps too far for me; my technical capabilities finish at \”insert disc\”. and, as for the kitchen, i believe restaurants were invented to keep me out of the kitchen.
Repeat after me.Polly pecked a pick of pepper.I.
How did the weekend install go – did it work?Look at this link on same http://laptopmag.com/Features/The-Way-it-Woz-Steve-Wozniak-on-All-Things-Apple.htm woz saying its no longer intuitive
ah … the great woz pronounces. he says a lot of things in that article but offers little insight. woz was, no doubt, a great guy but his post apple encores haven\’t amounted to much. wheels of zeus anyone? interesting to compare paul allen and woz and what they\’ve each gone on to do after splitting with their founding partners.on the install front- vista humming along just fine. performance on my laptop has actually improved – but it was in a pretty bad state beforehand. i\’m really pleased with it- the leopard stuff has been a bit mixed. it went fine after the \”insert disc\” bit. but the software appears unstable – i\’ve had to reboot each of 2 imacs a dozen times in the last 2 days (power off reboot – screen unresponsive except for the mouse moving); there seem to be problems with USB attached external drives; and some software doesn\’t work – it crashes on launch or errors. so i\’ll wait for the first patch before exercising it too much!