Apple Mac security is “a decade behind Microsoft”

[jikajoe1]

Is it true that Apple has over enough cash to buy Microsoft, Intel, Facebook & Nvidia together?

if that is true, thats not good for all of us, including the mobile operators who by the way are claiming that Apple is dictating to them on its products.

[clasqm]

Is it true that Apple has over enough cash to buy Microsoft, Intel, Facebook & Nvidia together?

Of course not. If Apple showed an interest in those companies, their share prices would skyrocket instantly.

[MattyW]

Is it true that Apple has over enough cash to buy Microsoft, Intel, Facebook & Nvidia together?

No most certainly not, assuming these corporations don't have special voting shares {which I'm sure they all do and which arn't traded on the open market} then the only other option {I think} is to buy out 51% of the company, now I am not entirely sure of how the system works but microsoft has a market cap of 268.66 Billion US Dollars so to buy the company out I assume apple would need at least half of that which is about 134 Billion US Dollars just to aquire half the the shares but as mentioned in the post above a move in the market to purchase that many shares would push the value of the shares far far higher massively inflating the value of the shares.

Last I heard apple had about 100 Billion US Dollars in ready Cash and could probably obtain more by issuing bonds but as they have no credit rating at the moment {since they have never sold bonds} it's unsure how much they could raise, on the other hand Microsoft is one of four publically traded {non-financial} companies with a AAA credit ratings {Higher than the US goverment's} so they could potentially obtain more cash since thier credit worthiness is already established.

So in short I would say no, I sincerely doubt {at this point at least} apple could even buy microsoft out let alone the other companies listed, Intel also has a market cap around around 140 Billion US Dollars {Which is massive}.

Links: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT#

http://www.google.com/finance?q=Intel#

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/bu...pagewanted=all

[[)roi(]]

Never ask a Windows expert or AV employee about Macs; I beg to differ that a Unix base is 10 years behind... Have had a Macs for a long time and never had any issues... Don't / won't use AV ever... Setup your firewall properly, install Little Snitch and never run your primary account under admin privileges and you'll be safer than most Windows users..

For added security get rid of the biggest threats on Mac (3rd party extensions) I.e. flash, adobe reader, java, ...

[ghoti]

Is it true that Apple has over enough cash to buy Microsoft, Intel, Facebook & Nvidia together?

No. They are worth more, but do not have the cash to buy even just Microsoft.

Apple are sitting on a record 100 billion dollar warchest. They could possibly buy Facebook. Microsoft is worth about 258 billion dollars.

Some people think that these large corps are not hoarding cash. Wonder how Apple got its 100 billion dollar warchest then.

[qriffin]

Over the weekend I read an interesting article about how Apple has set up an office in Reno, Nevada 200 miles away from California to get away paying 0% company tax rate. In California they would've paid 8.84%

[koffiejunkie]

if that is true, thats not good for all of us, including the mobile operators who by the way are claiming that Apple is dictating to them on its products.

That's probably a good thing, in this case. Apple wants their products to be available on as wide a selection of networks as possible. The networks want exclusivity. They're already restricting where you can get your handset from. If you buy an iPhone from the Apple store, Verizon won't let you connect it to your network - it's a brick, essentially. They have no consumer protection and anticompetitive behaviour is tolerated, encouraged even under the guise of "free market" economy.

Never ask a Windows expert or AV employee about Macs; I beg to differ that a Unix base is 10 years behind... Have had a Macs for a long time and never had any issues...

Never having had issues doesn't mean squat. I've never had any of my windows computers infected with anything, all the way from Windows 3.1 through Windows 7. The only one I skipped was Vista. Does that mean Windows' security is bullet proof? Of course not.

In my job I deal with compromised servers every day. Guess what - they're all Linux and FreeBSD. The only way to be absolutely secure is to not connect to a network. If you need networking you're compromising, and what you need to do and/or what services you need to offer determines how big that compromise is. The majority of compromises I see start with users/owners doing stupid things. No OS protects you against that.

[qriffin]

Over the weekend I read an interesting article about how Apple has set up an office in Reno, Nevada 200 miles away from California to get away paying 0% company tax rate. In California they would've paid 8.84%

Apple is now one of the biggest and most profitable companies in the world. In the first quarter of 2012, Apple said it generated a net profit of $11.6 billion, nearly twice as much as the $6 billion in profit that it made a year ago. Yet for all of that wealth and success, Apple still tries to get around paying taxes by finding lot of legal loopholes.

That's the subject of an extensive New York Times article which goes over how Apple tries to cut down on its taxes. That includes managing the company's investments via an office in Reno, Nevada rather than its home state of California. The reason? California has a 8.84 percent corporate tax rate while Nevada has none. The article does point out that other companies, including Microsoft, have similar offices in Nevada for avoiding corporate taxes.

In fact, Apple actually invented its own tax loophole that has since been used by many other large companies. The technique is called "Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich". Apple uses this move to funnel its profits to two offices in Ireland, which then go to the Netherlands and then end up in the Caribbean.

All of these activities and more allowed Apple to pay just $3.3 billion in taxes for its 2011 fiscal year, with a tax rate of just 9.8 percent. An economist in the article estimated that Apple would have paid $2.4 billion more in taxes without these kinds of efforts

http://www.neowin.net/news/report-ap...ns-in-us-taxes

[bwana]

That's probably a good thing, in this case. Apple wants their products to be available on as wide a selection of networks as possible. The networks want exclusivity. They're already restricting where you can get your handset from. If you buy an iPhone from the Apple store, Verizon won't let you connect it to your network - it's a brick, essentially. They have no consumer protection and anticompetitive behaviour is tolerated, encouraged even under the guise of "free market" economy.

I'm not sure I understand. Verizon uses a CDMA network which isn't compatible with the vast majority of networks around the world anyway.

[Arthur]

Is it true that Apple has over enough cash to buy Microsoft, Intel, Facebook & Nvidia together?

No.

[koffiejunkie]

I'm not sure I understand. Verizon uses a CDMA network which isn't compatible with the vast majority of networks around the world anyway.

You can go into an Apple store and buy your choice of network-free GSM or CDMA iPhone from Apple, but the network (Verizon in particular is guilty of this) won't let you use it on their network - they want you to source the phone from them directly, in which case it's network locked, so you can't take that to another network.

[koffiejunkie]

I'm not sure I understand. Verizon uses a CDMA network which isn't compatible with the vast majority of networks around the world anyway.

Sorry, I didn't address your question. Verizon is not the only CDMA provider. Sprint does CDMA too, and so does a host of smaller, regional providers (although I'd be willing to ignore them for the sake of the argument).

[bwana]

You can go into an Apple store and buy your choice of network-free GSM or CDMA iPhone from Apple, but the network (Verizon in particular is guilty of this) won't let you use it on their network - they want you to source the phone from them directly, in which case it's network locked, so you can't take that to another network.

I have to admit I'm sceptical of this.

[kingrob]

I have to admit I'm sceptical of this.

I'm skeptical of anything American.

[falcon786]

I have to admit I'm sceptical of this.

What is there to be skeptical about he is giving you the FACTS if you dont believe him go do research on how many USA subscribers are trying to unlock their phones....theres tons of content out there for you to browse through...google it because its a FACT.

I have bought a phone from the USA and it was locked to at&t needed to pay on some aftermarket website to get it unlocked to work on other networks.