Microsoft is a symbol of its 50th anniversary today, during which it has been one of Apple’s longest and most vigorous contestants.
Microsoft was established on April 4, 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Alan, starting as a software company, developing a basic interpreter for Altair 8800. It quickly becomes central for individual computing revolution, in which through its initial cooperation with Apple, where Apple licensed the origin of Microsoft for Apple II in 1977.
The most important initial participation of Microsoft with Apple took place with the development of applications for the original Macintosh, which included Word and Excel, which helped MAC legalize as productivity tools. The 1985 launch of Microsoft Windows, which featured a graphical user interface similar to Macintosh, inspired the allegations from Apple that Microsoft had mimicked the key elements of their design.
Reputations from upcoming legal and public disputes will be defined for years. In 1988, Apple filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, claiming violation of its Macintosh GUI, which eventually lost.
Despite rivalry, Microsoft invested $ 150 million in Apple in 1997 when the company was in financial crisis after years of decline in market share and internal misunderstandings. As part of the agreement, Microsoft committed to continue the continuous development of the office for Mac and to create a default browser on the Internet Explorer on Macintosh System. During his keynote speaker in 1997, McWorld Boston, Steve Jobs announced the deal and said:
We have to let the notion go that to win Apple, Microsoft will have to lose. We need to embrace a perception that to win Apple, Apple has a really good job.
In the 2000s and early 2010, Microsoft and Apple continued to compete on several fronts with operating systems, productivity software, mobile devices and later, cloud services. Apple’s resurrection under jobs was inspired by the success of IMAC, iPod, iPhone and iPad, while Microsoft was struggling to get traction with mobile devices such as Windows phones and surfaces. Apple has developed an option for Microsoft products, including Iwork, but Microsoft Office is prevalent and plays an important role on Apple devices including Vision Pro.
Today, both companies are prominent in their ecosystems. Microsoft’s software focuses on licensing, large-scale business usage-melas, and Azure with Azure, now focuses on cloud computing with a business model that makes consumer-support products, hardware-software integration and user’s emphasis on user experience rapidly opposite.
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