7 ms·

> Their [n.b Apple's] victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator

> Their [n.b Apple's] victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops So nearly all of the (relatively) very few people that are funded by YC have Apple and that's proof of Apple's complete victory over a dead MS. In a year when MS was still on an upward trend, growing by 20% market cap to become double that of Apple. Reading rich people's blogs reminds me every time that there's a reason wealth is also called "fortune". Because it's more about luck than anything else. And by luck I mean a family golden nugget, or lucky first investment, or both. A superpower that allows one to fail many times and still be able to try again until they hit the next fortune. Most people in the world can't even afford to try. Most of the rest can't afford to fail.

hliyan 2y ago
Whenever I read these types of writing, it reminds me that just because a narrative is elegant, doesn't mean its true, especially when you're operating at very high levels of abstraction. Same problem I have with many pop psychology writings.
dijit 2y ago
Think of it in the inverse. If you're a person who is at one end of a funnel (in this case; new tech companies) and you see a 100% adoption which is contrary to the mainstream: you would think you have good insight. You might forget that you're looking at: A) A cargo culture B) a homogeneous cohort. This is the same way that people knew ahead of time that Microsoft Office would kill off Lotus notes. Since all school's were transitioning (or had transitioned) to Microsofts products. It's also why people knew AWS would be so popular ahead of time, because new tech companies were not renting compute anymore, they were passing their credit cards to Amazon - even causing some companies to bet their products on making tooling to make AWS easier. If you're at one end of the funnel, you can see the future. Was this the future? or was it a false positive based on a cohort? - I definitely think the market dominance of Windows on the Desktop has been thoroughly challenged since 2008, and it's rare I see people elect to use Windows for <10yo companies unless the founders are only used to Microsoft products. and I work in AAA games, which is insanely Microsoft dominated.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  So you're saying that new AAA game companies use macs or linux? I can't resolve the cognitive dissonance of that making a ton of sense or none.
  - dijit 2y ago
    There are more non-windows PC's in AAA game companies than there were in 2008 by a wide margin. Though usually not directly for gamedev. In 2008, the IT department couldn't even handle Macs at all, now it's a standard deployment among managers, designers, brand and even some programmers who only work with backend code. (though usually they'll have a gaming PC too for testing the game). That was literally unthinkable back then.
    - CrimsonCape 2y ago
      Sure there are more non-windows PC's but it's still miniscule[1]. To claim Microsoft is anything other than dominant is fallacious. And I understand the desire to talk positively about the good things (linux adoption) and ignore the bad things (Microsoft dominance). [1] "https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/04/linux-share-on-steam-bounces-back-to-nearly-2pc-for-march-2024/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/04/linux-share-on-steam-b...
      - dijit 2y ago
        The amount of steam users is not at all what I’m talking about, I’m saying as a game developer (a windows *dominated* field) there are more people running around with Macs for general purpose computing than 2008. That’s not wishful thinking, thats reality. Computers do more than play games.
ninetyninenine 2y ago
That quote is so out of touch. It was never that complete. Gamers used pcs. Paul grahams surprise missed an entire segment of the market. Additionally Mac usage statistically never exceeded windows. Paul lived a bit in a rich persons world and he’s around a lot web developers who like osx because it’s unixy without the issues of old Linux.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- wink 2y ago
  And don't forget location. In 2007 not even the majority of developers in Europe had adopted the 'default developer mac', that only came a couple years later than in the US (afaik) and it never even reached that adoption rate (that is now in general, not only developers). If I look at my non-tech friends in Germany there is still just a tiny percentage using macs, and even iPhones are way outnumbered by Android.
  - theragra 2y ago
    I think I even saw Mac for the first time around 2004. Eastern europe.
pwillia7 2y ago
> there's a reason wealth is also called "fortune". Because it's more about luck than anything else. Very quotable
behnamoh 2y ago
> Reading rich people's blogs reminds me every time that there's a reason wealth is also called "fortune". Because it's more about luck than anything else. At some point they lose touch with reality. I've found their "advice" often doesn't work for young people who wanna become successful like them. Another example is Jensen: "Nvidia doesn't have a long-term strategy, we just think about what to do next. I don't wear a watch, because NOW is important" and a lot of crap like that.
- matwood 2y ago
  > At some point they lose touch with reality. See every rich person telling young people to follow their passion.
  - behnamoh 2y ago
    Yes, it's so frustrating to hear them talk. Everyone knows a great deal of their success was luck (as discussed in the book Outlier), but they still find it amusing to lecture the "lesser folks" about ways to get rich.
- dist-epoch 2y ago
  > I don't wear a watch, because NOW is important That doesn't imply that Jensen thinks he's successful because he doesn't wear a watch. He's not that delusional.
  - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    >He's not that delusional. I have no idea whether he is or not. However I suspect it is very hard to remain grounded when you have so much wealth. Every interaction with the outside world is going to be clouded by it. People will be subservient in a way that us peons don't experience when we dine in McDonalds or shop in Walmart.
  - behnamoh 2y ago
    oh he knows... you're telling me the CEO and co-founder of the most valuable company in history doesn't think he's successful?
RIMR 2y ago
It is an common theme with PG to write confidently about technology while also demonstrating that he has absolutely no understanding of what he's talking about. I've been commenting about this here for YEARS with constant pushback and excuses for him from the community. "He's a billionaire so he must be smart", "He personally wrote the entire HN codebase", "Nobody really needs a valid SSL cert on their website in 2023". Dang has even cited me for "personal attacks" for daring to point out PG's most visible shortcomings and knowledge gaps. I guess the inflection point was PG turning to X to screech about "wokism" in support of oligarchs like Trump and Musk to snap this community out of it's pro-PG trance. Watching a billionaire cheer on the billionaire class as we plummet into technofeudalism is a hell of a wake up call. Glad to see criticism of PG finally going mainstream here, especially digging back 18 years and concluding that he's always been like this. It's a shame he financially runs this place and these comments are short-lived due to platform manipulation.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > Glad to see criticism of PG finally going mainstream here I appreciate there are people out there who have chosen PG to emotionally glom onto, positively or negatively, and perhaps you're probably an extreme case of the latter, so I would have to challenge a little. "Criticising someone loads" isn't a good thing. Just neutrally challenging their ideas individually is all that's needed.
- foul 2y ago
  >I guess the inflection point was PG turning to X to screech about "wokism" in support of oligarchs like Trump and Musk to snap this community out of it's pro-PG trance. Watching a billionaire cheer on the billionaire class as we plummet into technofeudalism is a hell of a wake up call. In hindsight his (and Andreessen's techno-bullshit) have won a bet with Trump, those tweaker writings are very much aligning with the zeitgeist that's being imposed by Trump, Musk and their lackeys, they may even brag about having get there earlier than every other rich techbro.
- breck 2y ago
  [dead]
- deleted 2y ago
JohnHaugeland 2y ago
I’ve been hearing people say this since this incorrect essay was written almost 20 years ago Microsoft had 74% of the desktop then and has 72% today Microsoft had 0% of hosting then and has the world’s second largest share, 23%, today Microsoft had, in 2007, 18% presence share in console gaming. Today they have 65% They were one of the four tech orgs present at the presidential inauguration They have grown enormously in the time this essay claims they were dying
- PetitPrince 2y ago
  > Microsoft had, in 2007, 18% presence share in console gaming. Today they have 65% Source for this ? Also what do you mean by "presence" ? I had the impression that Sony was in a way better position than Microsoft, and they were both dwarfed by Nintendo by a substantial margin. (not that this invalidate your overall point).
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    PlayStation 3 went down quite badly among game developers given how hard Cell was to program for, and users with the whole OtherOS fallout, this brought XBox 360 into the winning round. Microsoft lost the plot afterwards with XBox ONE against the Playstation 4, and even with the Series S|X, they never recovered on the hardware side. However this is kind of relative now, even if they don't public admit yet, the hardware is gone, they are going SEGA, and by being one of the largest game publishers, it hardly matters if the XBox console isn't going that well. In one year they already recovered all the money lost in the ABK deal and litigations.
- Clubber 2y ago
  >Microsoft had 74% of the desktop then and has 72% today That's only counting the latest version, if you include all Windows versions, it was in the high 90%. Today it's in the mid 90%. https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...
- hajile 2y ago
  Xbox One sold 57.9M and Series family has sold 28.3M by mid 2024. PS4 sold 117M and PS5 sold 61.7M by mid 2024. Nintendo claims 150.9M Switch consoles sold as of the end of 2024. That puts Microsoft at around 20.7%, Sony at 43%, and Nintendo at about 36.3%. Even if you exclude Nintendo with a "no-true-gamer" fallacy, Microsoft still has just 32.5% of the market. Windows was over 90% in 2007 and is just 72% today. If you include the super-important mobile market, Windows actual marketshare is something like 10-15% and even less if you include servers (where even most Azure servers run Linux).
robertlagrant 2y ago
> Reading rich people's blogs reminds me every time that there's a reason wealth is also called "fortune". Because it's more about luck than anything else. And by luck I mean a family golden nugget, or lucky first investment, or both. A superpower that allows one to fail many times and still be able to try again until they hit the next fortune. Most people in the world can't even afford to try. Most of the rest can't afford to fail. Is this true? Did Paul Graham have outside money to fall back on that was given to him to sustain him through all his failures?
- graemep 2y ago
  I do not know about Paul Graham in particular, but it is true of many rich people.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    I know it's an oft-recited thing in the last decade or so, but I don't really understand it. It's true that in markets with lots of value to provide someone will win, and probably make lots of money, but to do so they would have to out-compete all the other people. That is extremely difficult, and calling it luck just seems a bit silly. People who got rich through building businesses aren't like lottery winners or heirs of fortunes. Why pretend they are, and what's behind that mindset?
    - graemep 2y ago
      Because it is demonstrably true for many people that luck or family influence or money played a factor. They may have had to compete with other people in the same advantages in the same business - which may not be very many. There is an overlap between people who build businesses and heirs of fortunes. Far more people increase an existing fortune than become rich from scratch.
- DonnyV 2y ago
  Yup, nepo kid "...father worked for Westinghouse, modelling nuclear reactors, then was named the Director of Nuclear Safety for Atomic Energy of Canada" https://hsm.stackexchange.com/a/16002 https://hsm.stackexchange.com/a/16002
carlosjobim 2y ago
It's not about being rich or not. People who can choose what kind of computer they have will choose Apple over PC. People who cannot choose will use work computers in their office with Windows installed, that corporate chose for them. People who do not want a computer at all will have neither PC or Mac. The majority of people do not want to have a computer – they see enough of them at work, and they are happy with their smart phones.
- globalnode 2y ago
  I think Apple is a very American thing. Outside the US, which you may not care about, only the most aspirationally Americanised people I've known have gone for apple products. Im not sure what the reasons are.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    Europeans generally don't purchase the things they want, they purchase the things they are supposed to be wanting, after having long deliberations together with relatives and friends. So then they'll only look at specs and price and not how useful a product is or how pleasant it is to use. Europeans are in general very weird about money. They are as greedy as anybody, but what do they do then with that money? They think turning on the air conditioner will ruin them financially and they count how many cents each person owes each other.
    - rewgs 2y ago
      > They think turning on the air conditioner will ruin them financially Literally laughed out loud at this, it’s so accurate.
    - theragra 2y ago
      This is pretty dumb generalization. In baltics, where I live, nobody counts cents or limits appliance use, despite low overall income.
  - vishnugupta 2y ago
    In 2007, when the article was written, I distinctly remember being at Amazon and Windows laptops were the default option. So was the entire office suite, their share point thing, not to speak about Outlook. In fact one had to beg to IT guys to allow us to use Linux laptops. MacBooks were still a few years away if I remember correctly. It's amazing that PG looked around in his bubble, saw MacBooks and decided to write that Microsoft is dead.
josefrichter 2y ago
This also reminds me of "garage startups". In fact, probably only a fraction of people around the world own a garage. If your family has a garage, it means you are probably among the top ~1% richest people on Earth.
- why_only_15 2y ago
  Probably more like richest 10%, which applies to most people in the US
- AlchemistCamp 2y ago
  That’s silly. When I was growing up, we always had a garage and my family was ~25% under the median income. Hundreds of millions of Americans have a garage at home and it’s not the richest 2/3 of the country. It’s basically the people outside the largest cities. There are probably about an equal number of people living in a home with a garage in China too, though it’s wealthier suburban areas as opposed to lower and middle class people. They’re common in Japan, too, outside of the densest few cities. And of course there are plenty of other countries where garages are common, like Canada and Australia.
dist-epoch 2y ago
Almost everybody I know drives a Lamborghini. Toyota is so dead...
fogpudding 2y ago
The first time this essay made the rounds, a bunch of people misunderstood his point the same way you're doing: https://www.paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html https://www.paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html He was talking about cultural dominance among people developing new tech, not revenue. There was a time when being a programmer essentially meant writing C++ on Windows. I still remember getting a Mac as late as ~2013 and having my normie (non-engineer) friends chastise me for it -- "how are you going to get any serious coding done?" -- because that was their genuine impression of Windows vs Macs. Meanwhile, imagine you're the founder of YC in 2007 in a city where all the new tech startups are happening. Everyone's using Macs. Surely it's at least a valid argument or hypothesis that this is a leading indicator of where the forefront of tech is going. And now if you go to any modern fast-growing tech company, you look around, everyone uses Macs. Even lots of Microsoft employees use Macs. It seems the hypothesis wasn't completely wrong. Incidentally, it's only with hindsight that we're able to refute this somewhat: Microsoft made a nice comeback in the tech world after Nadella became CEO. But that was a big surprise when it happened. Was it really necessary to turn this into a talking point about rich people and their sins?
- buran77 2y ago
  > a bunch of people misunderstood his point the same way you're doing Nobody implied he meant "dead dead" so that's a straw man, just that he completely missed the mark with his observation. Everything else is a backsplanation. PG even acknowledges he may look like a fool in retrospective. > He was talking about cultural dominance among people developing new tech [...] Everyone's using Macs So... a cultural thing you say, not connected to performance? Correlation not causation. The investor expects to see a Mac because that's part of the impression and everyone conformed. People showed up with a Mac to ask for money much like people show up in a suit to ask for a job. The interviewer expects the suit. It has no impact on the job performance or quality. It's just the "cultural" expectation. Wall Street people aren't more profitable due to the suits, and casual attire isn't dead. > Was it really necessary to turn this into a talking point about rich people and their sins? Was it really necessary to come to his defense? Was PG's opinion of MS really necessary? Would you have let it slide if I was praising instead?
scarface_74 2y ago
In 2005, it was actually closer to 4x - 60.79 vs 271B It was around 2011 that Apple had a higher market cap. He did predict the iPhone. That basically cemented Microsoft’s fate. Sure MS is still dominant in the “enterprise”. But no one is investing money to make great Windows apps.

hliyan 2y ago

Whenever I read these types of writing, it reminds me that just because a narrative is elegant, doesn't mean its true, especially when you're operating at very high levels of abstraction. Same problem I have with many pop psychology writings.

dijit 2y ago

Think of it in the inverse. If you're a person who is at one end of a funnel (in this case; new tech companies) and you see a 100% adoption which is contrary to the mainstream: you would think you have good insight. You might forget that you're looking at: A) A cargo culture B) a homogeneous cohort. This is the same way that people knew ahead of time that Microsoft Office would kill off Lotus notes. Since all school's were transitioning (or had transitioned) to Microsofts products. It's also why people knew AWS would be so popular ahead of time, because new tech companies were not renting compute anymore, they were passing their credit cards to Amazon - even causing some companies to bet their products on making tooling to make AWS easier. If you're at one end of the funnel, you can see the future. Was this the future? or was it a false positive based on a cohort? - I definitely think the market dominance of Windows on the Desktop has been thoroughly challenged since 2008, and it's rare I see people elect to use Windows for <10yo companies unless the founders are only used to Microsoft products. and I work in AAA games, which is insanely Microsoft dominated.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jvanderbot 2y ago
So you're saying that new AAA game companies use macs or linux? I can't resolve the cognitive dissonance of that making a ton of sense or none.
- dijit 2y ago
  There are more non-windows PC's in AAA game companies than there were in 2008 by a wide margin. Though usually not directly for gamedev. In 2008, the IT department couldn't even handle Macs at all, now it's a standard deployment among managers, designers, brand and even some programmers who only work with backend code. (though usually they'll have a gaming PC too for testing the game). That was literally unthinkable back then.
  - CrimsonCape 2y ago
    Sure there are more non-windows PC's but it's still miniscule[1]. To claim Microsoft is anything other than dominant is fallacious. And I understand the desire to talk positively about the good things (linux adoption) and ignore the bad things (Microsoft dominance). [1] "https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/04/linux-share-on-steam-bounces-back-to-nearly-2pc-for-march-2024/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/04/linux-share-on-steam-b...
    - dijit 2y ago
      The amount of steam users is not at all what I’m talking about, I’m saying as a game developer (a windows *dominated* field) there are more people running around with Macs for general purpose computing than 2008. That’s not wishful thinking, thats reality. Computers do more than play games.

ninetyninenine 2y ago

That quote is so out of touch. It was never that complete. Gamers used pcs. Paul grahams surprise missed an entire segment of the market. Additionally Mac usage statistically never exceeded windows. Paul lived a bit in a rich persons world and he’s around a lot web developers who like osx because it’s unixy without the issues of old Linux.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
wink 2y ago
And don't forget location. In 2007 not even the majority of developers in Europe had adopted the 'default developer mac', that only came a couple years later than in the US (afaik) and it never even reached that adoption rate (that is now in general, not only developers). If I look at my non-tech friends in Germany there is still just a tiny percentage using macs, and even iPhones are way outnumbered by Android.
- theragra 2y ago
  I think I even saw Mac for the first time around 2004. Eastern europe.

pwillia7 2y ago

> there's a reason wealth is also called "fortune". Because it's more about luck than anything else. Very quotable

behnamoh 2y ago

> Reading rich people's blogs reminds me every time that there's a reason wealth is also called "fortune". Because it's more about luck than anything else. At some point they lose touch with reality. I've found their "advice" often doesn't work for young people who wanna become successful like them. Another example is Jensen: "Nvidia doesn't have a long-term strategy, we just think about what to do next. I don't wear a watch, because NOW is important" and a lot of crap like that.

matwood 2y ago
> At some point they lose touch with reality. See every rich person telling young people to follow their passion.
- behnamoh 2y ago
  Yes, it's so frustrating to hear them talk. Everyone knows a great deal of their success was luck (as discussed in the book Outlier), but they still find it amusing to lecture the "lesser folks" about ways to get rich.
dist-epoch 2y ago
> I don't wear a watch, because NOW is important That doesn't imply that Jensen thinks he's successful because he doesn't wear a watch. He's not that delusional.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  >He's not that delusional. I have no idea whether he is or not. However I suspect it is very hard to remain grounded when you have so much wealth. Every interaction with the outside world is going to be clouded by it. People will be subservient in a way that us peons don't experience when we dine in McDonalds or shop in Walmart.
- behnamoh 2y ago
  oh he knows... you're telling me the CEO and co-founder of the most valuable company in history doesn't think he's successful?

RIMR 2y ago

It is an common theme with PG to write confidently about technology while also demonstrating that he has absolutely no understanding of what he's talking about. I've been commenting about this here for YEARS with constant pushback and excuses for him from the community. "He's a billionaire so he must be smart", "He personally wrote the entire HN codebase", "Nobody really needs a valid SSL cert on their website in 2023". Dang has even cited me for "personal attacks" for daring to point out PG's most visible shortcomings and knowledge gaps. I guess the inflection point was PG turning to X to screech about "wokism" in support of oligarchs like Trump and Musk to snap this community out of it's pro-PG trance. Watching a billionaire cheer on the billionaire class as we plummet into technofeudalism is a hell of a wake up call. Glad to see criticism of PG finally going mainstream here, especially digging back 18 years and concluding that he's always been like this. It's a shame he financially runs this place and these comments are short-lived due to platform manipulation.

robertlagrant 2y ago
> Glad to see criticism of PG finally going mainstream here I appreciate there are people out there who have chosen PG to emotionally glom onto, positively or negatively, and perhaps you're probably an extreme case of the latter, so I would have to challenge a little. "Criticising someone loads" isn't a good thing. Just neutrally challenging their ideas individually is all that's needed.
foul 2y ago
>I guess the inflection point was PG turning to X to screech about "wokism" in support of oligarchs like Trump and Musk to snap this community out of it's pro-PG trance. Watching a billionaire cheer on the billionaire class as we plummet into technofeudalism is a hell of a wake up call. In hindsight his (and Andreessen's techno-bullshit) have won a bet with Trump, those tweaker writings are very much aligning with the zeitgeist that's being imposed by Trump, Musk and their lackeys, they may even brag about having get there earlier than every other rich techbro.
breck 2y ago
[dead]
deleted 2y ago

JohnHaugeland 2y ago

I’ve been hearing people say this since this incorrect essay was written almost 20 years ago Microsoft had 74% of the desktop then and has 72% today Microsoft had 0% of hosting then and has the world’s second largest share, 23%, today Microsoft had, in 2007, 18% presence share in console gaming. Today they have 65% They were one of the four tech orgs present at the presidential inauguration They have grown enormously in the time this essay claims they were dying

PetitPrince 2y ago
> Microsoft had, in 2007, 18% presence share in console gaming. Today they have 65% Source for this ? Also what do you mean by "presence" ? I had the impression that Sony was in a way better position than Microsoft, and they were both dwarfed by Nintendo by a substantial margin. (not that this invalidate your overall point).
- pjmlp 2y ago
  PlayStation 3 went down quite badly among game developers given how hard Cell was to program for, and users with the whole OtherOS fallout, this brought XBox 360 into the winning round. Microsoft lost the plot afterwards with XBox ONE against the Playstation 4, and even with the Series S|X, they never recovered on the hardware side. However this is kind of relative now, even if they don't public admit yet, the hardware is gone, they are going SEGA, and by being one of the largest game publishers, it hardly matters if the XBox console isn't going that well. In one year they already recovered all the money lost in the ABK deal and litigations.
Clubber 2y ago
>Microsoft had 74% of the desktop then and has 72% today That's only counting the latest version, if you include all Windows versions, it was in the high 90%. Today it's in the mid 90%. https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...
hajile 2y ago
Xbox One sold 57.9M and Series family has sold 28.3M by mid 2024. PS4 sold 117M and PS5 sold 61.7M by mid 2024. Nintendo claims 150.9M Switch consoles sold as of the end of 2024. That puts Microsoft at around 20.7%, Sony at 43%, and Nintendo at about 36.3%. Even if you exclude Nintendo with a "no-true-gamer" fallacy, Microsoft still has just 32.5% of the market. Windows was over 90% in 2007 and is just 72% today. If you include the super-important mobile market, Windows actual marketshare is something like 10-15% and even less if you include servers (where even most Azure servers run Linux).

robertlagrant 2y ago

> Reading rich people's blogs reminds me every time that there's a reason wealth is also called "fortune". Because it's more about luck than anything else. And by luck I mean a family golden nugget, or lucky first investment, or both. A superpower that allows one to fail many times and still be able to try again until they hit the next fortune. Most people in the world can't even afford to try. Most of the rest can't afford to fail. Is this true? Did Paul Graham have outside money to fall back on that was given to him to sustain him through all his failures?

graemep 2y ago
I do not know about Paul Graham in particular, but it is true of many rich people.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  I know it's an oft-recited thing in the last decade or so, but I don't really understand it. It's true that in markets with lots of value to provide someone will win, and probably make lots of money, but to do so they would have to out-compete all the other people. That is extremely difficult, and calling it luck just seems a bit silly. People who got rich through building businesses aren't like lottery winners or heirs of fortunes. Why pretend they are, and what's behind that mindset?
  - graemep 2y ago
    Because it is demonstrably true for many people that luck or family influence or money played a factor. They may have had to compete with other people in the same advantages in the same business - which may not be very many. There is an overlap between people who build businesses and heirs of fortunes. Far more people increase an existing fortune than become rich from scratch.
DonnyV 2y ago
Yup, nepo kid "...father worked for Westinghouse, modelling nuclear reactors, then was named the Director of Nuclear Safety for Atomic Energy of Canada" https://hsm.stackexchange.com/a/16002 https://hsm.stackexchange.com/a/16002

carlosjobim 2y ago

It's not about being rich or not. People who can choose what kind of computer they have will choose Apple over PC. People who cannot choose will use work computers in their office with Windows installed, that corporate chose for them. People who do not want a computer at all will have neither PC or Mac. The majority of people do not want to have a computer – they see enough of them at work, and they are happy with their smart phones.

globalnode 2y ago
I think Apple is a very American thing. Outside the US, which you may not care about, only the most aspirationally Americanised people I've known have gone for apple products. Im not sure what the reasons are.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  Europeans generally don't purchase the things they want, they purchase the things they are supposed to be wanting, after having long deliberations together with relatives and friends. So then they'll only look at specs and price and not how useful a product is or how pleasant it is to use. Europeans are in general very weird about money. They are as greedy as anybody, but what do they do then with that money? They think turning on the air conditioner will ruin them financially and they count how many cents each person owes each other.
  - rewgs 2y ago
    > They think turning on the air conditioner will ruin them financially Literally laughed out loud at this, it’s so accurate.
  - theragra 2y ago
    This is pretty dumb generalization. In baltics, where I live, nobody counts cents or limits appliance use, despite low overall income.
- vishnugupta 2y ago
  In 2007, when the article was written, I distinctly remember being at Amazon and Windows laptops were the default option. So was the entire office suite, their share point thing, not to speak about Outlook. In fact one had to beg to IT guys to allow us to use Linux laptops. MacBooks were still a few years away if I remember correctly. It's amazing that PG looked around in his bubble, saw MacBooks and decided to write that Microsoft is dead.

josefrichter 2y ago

This also reminds me of "garage startups". In fact, probably only a fraction of people around the world own a garage. If your family has a garage, it means you are probably among the top ~1% richest people on Earth.

why_only_15 2y ago
Probably more like richest 10%, which applies to most people in the US
AlchemistCamp 2y ago
That’s silly. When I was growing up, we always had a garage and my family was ~25% under the median income. Hundreds of millions of Americans have a garage at home and it’s not the richest 2/3 of the country. It’s basically the people outside the largest cities. There are probably about an equal number of people living in a home with a garage in China too, though it’s wealthier suburban areas as opposed to lower and middle class people. They’re common in Japan, too, outside of the densest few cities. And of course there are plenty of other countries where garages are common, like Canada and Australia.

dist-epoch 2y ago

Almost everybody I know drives a Lamborghini. Toyota is so dead...

fogpudding 2y ago

The first time this essay made the rounds, a bunch of people misunderstood his point the same way you're doing: https://www.paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html https://www.paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html He was talking about cultural dominance among people developing new tech, not revenue. There was a time when being a programmer essentially meant writing C++ on Windows. I still remember getting a Mac as late as ~2013 and having my normie (non-engineer) friends chastise me for it -- "how are you going to get any serious coding done?" -- because that was their genuine impression of Windows vs Macs. Meanwhile, imagine you're the founder of YC in 2007 in a city where all the new tech startups are happening. Everyone's using Macs. Surely it's at least a valid argument or hypothesis that this is a leading indicator of where the forefront of tech is going. And now if you go to any modern fast-growing tech company, you look around, everyone uses Macs. Even lots of Microsoft employees use Macs. It seems the hypothesis wasn't completely wrong. Incidentally, it's only with hindsight that we're able to refute this somewhat: Microsoft made a nice comeback in the tech world after Nadella became CEO. But that was a big surprise when it happened. Was it really necessary to turn this into a talking point about rich people and their sins?

buran77 2y ago
> a bunch of people misunderstood his point the same way you're doing Nobody implied he meant "dead dead" so that's a straw man, just that he completely missed the mark with his observation. Everything else is a backsplanation. PG even acknowledges he may look like a fool in retrospective. > He was talking about cultural dominance among people developing new tech [...] Everyone's using Macs So... a cultural thing you say, not connected to performance? Correlation not causation. The investor expects to see a Mac because that's part of the impression and everyone conformed. People showed up with a Mac to ask for money much like people show up in a suit to ask for a job. The interviewer expects the suit. It has no impact on the job performance or quality. It's just the "cultural" expectation. Wall Street people aren't more profitable due to the suits, and casual attire isn't dead. > Was it really necessary to turn this into a talking point about rich people and their sins? Was it really necessary to come to his defense? Was PG's opinion of MS really necessary? Would you have let it slide if I was praising instead?

scarface_74 2y ago

In 2005, it was actually closer to 4x - 60.79 vs 271B It was around 2011 that Apple had a higher market cap. He did predict the iPhone. That basically cemented Microsoft’s fate. Sure MS is still dominant in the “enterprise”. But no one is investing money to make great Windows apps.