Yesterday, Apple (AAPL +0.63%) had quite a busy day during its iPad event. Apple unveiled a slew of new products, starting with upgraded Retina MacBook Pros with the latest Intel chips inside. The latest Haswell processors bring much-improved battery life and dramatic improvements with integrated graphics, both of which are highly valued within the notebook market.
Apple also took numerous opportunities to poke at Microsoft (MSFT 0.34%), undermining its rival's pricing strategy with software. Apple made OS X Mavericks and iWork free going forward, which could potentially threaten Windows and Office to some degree. This possible threat is greater for Windows, since the market is slowly moving to a world where consumers expect frequent and low-cost updates. Apple and Google are creating this precedent. It would take quite a long time to topple the Windows empire, if at all, but the possibility is there in the distant future.
With Office, Microsoft has little to worry about from Apple. Office's target market is the enterprise, where Apple has expressed little interest. iWork is very much a consumer productivity offering, so Microsoft can rest easy for now. Google, on the other hand, is targeting the enterprise, but the search giant also charges for its productivity suite.
In this segment of Tech Teardown, Erin Kennedy discusses Apple and Microsoft with Evan Niu, CFA.
