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People forget that just 20 years ago - August 1997 - Apple was on the verge of going under. Microsoft kept them afloat with a massive (at the time) $150M purcha

People forget that just 20 years ago - August 1997 - Apple was on the verge of going under. Microsoft kept them afloat with a massive (at the time) $150M purchase. Microsoft was in the middle of their anti-trust fight so they couldn't afford to lose a "competitor" no matter how absurdly mismatched they were. iMacs, iPods, and eventually iPhones fundamentally changed everything. The economic behemoths regularly change shape, form, and function and others replace them. Believing that we're at the final result of everything seems misguided at best.

sah2ed 9y ago
> Microsoft was in the middle of their anti-trust fight so they couldn't afford to lose a "competitor" no matter how absurdly mismatched they were. That's one possible explanation. I think a much more plausible explanation was that Steve Jobs needed a significant amount of capital infusion to turn-around Apple but he needed the terms to be reasonable, which was why he leveraged on his longstanding friendship with Bill Gates even though they were (unequal) competitors at that time. It's next to impossible to get any form of capital for a dying company, whether debt or equity without having cut-throat clauses included to protect the investors' capital.
- hunterjrj 9y ago
  Jobs had leverage in the form a long-running lawsuit that he agreed to drop in exchange for the investment: "In a remarkable feat of negotiating legerdemain, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs got needed cash — in return for non-voting shares — and an assurance that Microsoft would support Office for the Mac for five years. Apple agreed to drop a long-running lawsuit in which they alleged Microsoft copied the look and feel of the Mac OS for Windows and to make Internet Explorer the default browser on its computers — but not the only choice." https://www.wired.com/2009/08/dayintech_0806/ https://www.wired.com/2009/08/dayintech_0806/

sah2ed 9y ago

> Microsoft was in the middle of their anti-trust fight so they couldn't afford to lose a "competitor" no matter how absurdly mismatched they were. That's one possible explanation. I think a much more plausible explanation was that Steve Jobs needed a significant amount of capital infusion to turn-around Apple but he needed the terms to be reasonable, which was why he leveraged on his longstanding friendship with Bill Gates even though they were (unequal) competitors at that time. It's next to impossible to get any form of capital for a dying company, whether debt or equity without having cut-throat clauses included to protect the investors' capital.

hunterjrj 9y ago
Jobs had leverage in the form a long-running lawsuit that he agreed to drop in exchange for the investment: "In a remarkable feat of negotiating legerdemain, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs got needed cash — in return for non-voting shares — and an assurance that Microsoft would support Office for the Mac for five years. Apple agreed to drop a long-running lawsuit in which they alleged Microsoft copied the look and feel of the Mac OS for Windows and to make Internet Explorer the default browser on its computers — but not the only choice." https://www.wired.com/2009/08/dayintech_0806/ https://www.wired.com/2009/08/dayintech_0806/