Apple Inc shot past Microsoft Corp as the world’s biggest tech company based on market value on Wednesday, the latest milestone in the resurgence of the maker of the iPhone, which nearly went out of business in the 1990s.
Apple’s shares rose as much 2.8 percent on Nasdaq on Wednesday, as Microsoft shares floundered, briefly pushing its market value above $229 billion, ahead of its longtime rival.
Both stocks ended down after a late-day sell-off, but Apple emerged ahead with a market value of about $222 billion, compared with Microsoft’s $219 billion, according to Reuters data.
Apple shares closed down 0.4 percent at $244.11 on Nasdaq, while Microsoft fell 4 percent to a seven-month low of $25.01.
Shares of Apple are worth more than 10 times what they were 10 years ago, as it has profited from revolutionizing consumer electronics with its stylish, easy to use products such as the iPod, iPhone and MacBook laptops.
The last time Apple had a higher market value than Microsoft was December 19, 1989, according to Thomson Reuters Datastream.
Microsoft, whose operating system runs on more than 90 percent of the world’s personal computers, has not been able to match growth rates from its hey-day 1990s. Its stock is down 20 percent from 10 years ago.
Apple, which struggled for many years to get its products into the mainstream, resorted to a $150 million investment from the much larger Microsoft in 1997 in order to keep it afloat. At that time, Microsoft’s market value was more than five times that of Apple.
Microsoft still leads Apple in sales. In the latest quarter, Microsoft reported $14.5 billion in revenue compared with Apple’s $13.5 billion.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is now the second-largest company on the Standard & Poor’s 500 index by market value, behind energy behemoth Exxon Mobil Corp.

Apple (NYSE: AAPL – News) investors could be excused for feeling on top of the world. Another blowout quarter has sent the stock booming to another all-time high. The iPad seems to be a success. Everything the company touches seems to turn to gold.
Savor the moment, by all means. But don’t get complacent. If you’re an Apple shareholder, here are seven things to be concerned about—and one thing you can do about it.
1. Apple’s good — but not that good. It’s just that the competition is so bad. Nokia (NYSE: NOK – News), Microsoft (NasdaqGS: MSFT – News), Samsung, Palm (NasdaqGS: PALM – News): From smartphones to Internet tablets to computers, it’s hard to believe so many big companies have blown it so badly. And they’ve committed mainly unforced errors, such as terrible user interfaces. I bought a non-iPod MP3 player the other day. It’s great … except making playlists is nearly impossible.
As long as the competition acts like this, Apple will keep winning. But its success owes less to the genius of Apple than the incompetence of everyone else. And that’s something you can’t control.
2. Apple fatigue. Was anything so ridiculous as the coverage of the new iPad? A computer company launched a new computer. Time and Newsweek put it on the cover, for heaven’s sake, complete with fawning copy from the likes of Stephen Fry. A lot of people are getting absolutely fed up with this circus. Fashions come, but fashions go. Is Apple becoming overexposed? Right now Steve Jobs could sell his old underwear for $200 a pair (the “iPants”), and the sheep would line up at your local Apple store. If this mania lasts, it will be a first in human history.
3. The share price. At $260, Apple’s stock price has more than doubled in a year. Amateur investors say, “It’s going up.” Present tense. Serious investors say, more accurately: “It has gone up.” Past tense. No one knows the future. And the more it rises, the less attractive it gets. It’s now 20 times annual cash flow and 5 and a half times annual sales. At $235 billion, the company is being valued at more than Sony (NYSE: SNE – News), Research In Motion (NasdaqGS: RIMM – News), Dell (NasdaqGS: DELL – News), Motorola (NYSE: MOT – News), Nokia, HTC (Taiwan 2498.TW – News), SanDisk (NasdaqGS: SNDK – News) and Palm … put together. That assumes a lot.
4. Steve Jobs’s ego. I don’t care how much of a genius he is: Nobody is perfect. Yet Mr. Jobs has been subject to extravagant cheerleading, and it’s not as if he was overendowed with a sense of humility to begin with. Bottom line: If and when he makes mistakes, who is going to stop him? A small but telling example: One thing keeping Apple from lots of extra iPhone sales to business users is that Mr. Jobs, for some reason, has a thing against keyboards. There’s no business reason for it. It’s a silly, unforced error.
5. The cellular networks. At what point will they stop giving away the store? Right now they’re paying most of the cost of each new iPhone, and under-charging for the data plans too. That’s great for customers and great for Apple, and bad for the networks. The iPhone is an expensive data hog that soaks up airtime, and there’s always a risk the networks will start playing tougher. Verizon, which lost out to AT&T three years ago for the right to carry the iPhone in the US, doesn’t seem to be suffering as a result. Its investors have done no worse than those of AT&T. And its data traffic just jumped 20%, even without the Apple phone.
6. Apple backlash. As the competition forfeits game after game, Apple is starting to dominate industries from cell phones and games to music and media. Now it looks like it wants to dominate ebooks too. But if Ken Auletta’s account in the latest New Yorker is correct, Apple’s game plan to defeat Amazon means teaming up with book publishers—and that may mean higher book prices for consumers. How will consumers react? And what will that do for Apple’s “friendly,” rebel image? Anyway, you can’t play the underdog when you’re the third-biggest company in the world by market value. Apple is already worth more than General Electric (NYSE: GE – News), Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT – News), Chevron (NYSE: CVX – News) or Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG – News). It is worth nearly as much as Microsoft. At some point it starts to look like the Big Brother it once vilified. It may even look like the new Microsoft.
7. Steve Jobs’s health. This is the “ick” issue. But Apple cheerleaders can’t have it both ways. They can’t hail Steve Jobs as a visionary genius and the world’s greatest CEO, and then say it’s none of shareholders’ business whether he will still be running the company in three years’ time. It’s only a year since he had a liver transplant, and investors can hardly feel confident they got all the relevant information clearly and early. We all hope Mr. Jobs enjoys the best of health and lives to a ripe old age. But he still looks worryingly thin. This is something for investors to keep an eye on.
Some of these are issues that could erupt into problems quickly. Others, if they do emerge, would take more time. But if you’re a nervous Apple investor, what are your alternatives? Sure you could sell some stock and take your profits. But if you don’t want to get off this train quite yet, here’s another idea: You could buy some insurance using “put” options. These pay out if the stock falls. So for $19 you can buy $200 puts, good until January 2012. These will limit your downside on the stock to $200. But if Apple keeps booming upwards, all you can lose is the $19.

AT&T today announced financial results for the first quarter of 2010, revealing that the carrier activated 2.7 million iPhones during the quarter. The number is down from 3.1 million in the previous quarter, despite Apple announcing yesterday that it had sold 8.75 million iPhones overall during the quarter, an increase of approximately 15,000 units over the prior quarter.
The results illustrate that international growth is a primary driver for the iPhone as AT&T begins to experience a slowing of its portion of the overall growth. The iPhone’s ability to attract new customers to AT&T has also begun to slip, as the company noted that “more than one-third” of its iPhone activations for the quarter came from customers new to the carrier, down from a 40% figure the company has consistently cited in past earnings releases.
Signs of slowing iPhone growth for AT&T are likely to add to the clamor for Apple to extend distribution to additional carriers in the United States, with market leader Verizon having received the most attention in recent years despite the requirement that Apple offer specialized hardware to operate on the carrier’s current network. For its part, Apple executives noted during yesterday’s earnings conference call that the U.S., Germany, and Spain remain the company’s three major markets where the iPhone is offered in exclusive carrier relationships. Despite that fact that the company has seen increased unit sales and market share in countries where it had moved to a multi-carrier model, however, it is not convinced that that dynamic would play out everywhere. Consequently, Apple continues to evaluate its carrier relationships on a country-by-country basis.

Thanks to a change in Apple’s iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, Adobe has decided to abandon the iPhone app building technology included in Flash CS5.
Adobe says it’s not planning on “any additional investments in that feature” after CS5 because of section 3.3.1 of Apple’s iPhone Developer Program License Agreement:
Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).
This section indicates that tools such as that in Flash CS5 are forbidden when developing apps for the iPhone and it appears to make it pointless for Adobe to provide the feature according to Adobe’s Mike Chambers:
While it appears that Apple may selectively enforce the terms, it is our belief that Apple will enforce those terms as they apply to content created with Flash CS5. Developers should be prepared for Apple to remove existing content and applications (100+ on the store today) created with Flash CS5 from the iTunes store.
The feature will still ship with Flash CS5, but is there much of a point in using it?

iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 2 slipped into the iPhone Dev Center earlier, but unless you’re a developer and really need to test apps, it’s best to skip this extra buggy beta and just keep playing around with the first.
I realize that you’re curious—after all iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 1 was full of new features—but Beta 2 is a bit of a letdown. Aside from the annoying inability to take screenshots, Beta 2 actually left me struggling to do simple things—like using the Camera app.
For whatever reason, the Camera app freezes and doesn’t save pictures, the on-screen keyboard refuses to pop up when I want to add my email account to the phone, and third-party apps go nuts.
Yes, this is all expected with a beta build, but many of us are prone to putting such things on our devices for the sake of trying them out and discovering new features. When it comes to iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 2 though, skip that step unless you have to and just keep playing with the first beta.
Or let us risk our iPhones—and patience—to find the new features for you and leave your iPhone happy with a public OS build.

Well, I guess this settles it as far as the authenticity of Gizmodo’s iPhone 4G scoop Monday. The definitive piece of evidence: a letter from Apple’s top lawyer, formally requesting the safe return of the wayward next-generation iPhone — the one left on a Redwood City barstool last month by a young (and surely red-faced) Apple software engineer.
Gizmodo posted the letter late Monday, and the missive — while firm in tone, and signed by Apple General Counsel and Senior VP Bruce Sewell — stops short of making any legal threats, at least for the time being:
It has come to our attention that GIZMODO is currently in possession of a device that belongs to Apple. This letter constitutes a formal request that you return the device to Apple. Please let me know where to pick up the unit.
Gizmodo Editorial Director Brian Lam replied cheekily that the lost, radically redesigned iPhone was “burning a hole in our pockets” and that he was “happy to see it returned to its rightful owner” now that “we definitely know it’s not some knockoff.”
The news came just hours after the bloggers Gizmodo described how a 27-year-old software engineer at Apple (who is named and pictured in the post, by the way) managed to leave the precious iPhone 4G prototype — disguised to look like an iPhone 3GS — on a barstool at the Gourmet Haus Straut, a “nice German beer garden” in Redwood City, about 20 miles northwest of Apple HQ in Cupertino. (Engadget had blogged over the weekend that the phone was lost in a San Jose watering hole, leading to some initial confusion.)
Having downed a few brews, the hapless Apple engineer eventually rolled out of the bar, according to Gizmodo, absentmindedly leaving behind the next-generation iPhone (which he’d been field testing, the post said). Hey, it happens. (If I had a nickel for every time I left a credit card at a bar … ) Another man in the bar ended up taking the phone home, peeled off the protective jacket the next day, and realized he had a windfall on his hands.
And as we all now know, “weeks later, Gizmodo got it,” says Gawker Media Inc.’s Gizmodo — leaving out a key detail that Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media, filled in later for the Associated Press: The company paid $5,000 for it.
What followed, I’m sure, was a scene similar to the wonderful sequence in the BBC version of “State of Play”: The editors huddled with their lawyers, the crucial evidence (a suitcase of documents in “State of Play,” an iPhone in the case of Gizmodo) on a table before them, trying to suss out whether they should write a story or call the police.
So, is Gizmodo in trouble? Hard to say, but the L.A. Times tech blog checked in with UC Irvine law professor Henry Weinstein, who says Gizmodo is probably in the clear: “Journalists generally do not get prosecuted for being in receipt of stolen documents, as opposed to the person who received the documents and turned them over.” (It’s worth noting that Gizmodo claims the iPhone in question wasn’t stolen — merely “lost.”)
Now, Apple may find some other way to punish the Gizmodo guys (who are fast becoming the Merry Pranksters of tech bloggerdom) — perhaps a different legal route, or it may freeze out Gizmodo in terms of access to Apple reps and review samples. Then again, Apple reportedly had already snubbed Gizmodo by refusing to give it an advance review iPad, so … sounds like Gizmodo’s iPhone scoop may have been sweet revenge for the spurned blog.
And c’mon: Here’s Apple, perhaps the most infamously paranoid company of all time, complete with triple-secret security zones, blackout curtains hung over conference room windows, flashing red warning lights, prototype devices chained to tables, and all that — only to suffer the (arguably) worst security breach in its history because some poor guy left the next iPhone on a barstool. The irony is just too rich.
Of course, this is all inside baseball (albeit a fascinating game of inside baseball); in the end, we’re left with what appears to be an enticing new iPhone, with a revamped design (flat and shiny on the front and back, trim aluminum sides, thinner but a bit heavier), dual cameras (with a front-facing lens for video chat), a bigger battery, and what appears to be a higher-resolution display. The design may change between now and the final shipping date — after all, the phone Gizmodo snagged may only have been a prototype — but still, there’s little question that the iPhone as we know it is poised for some big changes.

Apple today released via the iPhone Dev Center its second beta version of iPhone OS 4 and the associated Software Development Kit (SDK) for developers to use in creating and updating applications. The initial versions of iPhone OS 4 and the SDK were released earlier this month alongside Apple’s media event to introduce the features of the next-generation operating system.
iPhone OS 4 will bring a number of new features, including various services supporting multitasking, email enhancements, and greater access for third-party application to built-iPhone functions such as calendars, photos, and camera controls. In all, Apple notes that iPhone OS 4 brings over 1,500 new APIs for developers to use in their applications.
Apple is expected to publicly release iPhone OS 4 to iPhone and iPod touch users “this summer”, although early models of those devices will not be compatible with the new OS and even some newer models will not be able to take advantage of all of the features. iPhone OS 4 will come to the iPad “in the fall”.

Apple has updated their online store to reveal that the 3G version of the iPad will begin shipping by May 7th. Apple launched the Wi-Fi version of the iPad on April 3th in the U.S. The company has reported that they have sold over 500,000 iPads since that time and have subsequently delayed the international iPad launch until the end of May.
The May 7th date appears to be for new iPad 3G orders as those who have pre-ordered the 3G model were promised delivery by late April. Several readers who pre-ordered the 3G iPads note that their order statuses still indicate a “late April” delivery.
Update: Apple has also sent out emails to those who pre-ordered 3G models, reassuring them that their orders will ship in late April.
Thank you for your recent order of the magical and revolutionary iPad 3G.
We would like to confirm that your order will be shipped in late April as communicated at the time you placed your order. You will receive a confirmation notice when your order has shipped.
You can get up-to-date information about your order, including shipping status and tracking number, at http://www.apple.com/orderstatus

Seems more people are becoming convinced that the iPhone 4G images leaked by Engadget over the weekend are indeed legitimate. In fact, the report that the pictured product is actually a Japanese counterfeit has been retracted and was itself a false claim.
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber now believes the images are real and that the next generation iPhone looks like the images depicted. Gruber also adds a detail that he has heard that the new iPhones will have a “fancy glass” back.
Multiple sources familiar with the next iPhone have confirmed to me that the back is made out of some sort of fancy glass — and looks pretty much exactly what’s pictured at Engadget. That’s not the only reason I believe Engadget’s unit is legit, but it?s one.
He points to a 2006 Apple patent application which describes the use of Zirconia as a durable and radio-transparent material that might be used.
A portable computing device capable of wireless communications, the portable computing device comprising: an enclosure that surrounds and protects the internal operational components of the portable computing device, the enclosure including a structural wall formed from a ceramic material that permits wireless communications through.
Now, if you do believe that these images do represent the next generation iPhone, one interesting detail noted by an Engadget commenter is that it appears to allow for a user removable battery.

You’d think iPads might be banned by schools because they distract students, but George Washington University and Princeton University have both put the kibosh on them because their Wi-Fi networks are way overloaded since the launch.
Bandwidth overload is a problem we’ve all encountered, but you’ve got to really feel sorry for those students trying to access internet—for proper school reasons—from their laptops, but are booted off because all their peers have now got ‘Pads.
Princeton University has blocked around 20 per cent of iPads from being able to access the network, and George Washington doesn’t support any Apple products, apparently. Cornell University’s information-technology director Steve Schuster said they had similar problems when the iPhone launched, but is “working to ensure the iPad does not have devastating consequences to our network.”
This comes after an entire country banned the iPad: Israel has found that the iPad’s Wi-Fi broadcasting works at higher levels than is normally accepted in Israel.
Commenter Cintax has pointed us towards this Princeton report, which explains the problem they have with iPads on campus (22 of the 41 iPads, to be precise) are related to DHCP client malfunctions, which causes interference with other devices.