In terms of market capitalization, Apple has now passed Microsoft, making it the most valuable technology company worldwide. According to the New York Times, “As of Wednesday, Wall Street valued Apple at $222.12 billion and Microsoft at $219.18 billion.” Exxon Mobil, at $278.64 billion, is the only American company valued higher than these two.

There is no doubt that Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Windows 7 will be widely compared, given their similar launch dates. On the Windows side, Windows 7 promises to be what Vista should have been, while also adding a ton of nice features along the way. On the Mac side, Snow Leopard will bring minor user interface improvements with vastly better performance under the hood. However, one thing remains when it comes to comparing the two; who has the better wallpapers? While they are both interesting in their own way, I think they represent a lot about each company.

In the ongoing battle between Microsoft ads and Apple ads, Apple has played their latest cards: Customer Care, Elimination, and PC Choice Chat. Elimination is clearly a direct blow at Microsoft’s Laptop Hunter ads. In this ad, PC has numerous other PCs behind him and a woman is telling PC what she is looking for in her computer. When she mentions that she doesn’t want crashing or viruses, all of the PCs quickly make their way off of the screen. Very clever, Apple.

Although there are already platforms like Dropbox and MobileMe for the Mac when it comes to syncing your data with the cloud, these solutions may not be right for some users. Those people will be happy to know that Microsoft’s Live Mesh platform has now made its way to your Mac OS X machine. All more »

With Bill Gates’ departure from his everyday role at Microsoft having happened over a month ago now, I thought it might be a good time to reflect on what this means for Apple’s relationship with Microsoft, and vice versa.

I think that despite Bill’s obvious place in the Windows-based world, he still has and has always had a certain affinity for the Mac platform and many of Apple’s products. Let’s not forget that Bill was so very involved in software for the original Macintosh, and agreed to form probably Apple’s single most important partnership that, in my opinion, likely saved Apple from going under in the late 90s.

Video and more thoughts after the break.