Microsoft and Apple

A Profile on the Two Tech Giants

Gerona, Mara Czareanah B. 2/21/2012

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I. History (Humble Beginnings) Microsoft

1975 Probably most people think that Microsoft was founded only by Bill Gates, but in fact, it was founded by two people namely, Paul Allen and Bill Gates. They formed the company in 1975. The Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS) was the first software of the company. They hired a former classmate from Harvard to help them run Microsoft. They were approached by IM for a project named Chess and this is when they decided to focus on the operating system. An operating system is the software which manages a computer. The MS-DOS was distributed in 1981, but people generally found it difficult to use. 1982-1985 These were the years when Microsoft worked on the first version of their operating system. Interface Manager is supposed to be the code name and final name for the operating system, but in the end Windows was used because it best describes the creation. Windows was announced in 1983, but it took quite a while for it to be released. It was released on November 10, 1985 and is called the Windows 1.0. It is easier to use compared to MSDOS because you just move a mouse to point and click your way through screens, or windows. (Microsoft, 2012) 1987 Windows 2.0 was released and this included desktop icons, as well as, expanded memory. New software for Windows by other developers were can also be used in Windows 2.0. Windows 2.0 has better layout, graphics and speed. It was also designed for the Intel 286 processor. Also, the Control Panel first came out in this version of windows.
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1988 Based on their sales, Microsoft became the largest PC software company and it gradually became part of daily office life for some.

1990-1992 Windows 3.0 was released in 1990 and was followed by Windows 3.1 in 1992. These two were able to sell 10 million copies in two years. The features of Windows increased and it got better, including the graphics and the programs. This was also the time where floppy discs were installed. Around this time, there was also the release of the Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) which helped developers on writing programs. Domain networking support and peer-to-peer groups domain networking was also introduced during this time. After this, Windows NT was released and is is a 32-bit operating system, which makes it a strategic business platform that supports highend engineering and scientific programs. (Windows, 2012) 1993 In 1993, there became the first Microsoft internet Site. It was named gowinnt.microsoft.com and was later changed to ftp.microsoft.com, to better map with Internet naming conventions. In 1994, they wanted to expand and they did because they had very good feedback and requests from others. 1995 In 1995, they release Windows 95 which sold 7 million copies in just a little over a month. This was the time when the online world was introduced and a lot more media games and software. Faxes, modems, e-mail started becoming popular at this time. Windows 95 had internet support, dial-up networking and features for computing and networking. This is also when the Start menu, taskbar, minimize, maximize and close buttons were introduced. It was also in 1995 when the first version of the Internet Explorer was released. Windows 98, Me and 2000

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Windows 98 was released in 1998 and it was designed for consumers. Improvements such as speed, reading of DVD discs and USB devices were added. The Quick Launch Bar also first appeared in this version of Windows. This was the last version of Window which was based on the MS- DOS Windows Me was designed for use at home. It included improvements on music, video andhome networking. Other new appearances include Windows Movie Maker, System Restore, and Media Player 7. Windows 2000 Professional is designed to replace the Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT for business. The improvements in this software include the Plug and Play hardware, advanced networking and wireless products, USB devices, IEEE 1394 devices, and infrared devices. Windows XP In Windows XP, there has become more awareness on computer viruses and hackers and it had security updates as well as a help and support section. Is is also desigened for home use. It had enhancements in: Network Setup Wizard, Windows Media Player,Windows Movie Maker, and enhanced digital photo capabilities. Windows XP had several editions, including: Windows XP 64-bit Edition (2001) for large amounts of memory, Windows XP Media Center Edition (2002) for computing and entertainment and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition (2002) for pan-based computing. Windows Vista and Windows 7 It was released with the strongest security system. It provides better security and you can watch television. It also has a better designed compared to other versions of Windows. Windows 7 was released in 2009 and it paid attention to wireless features. Through Windows 7, wireless networks can be created at the office or at home. It has a lot of new features such as the Snap, Peek, and Shake.

Apple
1976 Apple was founded by Steven Wozniak and Steve Jobs. They were both drop-outs. Steve Wozniak was the one who made the design for the first
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ever Apple Computer which was later named as the Apple I in 1976. Steve Jobs was the person who convinced Wozniak to form a company together. To describe their partnership, at first Wozniak, a self-taught electronics engineer, and before working on the Apple I, built boxes which made him enabled him to make long-distance phone calls for free. The two were able to sell a lot of these so called boxes. The Apple I was generally designed for computer hobbyists. A local retailer ordered about a 50 pieces of the Apple I and it sold for $666. At first they were also made in the garage of Steve Jobs.

1977 In 1977, Apple II was created and after a year came the Apple III. In the beginning, the company employed a couple of thousand workers. This is how the now extremely famous Apple Incorporated began. Apple Computers were referred to as Mac and the computer had features such as the trash can, The early Macs user-friendly interface, with such features as the trash can, windows, drag-and-drop file move ability, and plug-in-and-play compatibility. While working on the Apple II, Jobs wanted to create a larger company which is why he consulted with Mike Markkula. Markkula managed marketing for Intel Corporation and Fairchild Semiconductor in the past. Markkula then bought one-third of the company for $250,000, and he helped with the planning of the business. In 1977, they also hired Mike Scott as the president and Wozniak started to work full-time. For the advertising, Jobs hired Regis McKenna for it and they came up with the Apple logo. By 1977, Apple became available in retail stores all thanks to the marketing team. Apple II stored information on cassette tapes, and were sort of slow. 1978-1979 By 1978, Apple was becoming successful and popular among consumers. It became one of the fastest growing companies in 1978. Apple II+ was released in 1979 and it had better memory, easier start
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up and a printer which was called the Silentype. They sold over 35,000 computers in 1978. 1980 -1983 In 1980, Apple Foltran was released and this was the time the company went public. Apple III was also released and it was well received but many units were found to be defective and soon the production was discontinued. Because of the problems, Mike Scott decided to lay off employees in 1981. Jobs disagreed and later on Markkula became president and Jobs chairman. Scott decided to leave the firm. During these years Apple also lost its position as chief supplier of personal computers in Europe to IBM. They tried to make up for it through Lisa, which had the mouse. However, Lisa wasnt that successful. Macintosh It was seen as the future of the company, because Lisa didnt sell well. It was designed as a peoples computer. In order to promote Macintosh, they advertised in a way where they offered people the chance to take a Macintosh home for 24 hours. More than 200,000 people decided to try it. Because of the success, Apple released more products for the Macintosh. They also released laser-printers and hard drives. However, Macintosh proved only to be successful at first, so Apple experienced problems after a while. In 1985, because of internal problems and management problems, Jobs wanted to oust a member of the company, Sculley, but it backfired and he had to leave the company instead. The company experienced a lot of losses after that and had problems, such as the lawsuit with Microsoft, shortage of memory chips and other things. When Jobs decided to leave the company, he established his own company called NeXT. In December 1996, Apple paid $377 million for NeXT because of the problems. Jobs was hired as special advisor because their stocks were dropping. He returned after about 12 years of leaving. In 1997 Jobs was named as the interim chief executive officer and the recovery of the company came after months. Upon his appointment, he stopped the licensing agreement that spawned Apple clones. He also withdrew Apple's involvement in making printers, scanners, portable digital assistants, and other peripherals. Starting 1997, Apple focused only on desktop and portable Macintoshes
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professional and consumer use. Jobs laid off thousands of workers. He laslo sold stock to Microsoft Corporation. In 1998, Jobs released iMAC which became a success. In 1990, Jobs, was back to its former self and continued rising in 1999.

II.Driving Force (Gates, Jobs) & Competition between Gates & Jobs
It can be inferred that the competition between Apple and Microsoft is really because of the approaches of the two leaders of the companies. In the past, they had a good relationship, even making business transactions together, collaborating and appearing in interviews together. In the past, Bill Gates was the most important partner in software for Apple. Jobs even invited Gates for the preview of the Mac. Gates also praised Apple for being able to capture the imagination of people. However the way both companies were developed turned into a sort of competition. Nonetheless, Microsoft continued to make software for Apple such as Microsoft Windows Office for Mac. Microsoft came a year before Apple came out. At the start Apple even depended on Microsoft to develop their products. But in 1988 Apple sued Microsoft for copyright issues and for copying the look of their operating system. Also, the fact that Apple was almost dead a decade ago seems to have surpassed or equaled the success of Microsoft today. They both brought computers to the masses. Also, they are both very popular and are regarded as celebrities. Both of them were the first to create the first computers and the first to mass produce them. However, the rivalry really came out when Steve Jobs commented that Microsoft had no taste during the launch of Windows 95. He was then not part of Apple because he had quit and strated his own company called NeXT. He referred to Microsoft as unoriginal and this worsened their relationship with one another. The ties between the two companies only returned to normal when Jobs returned to Apple and made negotiations and affiliations with Microsoft to ask for support for Apple during its troubled times.
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Even though they may seem bitter about each other, especially with each of the companys success, it is safe to say that both companies respect the achievement of each other.

III. Best Work/Services/Products (Current) and pics, links, video clips/demo Microsoft
Skydrive Skydrive is one of the best services that you get when you make a windows live account or a hotmail account. In Windows Skydrive, you are given 25 GB space online where you can store files such as pictures, word documents or videos. You can make folders and you can make them public or private. Microsoft Office Microsoft Office is clearly one of the best software created by Windows because it is great for office, school or personal use. In mirosoft office, you get access, excel, power point, word, groove, infopath, outlook, and publisher. In Microsoft office you can practically write or create anything from papers to presentations to birthday cards. It is clearly the best hoe office currently in the market. It is also the most user friendly. Movie Maker Windows Movie Maker is great because it is user-friendly, and it has tools to import, edit, manage, and share your digital home videos. You can also edit High-Definition videos in it. It is best for someone who is new to video editing and it has built in features which you can easily use and add to your videos. Windows 7 Windows 7 has generally the best feedback and was the latest and greatest creation of Microsoft. It provides a user friendly interface
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and has a cleaner design, and smoother operation. The taskbar is also arranged differently, automatically resizes windows and a revamped media center. It is the fastest, it is more responsive. Its processor can also manage heavy tasks such as copying of files, downloading and the converting of files.

Apple

iMac iMac wasnt expected by the consumers, and yet it was the computer that brought back the company of Apple. Ipod - iPad 2 The iPod is the product that turn into a mass-market electronics giant. And now they have created the iPad 2. It is generally the best product that came out from the iPod line yet. It was a great tablet. It had a long battery life, was available in 2 colors and was perfect for watching and gaming. It was also thinner. Its great for storing books, watching movies and playing games. It is also useful for making presentations and for viewing documents.

OS X Lion It is currently the best operating system created by Apple. The desktop is created similar to the iPod touch and iPad. It has multitouch gestures, full screen apps, mission control, launch pad, resume, autosave, air drop, iCloud, and the Lion Server which can all be seen here: http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/

Macbook Air The Macbook Air really lives up to the name of portable. And it literally made laptops portable. Macbook made it possible to carry on a lot of features in a thin laptop such as long battery life and a lot of programs and freatures.

Iphone 4S One of the most sought after mobile phones in the market. It has Siri. It also has the incredible 8 MP camera, has zoom and is a world phone. It is currently the most advanced smartphone by having the best software and the only mobile phone to have Siri.

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IV. Future Development Plans Microsoft expanding in Japan and education
In 2008, Microsoft really planned on using its future work on learning and education. They want to explore education by looking at work through examining educators, learners and administrators. They plan to do this through creating, synthesizing, sharing, absorbing and managing information. They want software to become commercially available to solve problems in learning and to generate ideas and knowledge without the usual educational methods. (Rasmus, 2008) Today, Microsoft if still concentrating on education, but it has expanded on other aspects as well. It has expanded on the gaming business such as the Xbox360 and it want to bring the Xbox to Japan. Microsfot plans to expand in Japan with gaming and it also plans on exploring touch-based computing anywhere and everywhere. From touch-based computing they also plan on developing 3D graphics. Currently, Microsoft is trying to bring Xbox 360 to Japan and their sales are focused on the Kinect for the past year.

Apple A Greener Apple

Apple has been criticized for using chemicals on their products and for not properly recycling the past products that they have created. Now, Apple plans on addressing environmental issues such as removing the toxic chamicals such as lead in their products and recycling through the use of E-waste. They also plan on focusing on the energy efficiency of their products, even measuring the carbon footprint of their products starting this year. Apple plans on continuing to create electronic products with the environment in mind, hoping to be and environmental leader as well someday. With the passing away of Steve Jobs, Apple has future product plans. There has been a speculation the he left 4 years plan for the future of the Apple product and some of these products include the rumoured such as the Apple iTV, a Video Game Platform, Touch and 3D Data Input.
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V. Social Issues (specific court cases)

The most popular court of Apple and Microsoft is probably the case between the two which involved copyright and licensing issues. However both companies had their share of court cases which dealt with court cases as well.

Microsoft
The was a case filed by the European Union or the Microsoft in 1993. It also claimed that Microsoft was blocking its other competitors from the market through unacceptable methods. In 1994, Microsoft reached a settlement. But in 1998, Sun Microsystems filed another case about Microsoft not have enough disclosures regarding its products. Another court case similar to the EU case was labeled as the United States versus Microsoft. This was filed against Microsoft saying that Microsoft was abusing their power as a monopoly because every person or ever consumer who bought their computers automatically had Internet Explorer in it and it said that it was hard to download other browsers. It made them the winner among other browsers because it generally restricted the other consumers from downloading other browsers. This case happened in 1998. In 2001, Microsoft settled the case, allowing it to share its application programming interfaces with other companies.

Apple
Think secret lawsuit
This is a court case where Apple filed a lawsuit against John Does or unknown people for leaking out their information. Apple filed a lot of cases against other companies, ofter regarding copyright issues. This included cases against Franklin Computer Corp., OdioWorks, eMachines, Creative Technology, HTC, and Samsung. Kodak however also filed a case against Apple on copyright against their digital imaging technology.

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Currently, the latest social issue which reached a lot of media attention aside from the criticism about Apple not being environment friendly was when news about employee suicides came out. An employee who allegedly lost a prototype for an iPhone was interrogated and beaten up which is illegal under both the US law and Chinese law. This issue was investigated and later on employees had to sign contracts that they would not kill themselves. Both Microsoft and Apple have filed lawsuits against Samsungs Android OS, which dealt with copyright issues again.

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References:
Mobiledia. Microsoft, Apple mount legal attack on Android. Retrieved February 18 2012 from http://www.mobiledia.com/news/121594.html Malone, A. (2010). Revealed: Inside the Chinese suicide sweatshop where workers toil in 34-hour shifts to make your iPod. Retrieved February 18, 2012 from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285980/Revealed-InsideChinese-suicide-sweatshop-workers-toil-34-hour-shifts-makeiPod.html#ixzz1mpoWFCmD IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. Retrieved February 18, 2012 from http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm Backgrounder: Microsofts Competition Case in Europe. (2007). Retrieved February 18, 2012 from http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/legal /european/EU_Competition_Overview.mspx Apple. A Greener Apple. Retrieved February 18, 2012 from http://www.apple.com/hotnews/agreenerapple/

Gruener, W. (2011). 3 Apple Products For The Future Without Steve Jobs Retrieved January 18, 2102 from http://www.tomsguide.com/us/apple-tv-ios-valvesteam-video-game-3d,news-12887.html Warren, T. (2011). Microsofts future vision ranked most shared video of the week. Retrieved February 18 from http://www.winrumors.com/microsoftsfuture-vision-ranked-most-shared-video-of-the-week/. Gifford, K. (2011). Microsoft Outline Future Plans in Japan. Retrieved February 18, 2012 from http://www.1up.com/news/microsoft-outlines-future-plans-japan

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Hachman, M. (2010). Microsoft Shows Off Future Product Tech at R&D Day. Retrieved February 19, 2012 from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2363500,00.asp Rasmus, D. (2008). Scenario Planning and the Future of Education. Retrieved February 18, 2012 from http://www.microsoft.com/education/highered/whitep apers/scenario/ScenarioPlanning.aspx Halliday, J. (2011). Apples top 10 products. Retrieved February 18, 2012 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/06/apple-top-10-products. Brownlee, J. (2011). Here Are The Top Apple Products Of 2011, Now Choose The Best [Best Of 2011]. Retrieved February 18, 2012 from http://www.cultofmac.com/136837/here-are-the-top-apple-products-of2011-now-choose-the-best-best-of-2011/ Apple Computer, Inc. (n.d.). Retrieved February 18 , 2012, from http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Apple-Computer-IncCompany-History.html Applehistory.com. (n.d.). Retrieved February 18 , 2012 , from n.d.: http://thescreamonline.com/technology/applehistory/applehistory.html Ballmer: And Microsofts main competitors are. (n.d.). Retrieved February 18, 2012, from Seattlepi : http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2010/06/03/ballmerand-microsofts-main-competitors-are/ Chen, B. (2009, October 22). Lucky No. 7 Is Microsoft's Best Windows Yet. Retrieved February 18, 2012 , from Wired : http://www.wired.com/reviews/2009/10/pr_win7/ Dernbach, C. (n.d.). Microsofts Relationship with Apple. Retrieved February 18 , 2012 , from Mac History : http://www.mac-history.net/apple/2011-0130/microsofts-relationship-with-apple Kramer, D. (1999). A Brief History on Microsoft on the Web . Retrieved February 18 , 2012, from Flashback: http://www.microsoft.com/misc/features/features_flshbk.htm

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Mankami, Y. (2010 , July 3). Top 10 Free Microsoft Products Worth Checking Out. Retrieved February 18 , 2012, from Save Delete : http://savedelete.com/top-10-free-microsoft-products-worth-checking-out.html Microsoft . ((n.d.)). Entertainment . Retrieved February 18, 2012, from http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windowsvista/products/features/entertainment Miric, J. (2012 , January 26 ). Steve Jobs and Bill Gates rivalry explained Fire vs Water. Retrieved February 18, 2012 , from http://www.oceen.com/2012/01/26/steve-jobs-and-bill-gates-rivalry-explainedwater-vs-fire/ Palsule, M. (2010, January 26). The Top 5 Free Microsoft Products & Why They Are The Best. Retrieved February 18 , 2012 , from http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-5-free-microsoft-products-2/ reComparison Contributor. (n.d.). Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates. Retrieved February 18 , 2012, from http://recomparison.com/comparisons/100295/steve-jobs-vsbill-gates/ Steve Jobs and Bill Gates History: the Dueling Wizards. (2011 , October 6 ). Retrieved February 18 , 2012, from CAVAN SIECZKOWSKI: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/226524/20111006/steve-jobs-bill-gateshistory.htm Top 5 Best and Worst Microsoft Products. (2007, March 29). Retrieved February 18 , 2012 , from http://www.hardcoreware.net/top-5-best-and-worstmicrosoft-products/ Windows. (n.d.). A history of Windows. Retrieved February 18 , 2012, from http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/history

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