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The 10-year charts for MSFT and AAPL are pretty astonishing when plotted linearly, not logarithmically : http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&ch

• Keyframe 16y ago
  even more so when plotted from 1987: http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Linear&chdeh=1&chfdeh=0&chdet=1275681600000&chddm=2447660&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=NASDAQ:AAPL&cmptdms=0&q=NASDAQ:MSFT&ntsp=0 http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&...
  • raganwald 16y ago
    Yes, but we're comparing executives, not companies. Jobs returned to Apple in 1996. Ballmer became CEO of Microsoft in 2000. It's relevant to compare the stock performance under their tenure.
    • Keyframe 16y ago
      Yeah, I was just responding to a post. What you say must be put in context though. Sure, without Jobs there would be no modern Apple - it's a fact, let alone current growth. However, considering microsoft during and after late 90's you must take into account there was this thing called dot-com bubble. Take a look at Cisco for example, during the same period (late 90's) http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Linear&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1275675960000&chddm=1977104&chddi=86400&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NASDAQ:CSCO&ntsp=0 http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&... I think they were the first company in history worth a trillion dollars if I remember correctly. edit: or it was a talk about it being the first big T company, can't remember correctly, it was a crazy time with madness like DOW 36,000 and fantasies like that.
  • jacobolus 16y ago
    Anyone who was choosing between the two companies before September 1990 would come out ahead (now, 20 years later) by choosing Microsoft stock. Anyone choosing in 1991 or after would come out ahead by choosing Apple stock. Or more simply: anyone who caught Microsoft stock in the mid-80s and rode it through the end of the 90s won big, and likewise for anyone who caught Apple stock circa 2001–2003 and is holding it now. To be honest though, I don’t think the linear comparison over that whole time period is an especially informative chart though. The logarithmic one is better (replace "linear" with "logarithmic" in that link), with a much more meaningful slope. Basically what we see is Microsoft stock went absolutely crazy between 1986 and 2000, doubling 9 times over that period (an utterly ridiculous sustained average doubling time of about a year and a half). Since 2000, Microsoft stock has dropped by half, mostly a drop during the year 2000 and stagnation since. By contrast, Apple stock roughly stagnated between 1988 and 1993, and then, worse, dropped to between a quarter and a third of that value by its rock bottom point in 1997. After Jobs returned, between 1997 and 2001 Apple caught a big upswing and then a big downswing, the up presumably aligned with the colorful iMacs/iBooks and so forth, and the drop presumably due to some combination of broader economic forces and slowdown/uncertainty to do with the OS X transition, etc. Apple stock has been going nuts since the beginning of 2003, doubling 5 times (!) in the last 7 years.
• jrockway 16y ago
  It's also relevant to compare the dividends you would have received from Microsoft and Apple over that time. Apple = 0.