APPLE VS MICROSOFT

APPLE

Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and manufactures consumer electronics and computer software products. The company's best-known hardware products include Macintosh computers, the iPod, and the iPhone. Apple software includes the Mac OS X operating system, the iTunes media browser, the iLife suite of multimedia and creativity software, the iWork suite of productivity software, Final Cut Studio, a suite of professional audio and film-industry software products, and Logic Studio, a suite of audio tools.

MICROSOFT

Microsoft Corporation is a multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices.[8] Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, its most profitable products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software.

THE BATTLE

The two giants pride themselves for producing cutting edge consumer and business products, and are leading the developments in software and hardware.
But what about their websites? How do they both compare, and more important, which one is better and more usable?

Well, in this article we’ll take a look at both websites for closer examination from a usability point of view.
One important thing to note before we proceed to compare these two websites is that each company’s business revolves around different markets.
Microsoft primarily makes its profits from business to business, which mainly consists of selling licenses to its operating system to computer manufacturers and office suites for enterprises.
That’s not to say that they don’t sell to consumers — they do, and they have consumer only product lines as well, such as the Xbox gaming console, and of course home users also buy Windows and Office. This means that their business targets pretty much everyone, from home computer owners to developers and enterprises; which in turn stretches the purpose of their website to try and serve everyone.
On the other hand, Apple is primarily a consumer company, and makes most of its profit selling hardware, like its iPod music players and Mac computers. This makes the target of Apple’s site much clearer — marketing, selling and providing support for its products to consumers.
They don’t have to worry about selling licenses to manufacturers because they’re the only manufacturer, so the key purpose of the website would be to advertise and promote their multiple product lines, as well as selling them through their online store.