They did include google apps. Look at "He’s no longer the Richest Man in the World" again.
Some businesses like keeping their data internal. There's nothing wrong with running your own SMTP server. Personally, I'm not exactly thrilled with Google's choice to make email into "conversations." Plus, how much control do you have over your data if it's in Google's hands?
Wow! That article was fantastic! My best bud worked for Asterisk for a while, so I knew how to get cheap VoIP. Just order that switching line from the telco.
I didn't even know there was an OSS alternative to VMware/MS Server! Again, great stuff!
I bookmarked this page and I'm forwarding it to my partners as I write this.
Perhaps it's because Apple offers nothing worth switching for over a Microsoft solution that is generally cheaper and more supported by not only oem manufacturers and colleagues, but software and hardware manufacturers?
"Mac ads have had pc's reputation on the ropes in the collective unconscious."
Do you mean Microsoft? If so, it sure as hell hasn't scratched the business world. It's only knicked the consumer world a couple percentage points. I'd reconsider your position.
Further, this is kind of old and becoming a nonissue in today's world. With the migration towards non-platform-specific consumer usage of systems (ie. internet) I don't see as heavy of a need for some bloated consumer operating system.
I'm no huge Windows fan. I've used countless operating systems; C64, Cisco IOS, HP-UX, AS/400, Solaris, Mac OS, Windows 3.x-Vista, Server NT-Server 2k8, Linux derivatives galore, BSD. While developing/working on them and I can say I'm not really impressed with what Apple offers.
Apple is just a gimmick in the world of computing systems. You can claim that consumers aren't nerds that love command lines, but what do you think drives the media infrastructure that panders to all the fun-filled music and video that Apple users love to waste time on? It sure as hell isn't Mac OS.
Computers primarily run the world's business. Steve Jobs' goal is not to get Apple tangled up with "boring" business stuff. Hell, look at the stupid hipster getup the "Mac Guy" wears in the comercials. Jobs put the noose around Apple's neck when he set the goal of being consumer-orientated instead of business-orientated if his plan is digital world domination.
Put a noose around its neck, huh? Jobs returned to Apple and changed its direction about 10 years ago.
- Go to: http://finance.google.com/finance?q=AAPL
- Click the 10 yr time frame.
- Click the check box to add MSFT to the same graph.
- Tell me again how bad of a job Steve has been doing, and how it hasn't meant anything to MSFT.
Now some more ycombinator specific points. When you get together with a bunch of web startup owners or attend a conference, do you see more or less macs than the overall market would indicate? Would you say there are more than 1 mac per 10 startups? Would you say that what startups are using, they are quite likely to support as they grow?
It hasn't. Microsoft's growth has remained relatively stable since it's growth from '95 to 2000. Apple has almost zero impact from '98 to 2005, which is where we start to see the stock perform well.
Economics FAIL. -0.5% growth over 10 year is a loss of money because you are falling behind inflation. Based on their market cap Microsoft is shrinking at a rate of 2-3% a year in real dollars while Apple is growing off the charts. You can't say that the falling Windows brand is not a direct cause of that, and Apple's contrast with Microsoft helps that. Apple's growth has more to do with the iPod than OS X, but OS X has a lot more to do with Windows falling image than anything else.
There's a lot more to it than just "Apple is just a gimmick..." OS X is unix and unix is the real rising star here. Apple just had the good sense to catch a ride on the bandwagon of that rising star and the competence to do a very good job of it. Apple's market share is still small but it's been growing steadily for years. Today's rate-of-change is tomorrow's level.
Apple won't catch on with business because why the hell would you pay for Apple when you could just get *nix? It's their own grave, but hey, if they're happy making consumer crap, be my guest.
Right now, Apple's pushing for the businessplace. Snow Leopard is supposed to have out-of-the-box Exchange support, which is a step Apple needs to take. Beyond that, Apple's been winning over plenty of small businesses: not the big guys yet, but large corporations can't change on a dime. If Apple stays as consistently reliable for another handful of years, I'd predict us seeing the Mac starting to gain entry to the workplace.
Actually... yes; and, I daresay, comes out on top. Having lost countless hours of my life debugging .NET Framework installation problems (yay, installer ran and finished. Why isn't this damn thing showing up in my list of components?), I have to say that never spend nearly that much debugging silly installation issues with Python and MySQL.
I never had any issue with the .Net framework installation, but I'll take your word for it.
I guess I just feel spoiled by Visual Studio, while every time I start something in Python I feel like I have to spend so much time trying to find quality tools to make it do what I want. It just doesn't feel like a very complete solution to me.
2nd that, the .Net installer was a big problem at my former company. Can't say Python is any better, but to say .Net is perfect shows you haven't seen it used in a lot of places.
While I do like that you're taking the time to reply to each of my comments in turn, could we keep this a little civil? I love flamefests as much as anybody, but this isn't the sort of argument that requires sarcasm and vitriol.
I said Exchange because it's the one thing I've read about. I am not a businessperson, nor am I a programmer: the closest I get to programming is PHP, because it's all that I need. I said that that's what Apple's been up to, because it is: they're obviously pushing to make Macs business-friendly.
I'd guess that most businesses don't have computers for the sake of programming, though. Most people in the workplace don't program. They email, they discuss things with coworkers. With a few tweaks, the Mac ought to be ready for that sort of thing in a secure environment. And that's just as much a part of business as coding is.
Go to a college and look at all the kids. They're using macs. That means, in the future, the people who make decisions will lean more towards mac.
I don't at all think that mac's polish is a gimmick. We know that using 2 monitors increases productivity. This is a general case of the fact that how you connect to your computer directly alters how your brain has to work in order to use the computer. It seems to me that a better user interface and a more clean design are important ways to decrease the cognitive friction with the computer. You know those little logos they put on pc laptops palmrests? Each of those, just by being in your visual field, causes a cascade of preconscious neurological activity as your brain triggers all the things it associates with the logos. Thus, just by sitting down to work in that environment, your are decreasing the brain power you can spend working. The superior mac UI generates much less cognitive friction, allowing me to focus more of my cognitive processes to thinking about what I'm working on. You may think this is a gimmick, I think it's essential to being maximally productive.
It's like the band velvet underground. Sure, there were more popular bands, but fans of velvet underground largely created later progress in subsequent waves of musical progress.
If you want to point fingers you only have to look at the federal reserve (1913).
Fractional reserve banking - Hey, let's give out invisible money ten fold (more today) than actually exists! Usury? Yeah, let's add more invisible money to it in the form of interest. We are geniuses!
Would you rather have 1 type of car that the government makes that works pretty reliably and is a middle-ground car, or would you rather have a selection of cars to chose from; sports, truck, sedan, minivan, etc. ?
Everyone has different needs. I use MySQL extensively for it's memory-based storage engine, MyISAM for quick & dirty non-escential data i/o, and InnoDB for when data needs to be managed securely for processes.
I would use PG for transaction-based data processing in a high-volume situation with multi-processing clusters. Otherwise MySQL works fantastic for all my needs.
Would you rather have a car that runs into a wall and explodes and kills everyone inside or no car at all? The car is like using car analogies on Slashdot and not having a car is like not using car analogies on YC.
In conclusion and in summary, go back to Slashdot. KTHXBAI.
Not sure if that's exactly for the YC crowd. While everyone would love to have a multi-million dollar business, the reality is that there are a lot of smaller good ideas that don't need $1mil+ funding.
I think YC takes a better approach in the way of financing. However, I think YC forces a group to be extremely frugal and thoughtful in their fiscal decissions. I think receiving large funding may lead to improper investments to younger entrepreneurs; but that's just my $0.02.
It seems like the core message (apart from getting to profitability quickly) is pretty important to YC startups keen on getting acquired - "in a poor economy, companies really need to find better, cheaper, and more efficient ways of operating."
In other words, stop making widgets that turn your Facebook friends into zombies and start creating ones that make it easier for people to sell or make things.
>- "in a poor economy, companies really need to find better, cheaper, and more efficient ways of operating."
The economy isn't that poor, though. Ignore the headlines. Watch GDP, GDP per capita, and unemployment. If those things aren't going negative, then people are still going to spend money.
Politicians live by demagoguery and fear. Businessmen should look at facts.
In other words, stop making widgets that turn your Facebook friends into zombies and start creating ones that make it easier for people to sell or make things.
I bristled at this:
"A business that needs no more than $1-$2 million in financing to become a $25-$50 million (exit value) company, simply by executing the core business plan."
That is an insane requirement for return. I'm not sure how that's even possible - or if any company has even managed to do that. Someone prove me wrong?
$25 million is a lot of money, but so is $1 million in funding. Most web 2.0 companies need no more than $100k or so to get to profitability, and can easily exit at $2.5 million. Same ratio, but it sounds a lot more achievable. So the only real issue is scale.
Bear in he's talking about enterprise software (i.e. support contracts, custom software, consultants). When you start doing custom work and get paid by the hour your revenue goes through the roof. So you can get to a $25 million valuation pretty easily, if you're willing to be a software/consultancy hybrid.
This is not the sort of situation I would invest in. If you are billing by the hour, it is unlikely to be a leveraged business, and the investment return is unlikely to be as comfortable. Additionally, due to the smaller size, there would have to be many, many investments; it's hard to find many of very good quality.
It's very hard to sell to large sized enterprise without supplying custom work. You're right that the custom work isn't leveraged, but it's a prerequisite to get your product installed into their (often silly) IT structure.
This only requires a portion of your engineering and support resources, and there is no reason you could not establish strong ties to an existing consulting organization to be the "consulting services" arm of your company.
That tends to be the cash-cow that enterprise software vendors grow into (SAP, Oracle, et al), though I agree that it's not the place you want to target from the get-go. It probably does have some seductiveness if you're boot-strapping.
Some businesses like keeping their data internal. There's nothing wrong with running your own SMTP server. Personally, I'm not exactly thrilled with Google's choice to make email into "conversations." Plus, how much control do you have over your data if it's in Google's hands?
Ever heard of Hula?