1. Apple and Microsoft
Frenemies since: 1977, when a tiny software company called Microsoft provided the BASIC programming language for a new computer called the Apple II.
Acts of friendship: Microsoft enthusiastically embraced the Mac when it was released in 1984–Bill Gates raved about it in public and Microsoft apps such as the at-first-Mac-only Excel gave Apple an important boost. And then there’s the legendary Microsoft bailout of Apple in 1997, shortly after Steve Jobs’ return to the company he co-founded. (At the only Macworld Expo keynote ever to provoke boos from the audience, Jobs and Bill Gates explained that Microsoft was investing $150 million in the still-sickly Apple, promising to continue development of Office for the Mac, and supplying Internet Explorer as the Mac’s default Web browser.) Did I mention the famously chummy onstage appearance of Gates and Jobs at the 2007 D conference?
Acts of enmity: Geez, where do we start? Steve Jobs accused Bill Gates of ripping off the Mac even before the Mac shipped; Gates in turn compared Jobs to a guy who stole a TV set (ie, Xerox’s ideas about user interfaces) and was pissed at another thief who arrived on the scene a little too late. In 1988, Apple sued Microsoft for violating its Mac-related copyrights (the two companies eventually settled). In the 1996 PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds, Jobs said “The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste.” Steve Ballmer greeted the debut of the iPhone last year with guffaws of disbelief. The two companies’ current ad campaigns have devolved into snippy, self-referential commentary on each others’ misdeeds. I could go on.
Current state of the frenemyship: Same as it ever was. For more than thirty years now, these two companies have engaged in this weird, tense, ultimately mutually beneficial tango. If it ever ends, the tech world won’t be anywhere near as much fun.
Okay, now it’s your turn: Please tell me about the tech frenemy relationships that don’t appear here, but should have. There are lots of them, I know…
(Image from TIME archive.)
December 11th, 2008 at 6:05 am
Great list, I enjoyed that, thanks. ;-)
December 11th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Great job on this, Harry. Many of us have lived through the stuff you’ve written about here, but were we really paying attention? On some levels, yes, but we all tend to be revisionist historians to a certain degree. With this article you’ve put a stake in the ground. Would love to see you do a periodic update on the same 12 — maybe adding or deleting as new frenemies develop or others lose pertinence.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
What about nVidia and AMD? It seems like that’s a big one.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Great article!
December 18th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Frenemies—- are they not just competitors? OR two persons/entities that have a mutual love hate relationship that shift from one end of teh spectrum to another….
December 23rd, 2008 at 1:03 am
Wow. Microsoft has many enemies.
December 30th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Not to be a grammar policeman, but it seems you spelled “enmity” wrong.
Oh, well. Pretty awesome article. That there are six pages containing Microsoft relationships says something….
May 4th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Wow, I immensely enjoyed this list. Microsoft leads the ranks with enemies on almost both ends of the list.
I’m missing the iFruad producers vs Apple on the list though. :P
http://kixtrix.com
May 8th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Microsoft and Nintendo! While it may not be cpu-based, nintendo helped microsoft get going with the xbox, which then completely left nintendo to branch out their own and is now nintendo’s biggest opponent (sorry sony). Not to mention how nintendo is so bitchy about making sure that nobody but themselves and add programs and games to their consoles, so there isn’t a nintendo game on the xbox and vise versa. And, Gates has famously said quote, “”There’s room for innovation (on the wii), but moving that controller around — it’s something that’s not mainstream for most games.” Who knows? Maybe Gates will give in to 114,000,000 dollars a year of motion-sensitivity and make a motion-sensitive Halo. YES.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:01 am
You forgot Google and Mozilla, google has always been a big but quiet supporter of firefox, and then they release Chrome…
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November 4th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Great article!I enjoyed that, thanks. ;-)