Case study: How Apple and Microsoft became rivals?

The decades-long relationship between Apple and Microsoft is packed with ups and
downs, but it also shaped the evolution of personal computing. The companies have
again cozied up to one another, and this time they have a new endgame: enterprise.
A little bit of history…
The on-again, off-again relationship between Apple and Microsoft began in earnest
in the late 1970s, during the dawn of the PC era. The hot and cold periods were
often tied to the personalities of the companies' founders and long-time leaders:
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Today, Apple and Microsoft are much different
companies, with new leaders who don't lug along the baggage that comes as a result
of nearly 40 years of fierce competition.

The following events, from periods of harmony and acrimony alike, define the long,
rocky relationship between the two modern-day technology giants.
Youthful innocence of the early '80s
During the first Macintosh's development and early years of production, Microsoft
was a critical Apple ally. The software pioneer created important programs for
Apple's PC in the early '80s. "We had more people working on the Mac than [Jobs]
did," Gates said of the early years, according to Walter Isaacson's biography, Steve
Jobs.
At an Apple event in 1983, Gates told attendees Microsoft expected to earn half of its
revenues selling Macintosh software the following year. And when Jobs asked Gates
if he thought Mac would become another standard in personal computing, Gates
praised the platform: "To create a new standard it takes something that's not just a
little bit different, it takes something that's really new and really captures people's
attention. And the Macintosh, of all the machines I've seen, is the only one that
meets that standard."

Isaacson's book also detailed just how quickly the relationship between the two
companies soured when they started to develop competing OS software with
graphical interfaces. Jobs lashed out at Gates during a meeting later that same year
and equated Microsoft's plans for Windows to theft. (Xerox PARC originally
developed graphical interfaces, not Apple, but for Jobs that was beside the point.)

Isaacson also described the Microsoft founder's response to Jobs's accusations.

"Gates just sat there coolly, looking Steve in the eye, before hurling back, in his
squeaky voice, what became a classic zinger. 'Well, Steve, I think there's more than
one way of looking at it. I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named
Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had
already stolen it.'"
12 years of Apple without Jobs
Before the end of 1985, Windows 1.0 was released, and Jobs was ousted from
Apple, the company he founded nine years earlier. Microsoft then went on to
dominate the PC industry while Jobs founded NeXT, where he spent the following 12
years building computer workstations for higher education and business.
Jobs didn't pry significant market share away from Microsoft during his time with
NeXT, but he did continue to regularly lob insults at Microsoft. "The only problem
with Microsoft is they just have no taste," Jobs said in the 1996 "Triumph of the
Nerds" TV documentary. "They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a
small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original
ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products,"
Jobs also said Microsoft's applications for Mac were "terrible" and called the
company's products "third rate." He eventually spoke to The New York Times about
the documentary and his decision to call Gates and apologize for his comments, but
his statement felt disingenuous. "I told him I believed every word of what I'd said but
that I never should have said it in public," Jobs told the newspaper.
An awkward period of harmony
When Apple acquired NeXT in 1997 and brought Steve Jobs back into the fold, the
company was in disarray amid growing uncertainty about the future of Microsoft
Office for Mac. During his keynote address at the Macworld Expo that year, Jobs
extolled the virtues of partnering with industry leaders and spoke of the need to
improve Apple's partner relations.
Jobs suggested Apple needed help from others and that destructive relationships
weren't helping any tech companies. Then he announced a new pact between Apple
and Microsoft, which was received with a chorus of boos from the audience.
The previously unimaginable deal had many components, including a perpetual
cross license for all existing patents and patents issued during the next five years; IE
became the default browser on Mac; Microsoft said it would release Office for Mac
for the next five years; and Gates's company invested $150 million in Apple.

"Microsoft is going to be part of the game with us as we restore this company back to
health," Jobs said before asking Gates to address the crowd via satellite. The
"kumbaya moment" continued when Gates told attendees that some of the most
exciting work of his career was done with Jobs on the Mac.
"We think Apple makes a huge contribution to the computer industry," Gates said.
"We think it's going to be a lot of fun helping out."
When Gates finished and the attendees' collective blood pressure dropped, Jobs
tried to frame the deal in a way Mac users and Apple fans could appreciate. "We
need all the help we can get. If we screw up and we don't do a good job, it's not
somebody else's fault, it's our fault," Jobs said. "I think if we want Microsoft Office on
the Mac we better treat the company that puts it out with a little bit of gratitude. We
like their software. The era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and
Microsoft is over as far as I'm concerned."
However, history hinted at what was to come, as Apple inched toward dominance
and eventually overtook Microsoft in the computing market by 2010.
A full decade at odds
By the mid-2000s, Jobs had returned to his old ways, and he chastised Microsoft for
"copying Google and Apple" despite having a $5 billion annual research and
development budget.

A seminal moment occurred in 2007 when Gates and Jobs jointly took the stage for
an interview at the D5 conference. The appearance is considered one of the most
significant moments in the history of technology. But before the panel with Gates,
Jobs couldn't resist taking a jab at Microsoft during a one-on-one interview with
journalist Walt Mossberg. "We've got cards and letters from lots of people that say
iTunes is their favorite app on Windows," Jobs said. "It's like giving a glass of ice
water to somebody in hell."
Later, the joint interview kicked off with a question about the companies'
contributions to the PC and technology industries. Jobs leaned forward, scratched
his head, and said: "Bill built the first software company in the industry … Bill was
really focused on software really before anybody else had a clue it was the
software."
Gates offer clear praise in his response. "What Steve's done is quite phenomenal,"
he said.
Jobs warmed up eventually and acknowledged the long, rocky relationship between
the two men when asked to describe the their greatest misunderstanding. "I think of
most things in life as either a Bob Dylan or a Beatles song, but there's that one line in
that one Beatles song — 'You and I have memories longer than the road that
stretches out ahead' — and that's clearly very true here," he said.

Opportunities in enterprise rekindle old flames

A new era of partnership buoyed by opportunities in the enterprise blossomed during

the past couple years. With new leaders at the helm of both companies came an end
to the insults and grandstanding … for now, at least. The past month saw three
separate events that demonstrate the companies' new commitment to compromise
and combined efforts.

At Apple's September 2015 new product event in San Francisco, the company
invited a Microsoft executive on stage to demonstrate Office 365 apps working in
split-screen mode on an iPad Pro. At Salesforce's Dreamforce conference a week
later, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella demoed the company's iOS apps on an iPhone.
And finally, during a keynote at cloud-storage company Box's BoxWorks conference
in late September, when asked about the company's renewed relationship with
Microsoft Apple CEO Tim Cook said he doesn't believe in holding grudges.

Microsoft's surprise on-stage presence at an Apple product event showed just how
cordial relations have become between the two tech giants. When Nadella used an
iPhone on stage at Dreamforce, he acknowledged such a thing would have been
unheard of in the past but also used the opportunity to pump up his own company. "I
like to call it the iPhone Pro because it has all the Microsoft software and
applications on it … It's pretty amazing."

Copyright case study: Apple Vs Microsoft

The battle between these tech giants started with a simple question: who invented
the graphical user interface (GUI)? The company that controls the interface of the
next major operating system will have the ability to set the standards for application
software, so it’s unsurprising that Apple tried to stop Windows from becoming a
major operating system.
It seemed that although Microsoft helped develop Macintosh, Jean-Louis Gassée,
who had taken over from Steve Jobs at the time, refused to allow Microsoft to use
their software. Bill Gates pressed on nonetheless, deciding to add in features of its
own to early prototypes of the Macintosh.
When Gassée noted the software, he was enraged. However, he didn’t want a
lawsuit, and ended up agreeing to license the Mac’s visual displays. But Windows
2.0 turned out to be almost identical, and Gassée believed it to be a breach of
contract, only having allowed their software to be used for 1.0 and not future
versions.
So, without warning, Apple filed a lawsuit against Microsoft in 1988. Apple’s case
included 189 contested visual displays that violated its copyright. This led to a six-
year long battle.
In 1989, the court ruled that 179 of the 189 disputed displays were covered by the
existing license. Furthermore, the other ten were not violations of Apple’s copyright
due to the merger doctrine, where the idea–expression divide limits the scope of
copyright protection by differentiating an idea from the manifestation of that idea.
The lawsuit was decided in Microsoft’s favor on August 24, 1993.
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Such friendly exchanges between frequent foes might never have taken place if not
for the opportunities both companies see in the business market. Apple's new pursuit
of enterprise, paired with Nadella's penchant for a partnership-friendly corporate
culture, let this new relationship flourish.

"If you think back in time, Apple and IBM were foes. Apple and Microsoft were foes,"
Cook said at BoxWorks. "Apple and Microsoft still compete today, but frankly Apple
and Microsoft can partner on more things than we could compete on, and that's what
the customer wants."

Apple and Microsoft might not ultimately share the same sentiment on the consumer
side of things, but the leaders of both companies determined the enterprise is an
area in which they want to cooperate and better cater to customers. However,
nothing in the enterprise is ever a sprint, and the hatchets will need to remain buried
for years to come if the two companies hope to realize the fruits of their collective
labor.