It's not a fair comparison and never was. Apple makes appliances: the hardware and software. When they let hardware clones into the market they cannibalize th

It's not a fair comparison and never was. Apple makes appliances: the hardware and software. When they let hardware clones into the market they cannibalize their business. Power Computing made great Mac machines and much cheaper than Apple. But Apple didn't want to be outsold on hardware and be reduced to only a software company (like Microsoft). You're right: Google is now the Microsoft in this scenario, the software company (although they're moving into hardware now but we'll see how that goes).