See, I never had a problem with Apple until very recently. When they rolled out their iPods, I eventually got one after they dropped the ridiculous DRM.

It has been basically since the iPhone came out that they have started to be more and more of a bad company. Also I do feel lied to by Apple, they promised me I could surf the web perfectly fine on my iPhone, and without flash support that has not happened, not to mention lack of multi-tasking. You just can't do what you want without that

Ultimately however, it's the AppStore and how they handle it that has basically taken Apple from a "ok, whatever" company to a "piece of shit, scum of the earth" company.

Just so you know, no mobile phone does Flash. Some do a very old version of limited flash, but unless you DL the beta of Flash 10.1 for Android, no one is playing farmville on a cell phone.

I think what Apple said was the iPhone is the best mobile browsing experience possible on a call phone, and when it came out, they were right.

I am curious to see how well Flash really runs on Android. My guess is the UI will suck, and the battery will die quickly.

Well yeah that's what I meant. For a beta it isn't bad and I haven't noticed this battery drain Steve talked about. Though I never leave my phone out of a charger for more than 7 hours so I may not be the one to judge.

But again, this wasn't even the big thing, it's how they handled the App Store. They are doing the same thing they did with their computers back in the day, and we saw how that worked out. Now you have the Linux, Mac, and soon Windows, phone OSes and with any luck, Apple will get its ass kicked again for another decade or so and come back humbled and ready to bend over for their customers again. The way it should be.

Look at it from an investor's standpoint. Microsoft has burned piles of cash to buy second place in a market and is struggling to recoup the expenses of this generation, let alone those of last generation. That's not creating value for shareholders.

No matter how much consumers like to buy subsidized hardware and software, it's not a success from an investor perspective.

I cut my last response short, because I am at work and had to go to a meeting....

The App store is a hit and miss thing. While I agree it's limited (why can't I get Chrome, or Fire Fox?), it's not like Apple took something someone else was doing, and then screwed it up.

If not for Apple, there would be no such thing as an app store (or it would be years until someone else came up with the idea). I think the concept of an App store is the single biggest advancement in the computer industry in the last ~20 years.

The app store is not even two years old yet. Give it some time for the thing to mature.

Nope its not. However the alternative was what? Sit on the money? Buy another couple of companies? So far the ROI is better than the interest they would have recieved from sitting on it and the latter option could have gone either way. I don't see them as being mad, perhaps more disapointed that they couldn't have done more/better.

Oh, I'm not suggesting that MS shouldn't go out and seek new markets. They have to, and it's clear that they're trying quite hard to do so. MS knows that companies are either growing or dying, it's just that their efforts to grow aren't meeting a lot of success.

I think Microsoft's problem is that they keep trying to take over big, established markets instead of persuing fledgling markets or creating new ones. They try to tackle search well after Google has it sewn up, mp3 players after Apple has it sewn up, consoles and Sony, et cetera. They had a pretty good position in smartphones but they let it slip out of their grasp. They keep going after companies that are big enough and entrenched enough that they can withstand Microsoft's huge size and deep pockets.

If I were Ballmer, I'd spend less time looking enviously at the markets that rivals have seized and more time looking for markets they haven't seized yet. He was sharp to identify the threat that Linux-based netbooks represented and moved quickly to crush it. He needs to use that perception in an aggressive manner and not just a defensive one.

They have been going after a new market. Their Zune, Windows Mobile, Xbox, and others has been in relation to getting their cloud services into a prime position to take control of a large proportion of one of the fastest growing and most monetiseable segments of the internet. They need Zune because they need an element of respectability with music publishers, they need Xbox Live for gaming and movies and they need Windows Mobile as a relevant passport to everything and to extend into daily life.

If Windows Mobile 7 fails to even hold its own against Apple/Google then it will be a terrible blow. If Natal fails to make traction it will be a terrible blow and if both fail it will be almost fatal. The EDD profits/losses overall represent this whole cloud services push and how financially successful they have been thus far. 2010 is the year where it either comes together with varying degrees of success or the whole thing falls over and back onto lifesupport whilst we wait earnestly to see if they have the patience to try again.

I like apple products, they are so techno, and I'm really looking foward to them being #2

If it wasn't for Apple we wouldn't have the PC, and Woszniak not Jobs in fact. However they had it all closed down, and we saw how that turned out.