What Me Worry? Microsoft And Apple’s Five Year Report Card.

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Cash in the Bank
Bill Gates has more money than God. Microsoft has more money than that; $20-billion or so, even after giving back $30-billion or so to shareholders.

Apple has a measly $8-billlion in cash. Neither company has any debt to speak of, so the sheer numbers give the nod to a good grade to Microsoft, an “A+” vs. Apple’s “A-”.

Granted, there’s not much room between an A+ and an A-, but there’s big distance between $20-billion (or $50-billion if you count what they gave back) and $8-billion.

Just note that 99-percent of the Fortune 1000 are drooling over Apple’s numbers, so it doesn’t seem fair to award AAPL a “C” for outstanding performance. I’m not grading on a curve.

Product Market Share
Five years ago, Microsoft was the undisputed king of market share, by nearly any definition. What’s wrong with 95-percent? Other than those pesky governments and their anti-trust lawsuits.

Apple? Five years ago the death-knell bell ringers were out in force, heralding the Microsoft mantra, and proclaiming the imminent death (once again) of Steve Jobs’ beloved company.

Today? Apple’s market share is growing. Sales are growing at two to three times the industry rate for computers. In music, Apple owns the player market, the downloads market, and the mindset of music buyers.

Microsoft? They’re losing market share in every category except game consoles (zero or so five years ago). Linux has eroded the server market share.

Windows is being ditched for anything else, sometimes for nothing else; just being ditched.

The combination of open source (say, ‘free’) tools and applications has certainly slowed Microsoft’s services and tools juggernaut. Apache is the most popular web server. PHP is the most popular applications ‘language.’ MySQL is the most popular web database.

Those tools are free and more than good enough, they’re very good. While Microsoft’s tools are also good at what they do, they come with a price.

For market share grades, Apple gets a “B+” mostly because of steady improvement, while Microsoft gets a “B-” because they’re looking more embattled than a leader.

Cool and Charisma
No, this category isn’t thrown in just to add another arrow to Apple’s quivering quiver. ‘Cool’ defines attitude and culture and seems to translate directly to stock price, customer perception, and eventually sales and market share.

Microsoft gets a “C” (Tera told me to be kind) and Apple gets an “A”.

Why? You have to ask? OK, settle in for an answer:

Cool is iPod, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iTunes, iLife, iMac G, PowerMac G5, Final Cut, iTMS, record stock price, Tiger, Dashboard Widgets, Spotlight, and Xbox.

Not Cool is Windows XP SP 127, Longhorn, viruses, spyware, pop-up ads, BSOD (blue screen of death), et al. You get the idea.

As far as charisma is concerned, grab any online video of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

Products and Features
I’m giving this one to Microsoft because, invariably, their products are more numerious and have more features than grains of sand on a beach.

If sheer numbers of products and features are the criteria, Redmond’s pulsating code monkeys win the show, best of breed, an “A”.

Now, add quality and usability to the mix, and the grades change. This may be the most subjective of the categories, so the grade may vary user to user.

As both a veteran Windows and Mac user, let me generalize. Apple passes, Microsoft fails. Why? In general, Windows users switch to Macs, not the other way around.

Summary Report
Surprised? Obviously, much has changed in the past five years when comparing Apple to Microsoft. The report card is very mixed for Microsoft, most poor grades.

For Apple, it would have been difficult to predict today’s reality five years ago, but it’s obvious that Apple is clicking along and doing well.

Ron has set up a Forums topic for discussion. Feel free to add your own category and grades. Oh, don’t hesitate to offer a look into the future. What do you think their grades will be five years from now?

PS - ‘There you go, Tera. This one’s for you.’