Apple is now nearly as big as Microsoft with personal computing devices

[ebw]

the2real4mafol said:

famousringo said:

the2real4mafol said:
If it weren't for iPad, Apple wouldn't have a chance against Microsoft. It's always been that way

And if it weren't for Windows, Microsoft would just be another Adobe.

This argument has always bugged me. Yes, if we just disregard everybody's successes, they're all failures. What point are you trying to make?

The thread is saying Apple is nearly as big as Microsoft, but this would of not been possible without iOS. Still impressive for a companies that makes the software and hardware itself and limits the rights to use such software to itself, when windows is used by dozen of companies worldwide. 

Still not seeing the point.  You could also say iOS would not have been possible without OS X, and OS X would not have been possible without NeXT.  Could you just say what you actually mean?  Are you just trying to express how amazed you are at the success of iOS?  Do you just enjoy repeating truisms?

I would say that Microsoft is one of the very few successes of the licensing model, which usually is not a path to world domination.  I can't think of a computer company that made significant money from selling their operating system separately from hardware (Android gets a lot of activations but it's a money loser for Google). Maybe Novell in the old days, and QNX carved out a modest niche before being acquired by RIM (now Blackberry).  On the other hand, RIM, Nokia, IBM, Sun, Apple, all made big money on hardware locked to proprietary software (in some cases they did license the OS but this did not generate any signficant profit), some of them reaching the top of their industry.