Can a Fruit Break Glass?

Historically, Apple and Microsoft have not been friends, but Microsoft fancied itself the wiser, older brother. For a long time, Apple produced geekier machines only seen in under-funded primary school computer labs. The first iMac was pretty ridiculous. They used slow, proprietary processors for which few developers really cared to program. The all-in-one design was novel at the time and, with the benefit of hindsight, forward-thinking. And the colors...I shudder at the memory. The next iteration was closer, but still ugly. In the past few years, Apple has switched to a more familiar Intel CPU, which increases compatibility and speed, and they really found a knack for design elegance. Last I heard, Apple has earned somewhere between 10% and 12% market share.

Microsoft has always focused more on the consumer side: “How can we make affordable, easy-to-use computers that everyone wants?” That makes perfect sense and Microsoft commanded the home computer market so completely and for so long that the very term “personal computer” has come to mean “Windows” and “Microsoft”—and a pejorative in a particularly clever ad campaign. The waning era of PC gaming was a driving force behind PCs and gaming technology pushed hardware further and faster than ever before. Easily upgrading or replacing components to keep up was commonplace and was only really feasible on PCs.

Times change and tastes shift. Apple seems to have always been driving toward this point. Perhaps it’s clairvoyance on Steve Jobs’ part or incredible luck that Apple’s vision and reality have intersected. Maybe both? People want single machines to do multiple jobs. It’s no longer acceptable to carry a music player and a book and a calendar and an address book and a cellular phone and a portable gaming platform and a laptop computer. Consumers want lighter bags and thinner pockets by condensing many products into few.

Macs are still something of a niche market, 10% to 12% can be called nothing else, but they’re powerhouses. With PC manufacturers pumping out inconsistent products with misleading specs and often-shoddy engineering, Macs have an increasing appeal. Apple controls everything that goes into their machines. I like to think that Steve Jobs personally engineers each design, but I doubt that’s quite the division of labor.

Apple has the best all-in-one desktop. Apple has some of the most powerful laptops that can still boast impressive battery life. Apple has the smartphone that virtually created the smartphone market and continues to be, in many respects, the standard against which others are compared.

Microsoft has Windows7 and Xbox 360. They make decent business selling mediocre peripherals. Windows7 is, perhaps unfairly, considered as an apology for Vista. And two years too late. The Xbox 360, other than having a silly name, is a good machine and is the current leader in console gaming by almost any metric. The peripherals are meh. They’re moderately-priced and operate as expected. Nothing more and nothing less. Oh, they also have a mobile platform and mp3 player, but they’re often known as “clunky” and “not an iPod” respectively.

All of this is intended to build up to a remarkable bit of news: Apple is worth more than Microsoft. Despite Windows’ undeniable popularity and nigh-ubiquity, Apple has taken its ugly, underperforming computers and transformed them into commercial gems. Microsoft is bleeding customers as frustration mounts from the mobile arena and the poor souls still stuck with Vista (like yours truly). There’s still lots of time for WAGs, but it’s looking like cleaner engineering and a clearer goal is really a good thing.

If I were Microsoft, I’d be pissed and embarrassed that Apple, a company with a mere 10%(ish) of the consumers’ homes, commands greater consumer confidence than my (greater) share. Microsoft has committed itself to a very different business model than Apple and they need to find some way to make it work. Windows is okay. PCs are okay. Xbox is okay. There’s a distinct undertone of “good enough” I feel from Microsoft products while Apple won’t release anything until it’s better than any of its competitors. And even then Apple keeps innovating.

Perhaps the mantra by which Steve Jobs lives is “Leadership is fleeting; continue earning it.” Mr. Ballmer may learn that the hard way.