7 ms·

The main things I see lately are: Apple is creating VR headsets and new chip technology, Microsoft is buying up AI companies and injecting ads/spyware into thei

The main things I see lately are: Apple is creating VR headsets and new chip technology, Microsoft is buying up AI companies and injecting ads/spyware into their operating systems. Also Microsoft is getting big into cloud. Interesting to see what Wall Street rewards.

sho_hn 3y ago
Ok, so one of those technologies potentially saves people time and levels the playing field by enabling the use of computers with less special training to achieve equivalent results. The other one aims to strap screens to other people's faces to keep them even longer in a perpetually-online computer bubble of their own choosing, because that's been going great for society so far.
- croes 3y ago
  >potentially saves people time And potentially kills people's jobs, potentially helps spammers and phisher to start larger and better campaigns, potentially increases the amount of fake news, disinformation or just bullshit.
- al_borland 3y ago
  Those are some upsides of AI, there are also many potential downsides that could be very harmful to society, more so than some AR goggles. Time will tell how it all plays out. Apple is also invested in AI, they just refuse to use the AI buzzword, and use ML instead, which is probably the more accurate term.
- tivert 3y ago
  > Ok, so one of those technologies potentially saves people time and levels the playing field by enabling the use of computers with less special training to achieve equivalent results. Did you forget allowing the sum total of human knowledge to be swamped by dogshit, because it allows for the creation of dogshit at scale more cheaply than ever before?
  - paradox242 3y ago
    Once content generation has been completely commoditized the platforms relying on user submitted content will collapse under the sheer weight of AI generate trash. Part spam, part DDoS, the bad will drive out the good until we settle at some even lower equilibrium than we are at now. There will be a strong incentive to find solutions with technology and regulation to determine who the actual humans are on the internet.
  - dartharva 3y ago
    > Did you forget allowing the sum total of human knowledge to be swamped by dogshit, because it allows for the creation of dogshit at scale more cheaply than ever before? What does that even mean? When has human knowledge ever gotten "swamped" by the capability of creating newer content?
bmitc 3y ago
Microsoft is much more diversified than that. They have entire consulting services and a world class research arm and many other things that Apple has no analog of.
- bch 3y ago
  > world class research arm Honest question: does Wall Street care? In my experience, this is the kind of thing that’s (rightly or wrongly) considered a “cost center”, not a “profit center”.
  - bonestamp2 3y ago
    I think you're right, investors don't really value the research arm until something profitable comes out of it and then they only value that thing that came out of it and not research arm itself. In some sense, that is the right move. For example, Intel was a market leader for decades while their research arm was very stagnant for many years too. Other times, it is short sighted not to price in what might be to come because you miss buying shares on the cheap before a huge technology/product leap.
  - ephemeral-life 3y ago
    > does Wall Street care? Some people on wallstreet do. In Mckinsey's book Valuation, they make it pretty clear to the reader that companies who spend a lot on r&d tend to have outsized returns compared to their counterparts, who don't spend that much.
    - bionsystem 3y ago
      I'd say the whole market gives a premium to companies with R&D spend, that's part of the reason why they have higher valuation metrics (alongside growth, margins and other quant factors). That is, when they are not stupidly burning it or giving it away as stock compensation.
- dataangel 3y ago
  Ignorant question: Does much actually make it out of MS Research? I've seen lots of interesting retrospectives on stuff that either failed or just has never come out of the lab (Singularity/Midori, accessibility demos showing phones reading restaurant menus to the blind, their tablet pre-ipad, etc.) but I don't think I know of anything they made that really grew up off the top of my head. I didn't want to say this without doing a little bit of homework so I checked their Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research) which doesn't list any accomplishments, just claims they have a lot of patents, and their main site has a publication index (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publications/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publications/?) but publication is not a good metric for ever seeing use.
paxys 3y ago
Microsoft is one of the most diversified companies in existence. Pretty much every business, every government and most consumers around the world are directly or indirectly paying them money for something, whether software, devices, consulting, cloud, data. On the other hand Apple's success for the last 15 years has relied on a single device. Now that the device is running into some issues (dropping sales in China, general stall in innovation, regulatory hurdles) their stock price is reacting accordingly. Of course investors aren't rewarding them for an upcoming VR headset which is yet to be proven. Why would they?
- GoToRO 3y ago
  also people don't realize how local Apple is. In a lot of countries you can't even access their services which decreases the value of their devices.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    But oddly enough one of those countries isn't China. Its weird how Google and Facebook can't do much their while everything from Apple works as well as anywhere else.
    - shortcrct 3y ago
      Because Apple is willing to play China's game. Google and Facebook's business models (ads) fundamentally don't work with China's government. They sell different products than Apple.
      - joecool1029 3y ago
        > Because Apple is willing to play China's game. They are forced to by their hardware business model. Almost every entry point to the Apple ecosystem is through hardware and nobody can meet QC and scale of Chinese factories. Too much of a risk to block China and risk supply chain disruptions.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
kgwgk 3y ago
> Interesting to see what Wall Street rewards. It seems to be rewarding Apple? They also had a similar market cap two years ago. Microsoft has seen growth in revenue and net income, Apple has not. Going back to pre-covid times the picture is similar: better financial results for Microsoft but still head-to-head with Apple in market cap.
thefz 3y ago
Microsoft has been innovating way more than Apple, which is always going for the low hanging fruit of taking tested and consolidated tech from others and rebranding it as its own.
- another2another 3y ago
  >Microsoft has been innovating way more than Apple, What has Microsoft been innovating recently? >taking tested and consolidated tech from others and rebranding it as its own. Didn't Microsoft just recently build out a whole public cloud infrastructure by copying AWS and "rebranding it as its own"? That's not innovating, that's direct competition, red in tooth and claw - something MS relishes.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
If you think that a company's market capitalization isn't high enough, you can always buy its stock. Conversely, if you think it's too high, you can always short it. Not financial advice.
jncfhnb 3y ago
Interesting to see you so confident that you’re well informed that you think you’re well positioned to make a moral judgement on such things.
- DoughnutHole 3y ago
  What have you added with this comment? He’s offered a short opinion on the behaviours of two companies and made something of an ethical judgement. Why disparage someone for daring to have an opinion?
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    It is irritating when people who have no idea what they’re talking about make judgmental comments like “interesting what wall st rewards”. This guy has no clue what wall st rewards. He clearly does not understand the current situation. He clearly does not follow it in depth. If you’re going to excuse this guy making an obnoxious unfounded moral high ground claim, grant me the same courtesy for telling others not to preach about things they don’t know. If you ever find yourself writing something like “I don’t know much about X.” Then don’t conclude your statement with an assertion about X. Go learn about X or ask questions or shut up. Your opinion contributed negative value when it’s knowingly predicated on incomplete information.
    - dr_kiszonka 3y ago
      > This guy has no clue what wall st rewards. He clearly does not understand the current situation. He clearly does not follow it in depth. Would you mind sharing what the other comment is missing?
      - jncfhnb 3y ago
        Sure! If you’re going to start with the financial value of any company, begin with their net income, growth trajectory, dividend yield, etc. Observe that none of this includes media headlines. After that, you can start to try and figure how where most of the money comes from. For Apple this is the iPhone hardware sales and the App Store tax. For Microsoft it’s split roughly evenly across cloud, business processes and PCs. Cloud is the biggest. These are the basic fundamental facts that begin to describe why Microsoft may or may not be valued. I don’t care or have an opinion on it. But I’m irritated by some guy saying he heard four media headlines ergo shame on wall st. for trading based on those four headlines. Like shut the fuck up man. That’s such a stupid claim. And look how many people have been suckered into responding to this garbage.
gumby 3y ago
Investors are throwing money at anyone who can spell “AI”, just like 25 years ago they thrust cash at people who could spell TCP, or who were one. Love them or hate them, Apple isn’t playing that game (and despite their having hired Giannandrea, who was the reason Google has an AI strategy in the first place).
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  Apple has their own AI strategy and it includes things like Ferret and scientific papers like running inference on "low-memory" devices. I wouldn't count them out over the long run.
  - gumby 3y ago
    I am not counting them out. In fact I’m hoping for, if nothing else, a working Siri better than the alternatives. But I think wall street is ignoring them at the moment.
nailer 3y ago
> The main things I see lately are...Microsoft is buying up AI companies and injecting ads/spyware into their operating systems. Also Microsoft is getting big into cloud. Thing the markets would care about, thing you are personally bothered by, thing the markets would care about. Got it. No, the advertising and telemetry in Windows isn't a reason for the markets to value Microsoft highly.
seuraughty 3y ago
You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.

sho_hn 3y ago

Ok, so one of those technologies potentially saves people time and levels the playing field by enabling the use of computers with less special training to achieve equivalent results. The other one aims to strap screens to other people's faces to keep them even longer in a perpetually-online computer bubble of their own choosing, because that's been going great for society so far.

croes 3y ago
>potentially saves people time And potentially kills people's jobs, potentially helps spammers and phisher to start larger and better campaigns, potentially increases the amount of fake news, disinformation or just bullshit.
al_borland 3y ago
Those are some upsides of AI, there are also many potential downsides that could be very harmful to society, more so than some AR goggles. Time will tell how it all plays out. Apple is also invested in AI, they just refuse to use the AI buzzword, and use ML instead, which is probably the more accurate term.
tivert 3y ago
> Ok, so one of those technologies potentially saves people time and levels the playing field by enabling the use of computers with less special training to achieve equivalent results. Did you forget allowing the sum total of human knowledge to be swamped by dogshit, because it allows for the creation of dogshit at scale more cheaply than ever before?
- paradox242 3y ago
  Once content generation has been completely commoditized the platforms relying on user submitted content will collapse under the sheer weight of AI generate trash. Part spam, part DDoS, the bad will drive out the good until we settle at some even lower equilibrium than we are at now. There will be a strong incentive to find solutions with technology and regulation to determine who the actual humans are on the internet.
- dartharva 3y ago
  > Did you forget allowing the sum total of human knowledge to be swamped by dogshit, because it allows for the creation of dogshit at scale more cheaply than ever before? What does that even mean? When has human knowledge ever gotten "swamped" by the capability of creating newer content?

bmitc 3y ago

Microsoft is much more diversified than that. They have entire consulting services and a world class research arm and many other things that Apple has no analog of.

bch 3y ago
> world class research arm Honest question: does Wall Street care? In my experience, this is the kind of thing that’s (rightly or wrongly) considered a “cost center”, not a “profit center”.
- bonestamp2 3y ago
  I think you're right, investors don't really value the research arm until something profitable comes out of it and then they only value that thing that came out of it and not research arm itself. In some sense, that is the right move. For example, Intel was a market leader for decades while their research arm was very stagnant for many years too. Other times, it is short sighted not to price in what might be to come because you miss buying shares on the cheap before a huge technology/product leap.
- ephemeral-life 3y ago
  > does Wall Street care? Some people on wallstreet do. In Mckinsey's book Valuation, they make it pretty clear to the reader that companies who spend a lot on r&d tend to have outsized returns compared to their counterparts, who don't spend that much.
  - bionsystem 3y ago
    I'd say the whole market gives a premium to companies with R&D spend, that's part of the reason why they have higher valuation metrics (alongside growth, margins and other quant factors). That is, when they are not stupidly burning it or giving it away as stock compensation.
dataangel 3y ago
Ignorant question: Does much actually make it out of MS Research? I've seen lots of interesting retrospectives on stuff that either failed or just has never come out of the lab (Singularity/Midori, accessibility demos showing phones reading restaurant menus to the blind, their tablet pre-ipad, etc.) but I don't think I know of anything they made that really grew up off the top of my head. I didn't want to say this without doing a little bit of homework so I checked their Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research) which doesn't list any accomplishments, just claims they have a lot of patents, and their main site has a publication index (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publications/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publications/?) but publication is not a good metric for ever seeing use.

paxys 3y ago

Microsoft is one of the most diversified companies in existence. Pretty much every business, every government and most consumers around the world are directly or indirectly paying them money for something, whether software, devices, consulting, cloud, data. On the other hand Apple's success for the last 15 years has relied on a single device. Now that the device is running into some issues (dropping sales in China, general stall in innovation, regulatory hurdles) their stock price is reacting accordingly. Of course investors aren't rewarding them for an upcoming VR headset which is yet to be proven. Why would they?

GoToRO 3y ago
also people don't realize how local Apple is. In a lot of countries you can't even access their services which decreases the value of their devices.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  But oddly enough one of those countries isn't China. Its weird how Google and Facebook can't do much their while everything from Apple works as well as anywhere else.
  - shortcrct 3y ago
    Because Apple is willing to play China's game. Google and Facebook's business models (ads) fundamentally don't work with China's government. They sell different products than Apple.
    - joecool1029 3y ago
      > Because Apple is willing to play China's game. They are forced to by their hardware business model. Almost every entry point to the Apple ecosystem is through hardware and nobody can meet QC and scale of Chinese factories. Too much of a risk to block China and risk supply chain disruptions.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

kgwgk 3y ago

> Interesting to see what Wall Street rewards. It seems to be rewarding Apple? They also had a similar market cap two years ago. Microsoft has seen growth in revenue and net income, Apple has not. Going back to pre-covid times the picture is similar: better financial results for Microsoft but still head-to-head with Apple in market cap.

thefz 3y ago

Microsoft has been innovating way more than Apple, which is always going for the low hanging fruit of taking tested and consolidated tech from others and rebranding it as its own.

another2another 3y ago
>Microsoft has been innovating way more than Apple, What has Microsoft been innovating recently? >taking tested and consolidated tech from others and rebranding it as its own. Didn't Microsoft just recently build out a whole public cloud infrastructure by copying AWS and "rebranding it as its own"? That's not innovating, that's direct competition, red in tooth and claw - something MS relishes.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

If you think that a company's market capitalization isn't high enough, you can always buy its stock. Conversely, if you think it's too high, you can always short it. Not financial advice.

jncfhnb 3y ago

Interesting to see you so confident that you’re well informed that you think you’re well positioned to make a moral judgement on such things.

DoughnutHole 3y ago
What have you added with this comment? He’s offered a short opinion on the behaviours of two companies and made something of an ethical judgement. Why disparage someone for daring to have an opinion?
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  It is irritating when people who have no idea what they’re talking about make judgmental comments like “interesting what wall st rewards”. This guy has no clue what wall st rewards. He clearly does not understand the current situation. He clearly does not follow it in depth. If you’re going to excuse this guy making an obnoxious unfounded moral high ground claim, grant me the same courtesy for telling others not to preach about things they don’t know. If you ever find yourself writing something like “I don’t know much about X.” Then don’t conclude your statement with an assertion about X. Go learn about X or ask questions or shut up. Your opinion contributed negative value when it’s knowingly predicated on incomplete information.
  - dr_kiszonka 3y ago
    > This guy has no clue what wall st rewards. He clearly does not understand the current situation. He clearly does not follow it in depth. Would you mind sharing what the other comment is missing?
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      Sure! If you’re going to start with the financial value of any company, begin with their net income, growth trajectory, dividend yield, etc. Observe that none of this includes media headlines. After that, you can start to try and figure how where most of the money comes from. For Apple this is the iPhone hardware sales and the App Store tax. For Microsoft it’s split roughly evenly across cloud, business processes and PCs. Cloud is the biggest. These are the basic fundamental facts that begin to describe why Microsoft may or may not be valued. I don’t care or have an opinion on it. But I’m irritated by some guy saying he heard four media headlines ergo shame on wall st. for trading based on those four headlines. Like shut the fuck up man. That’s such a stupid claim. And look how many people have been suckered into responding to this garbage.

gumby 3y ago

Investors are throwing money at anyone who can spell “AI”, just like 25 years ago they thrust cash at people who could spell TCP, or who were one. Love them or hate them, Apple isn’t playing that game (and despite their having hired Giannandrea, who was the reason Google has an AI strategy in the first place).

slowmovintarget 3y ago
Apple has their own AI strategy and it includes things like Ferret and scientific papers like running inference on "low-memory" devices. I wouldn't count them out over the long run.
- gumby 3y ago
  I am not counting them out. In fact I’m hoping for, if nothing else, a working Siri better than the alternatives. But I think wall street is ignoring them at the moment.

nailer 3y ago

> The main things I see lately are...Microsoft is buying up AI companies and injecting ads/spyware into their operating systems. Also Microsoft is getting big into cloud. Thing the markets would care about, thing you are personally bothered by, thing the markets would care about. Got it. No, the advertising and telemetry in Windows isn't a reason for the markets to value Microsoft highly.

seuraughty 3y ago

You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.