Computer news: whats new,and why apple?

[Banthaman]

Stock news today… an interesting article

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080507/D90GP8MO0.html

I was reading my “daily fix†when I saw this article and a few things jumped out.

“Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer had orally offered to pay $33 per share, or $47.5 billion, for Yahoo, up from an initial bid valued at $44.6 billion, or $31 per share. At the time the negotiations collapsed, the value of Microsoft's original offer had fallen to $42.3 billion, or $29.40 per share, because half the deal was supposed to be financed with Microsoft's declining stock.â€

And

“Microsoft's intense pursuit of Yahoo was widely seen as an acknowledgment of weaknesses in Microsoft's solo Web search and advertising strategy, and the software maker now needs to prove it can innovate without Yahoo as a partner.â€

In the software world it’s no secret that Microsoft has for the most part lacked innovation basically taking innovation of others and improving it then slapping on the MS logo and doing what it does best … marketing it. There tend to be a few things leading to what I would call the “death of a giant†a.k.a. Microsoft. 1. Lack of innovation 2. Lack of listening to the people (ie Vista) 3.Lack of diversification.
Now for the investor it’s been obvious for some time not to invest into MS stock but what this should be begging is the question “Who is going to fill this voidâ€. Logic says “Who is left?†Currently the competition in the area of personal computers lies in only a few regions.

For the more technically minded and corporate thinker Red hat Linux is making headway into the corporate market so much so Dell, IBM, and Oracle (leading database technology) are setup to support it, dell so much so even supports pre-installation of red hat on there systems.

The Linux factor from an investing standpoint would not so much lead into software innovations as much as hardware, the power of Linux is simplification and consolidation, meaning advanced server /hardware innovation is on the rise (like blade server systems
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/express/campaigns/bladesearch/index.html?ca=ag_us_mm_expbld_20080108&me=psearch&met=google&re=blade%20servers&s_tact=STA00010&cm_mmc=09-_-STA00010-_-k_google-blade%20servers-_-ag_us_mm_expbld_20080108

for linux corporate info: http://www.redhat.com/why_red_hat/

For the more residential/universal minded most would look to apple Inc. Steve Jobs in apple did something I think is brilliant in the sense of economics “helping you helps us†mentality. Apple for the most part in OS X is based on open source technology meaning, free and independently maintained software, what that means though is apple has hundreds of thousands of programmers and innovators it doesn’t have to pay for. All they have to do is package it under apple and support their package. For those of you who have used apple pre OS X you might want to give it another look as its completely different and far more user friendly. Apple does have a few obstacles to overcome:

1. Overcoming a bad name. (IMO) one of the main reasons the corporate world is shy of converting to apple is former knowledge in a bad taste of old systems, not to mention MS dependency.
2. Independent leadership (a.k.a. the Steve Jobs factor). As with MS without Gates so is apple without Jobs. Apple Inc. has yet to show it can make sound decisions in forward thinking without him and as such is a big ? mark to some investors.
3. To much to fast. I cant remember the quote but I believe last year apple sold 1.1 million computers this year they are looking at 2.1, but as with success comes unwanted attention namely viruses. Previously there were only a dozen known viruses listed for Macs vs. the over 500,000 known for MS, currently there are over 150 for Macs, and the trend is rising (though Mac requires any install, virus or otherwise to be approved by the user making it hardened far more than MS in that regard).

All this being said the next 3 years are going to prove to be most interesting as 1. Vista is failing and XP is ever aging on the market, MS’s market share is being crowded in on all fronts and newer and better systems are starting to make significant headway in the marketplace software and hardware wise.

If you’ve been watching the market closely you’ve probably already heard this stuff before so this would be old hat just wanted to give you an inside view of what systems are going on in this trendy, ever-changing environment.

Shaun “Banthaman†- Linux user, A+, Network+, Microsoft Certified Professional, hardware specialist

 

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[Jito]

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