Google and Apple's Financial Statements

For fun, I decided to compare the financial statements of these two giant companies. Google, incorporated as a privately held company in September of 1998, is doing quite well for itself. For 2009, Google reported $6.5 billion in net income. (Net income is basically revenue minus expenses as well as tax.)

Apple, on the other hand, was incorporated in January of 1977, about 21 years before Google. In 2009, it reported only $3.3 billion in net income, almost half of Google's net income.

I make this comparison for two basic reasons. The companies are competing against each other right now in a few areas such as mobile phones. They also have completely different business philosophies. Google is pioneer in innovation and loves open-source. One of the most admirable tasks Google has taken on is Google Books. They want to digitize, and therefore preserve, knowledge and history for the good of civilization and its advancement.

Apple has a polar opposite business philosophy. It views success as being closed-source, closed-distribution. You cannot create and app for an iPhone or iPad without Apple's approval. Even then, you have to create the apps in the way that Apple wants. The creator does not have complete freedom when trying to be creative. This easily hampers innovation.

I was particularly caught off guard yesterday when I noticed that I cannot choose any color as my desktop background on my MacBook. It has a list of 10 colors that I can choose from, but I cannot open a color wheel and create my own. I could however choose my own background color if I chose a picture as my background but that picture didn't cover the whole desktop. I heard from a friend that in the upcoming iPhone/iPad update, the user would be able to change their background, which is something PC users have been able to do, well, forever.

It's easy to see how a business' philosophy translates into revenue for the company. Some companies care about advancing society. Some companies want to choke their customers, and when they choke a little less, they call it an upgrade.

Dell Mini 9 Hackintosh

I knew the Dell Mini 9 made a great Hackintosh, but I've only just now gotten to try it out. It was a very interesting project. It is a fairly intensive process to get the OS installed on non-Apple hardware, but once it's running it is smooth as glass.

There's a stunning Hackintosh community out there. While its definitely not an open source community in terms of the amount of information being at your fingertips, the Hackintosh community is very supportive of noobs. Thus, it is a fun and constructive endeavor.

My netbook runs slightly slower than it did with Ubuntu, but I'm very impressed with  how a graphical operating system like Mac runs on this little thing. The one caveat I have is trying to figure out keyboard shortcuts for various programs with the Mini 9's horrible windows keyboard.

Chrome Is Now Beta on Mac

Chrome has finally reached beta on Mac. Now you have access to extensions, fully functional flash and all the slick features that Windows and Linux users have had access to for a few months now. Now you have no excuse to keep using Safari or Firefox!

Google Better Than Apple

I'm cleaning up my Mac's HDD space; removing programs, cleaning up documents and pictures, etc. I ran across Address Book, the Apple program that comes with the Mac. I open it and see my profile I made a while back. Instantly, I see it as futile to create an address book that is saved locally on any hard drive these days, especially for me since I own PC and Mac. No point in creating a large database of addresses on my Mac if I need to access the info when I'm on my PC.

With Google, all of my contacts carry to all of my Google products. Out of curiosity, I cruise over to Apple.com to see what their solution is. It's called MobileMe, and it's available for a 60 day free trial. Not sure what it costs after the trial, but the point is that it costs something. When paying for a service, you usually get premium service for your hard earned money. What Apple highlights with MobileMe regarding email is "Read messages are marked as read, and all your folders are exactly the way you left them, no matter what device you use to check your email." It also syncs your calendars and your contacts. Amazing!

In fact, MobileMe's products are just like all of Google's products. Except not free.

Chrome on Linux and Mac

The wait will soon be over Linux and Mac users, Chrome should be here before the end of the year. No more alpha builds for me, I'll be using the real thing!

My New Laptop

My initial intention was to put Windows on my MacBook, as you can see from an earlier post. I need Windows to minimize the compatibility issues with Excel files since I'm in the graduate program at UNCG for accounting. The department uses Excel 2007 for PC. There is no Office 2007 for Mac; only Office 2004 (which I have) and Office 2008. I read that there were some compatibility issues with Office 2008 and 2007. I wanted to avoid this since accounting uses Excel heavily. OpenOffice also wasn't a solution for the same reasons; a different interface would mean I'd have to learn on my own how to do in OpenOffice the functions and operations that the professor does in Excel 2007. The best solution was to get Windows, either on my Mac, or get a whole new laptop.

The MacBook has been a dream to have ever since I bought it in late 2006. The problems I've has with it have been minimal and almost insignificant, such as Firefox freezing up and having to restart the program. However, to get Windows on my Mac, I would have had to get a bigger hard drive, as I've filled mine up over the past 3 years. Also, I would have had to increase my RAM to at least 2 GB. Additionally, there was the time factor. This particular class, Business Statistics, meets once per week and I needed windows ASAP. At this point, it seemed easier and less stressful to just buy a PC laptop. So, I went to Best Buy.

My criteria for buying a laptop was simple: I'm not buying a Dell. I can specifically recall three people who have had abysmal experiences with Dell laptops. Myself, Ben, and Ruff. I know I've heard the same horror stories from other people (maybe 2 others), but I can't specifically remember them. My old Dell Inspiron 8200 had hard drive problems, it kept crashing, and even though I took extremely good care of it, the hinge cracked, meaning the screen couldn't support itself or shut properly. It was an embarrassment.

So now I have an HP G60-445DX Notebook PC. I know this because I haven't taken the stickers off yet. It was within my price range, has HDMI output, and has a 5-in-1 card reader. Neat. I also get Windows 7 for free when it comes out in October. Time will tell if that was money well spent, or if it's another money-sink like most PC's. My first impressions are optimistic. This seems like a nice laptop for the price. My only complaint so far is that to open the laptop, I have to hold the bottom down while I open the screen, like prying open a clam, because the hinge is tight. But hopefully this means that it will last a long time, unlike my Dell.

How to check if your PC/Mac is 32 or 64 bit

Stata.com has an excellent quick reference guide on how to check if your computer is 32 bit or 64 bit.

The main difference in the two types of processors is the power you have available. A 64 bit systems has a much larger buss available than the 32 bit system. Infopackets gave a brief overview of the differences in 2006, noting that with the 64 bit system "Normal office productivity and web surfing will show no advantages at all, whereas graphics processing and scientific calculations will go much faster."

Here's a practical application of knowing the difference: If you're considering putting Windows on a Mac, you'll want to make sure the version of Windows is either 32 bit or 64 bit so it matches your processor speed.* I'm probably going to do this and I'll post an update on how well this goes.

*EDIT: Upon further research, it turns out the 64 bit OS is needed to utilize RAM 4GB and up.