Lol...girlie case eh? Never saw it as girlie...kinda like it like that to be honest. :)

And yeah iPod is missing there but if I go through my electronics I'll find some ipod nanos too.

So the question remains...why would someone that spent most of this thread defending windows, windows phone and Microsoft in general have all this apple stuff?

Because you have a brain and aren't beholden to any one company, preferring to buy whatever works best for you at the time?

Or was that a rhetorical question?

I own a shit-ton of Apple hardware but I'm not a big fan of the company itself. In fact, they piss me off more often than not. But, alas... they make damned fine products right now.

But it will be interesting to see who gets my smartphone money in about six months. I had iPhones but bought an HTC Inspire a year ago so I've been on Android for awhile now. I have to say that the experience has not been entirely positive. The phone is buggy as all hell and drives me nuts more often than not, not to mention that despite its more than adequate hardware, will probably never receive an update higher than 2.3. I consider that practice completely un-fucking-acceptable. Right now the rumored 4" iPhone 5 is in the lead for my smartphone dollar but I'm also keeping an eye out for Windows Phone 8. I've played with Win7 phones and while their feature set sucks pretty hard right now, it's hard to ignore that beautiful and intuitive UI.

Investors don't buy the company as it is today, they buy the company they see tomorrow. From 2008 to 2011, Microsoft's net income has grown 31%. In the same time period, Apple's net income has grown 448%. That trend continues, as Microsoft just reported quarterly growth less than 10% YoY, and Apple is about to report at least 60% growth YoY.

That's what investors are buying.

It doesn't help Microsoft that nearly all the markets it's strong in are either slow-growing or in decline. They have a number of gambits to break into growth markets, as usual, but the only division that I expect to reliably perform well is the server group. The conventional PC market has peaked, and unless Windows 8 busts MS into the mobile PC market in a big way, the decline of desktops and laptops will drag Windows and Office down with them.

Thats pretty much it. Iphone was given to me by my company but ipad and mac air were the best products in their class when i bought them.

When i got that macbook air, almost 2 years ago, there was nothing like that on the pc side. hardware is beautiful. After making it dual boot to win 7 for when needed, i was very happy with my purchase. Come en of this year i will be most likely buying a win8 touchscreen ultrabook to replace mac air tho.

Same with the ipad. i had an acer android tablet for a few months and was not happy with it at all. And it wasnt hardware i didnt like... so ipad upgrade was a godsend. Its an amazing content consumption device.

No wonder apple is bigger than Greece when its haters are buying their producrs. ☺

That's why I said one of the fastest ;)

For long term investing i fully agree.

However I believe i could make a quick buck easier by flipping some microsoft shares right now, compared to apples. Tis all im sayin...

I sold all my apple stock the other day. Did quite well on it. A company that size can't continue achieving such large growth rates.

That's what people keep saying, but Apple keeps on growing earnings an average of 67% every year since 2007. To understand how this is possible, just look at the marketshare numbers:

Mac: ~5% of the PC market

iPhone: ~4% of the cell phone market

iPad: 70+% of a rapidly growing, nascent market

iPod: 70+% of a rapidly collapsing market

Only one key Apple product is constrained for growth, and it's acting as a gateway for Apple's most lucrative product. Even if you assume that Apple can only seize 20% of a market like cell phones without somehow devaluing their brand by shipping cheap products, that still leaves space to grow iPhone revenues by a factor of five. An Apple that takes 20% of the cell phone market without sacrificing margins would be worth $1.2 trillion for its iPhone division alone.

If the iPod completely collapses while that's happening, you can knock $24 billion off Apple's value.

I won't consider moving away from Mac laptops until someone creates a trackpad that is on par with Apple's offering. It's so superior to other trackpads that it's unbelievable that others haven't copied the system. And the trackpad is just one great feature of the laptop. Fantastic keyboard, great operating system, beautiful form factor, the list goes on... Are they expensive? Shit yeah they are. But if you've got the money, there's nothing better on the market right now (at least for me). And now that it appears they're going to add high resolution screens and move toward the Air form factor, the computer is going to be even better. There simply isn't much on the market that compares to the Macbook line.

I contemplated buying an Android tablet. I gave the Xoom and Tab a whirl because they were priced similarly and had superior specs. It turned out that those specs didn't mean a damned thing. The iPad was faster, easier to hold (go ahead and make fun of the 4:3 screen but it's better for actual use than a 16:9), and the Google Market for tablets is a joke. I really wanted to like the Honeycomb tablets but after using one, I think a person is insane for spending $500 on one when they could get an iPad for the same price. Hopefully that will change in the future but right now, I am thoroughly unimpressed with Android tablet offerings.

I love having choices and I have no allegiance to any company but after using Apple products, there are some areas where they just do it better. That's why they're successful. It's not some crazy fanboy allegiance as others would try to claim.