Adam Kos A new report from Bloomberg shows that we can start to "look forward" to a new battle between the tech giants, i.e. Microsoft and Apple. Of course, everything stems from the case on behalf of Epic Games, but it is true that the incipient animosity has seeds even before the ongoing court case. In the past few years, it might have looked like an ideal collaboration. Microsoft provided Office for iPhone and iPad, when it allowed to work with Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard, the company was even invited to Apple's keynote. The latter, in turn, allowed users to use Xbox game controllers within their systems. Regardless of the situation surrounding App Store commissions, which was already resolved in 2012, it was an exemplary symbiosis of two age-old rivals.
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I'm a PC
However, this relationship was initially disrupted by the introduction of Apple's own chip. It was rather just a nudge of the company in the direction of Microsoft, when it again hired the actor John Hodgman, known as the clumsy Mr. PC, for promotion. And since Apple ran away from Intel for its M1 chip, the latter countered this by establishing cooperation with Mr. Mac, that is, Justin Long, who is promoting his processors attacking Apple devices.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that another turning point in the companies' nascent mutual hatred was Microsoft's attempt to push its xCloud cloud gaming service onto Apple's iOS platform. Originally, Apple wouldn't allow it (just like Google with its Stadia and everyone else, for that matter) and then rush in with the unrealistic solution of being able to stream games on the assumption that every game will be installed on the device = a commission on the price.
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Amaya Toman However, Gurman cites other reasons. Indeed, Microsoft is said to have begun urging US and European antitrust regulators to investigate Apple's practices with regard to Mac market share growth while Windows PCs stagnated. Competition is healthy and necessary for the market, as long as it is played fairly. Unfortunately, the user is most often beaten by such "reporting". But in the long run, we're in for a nice battle here. It will certainly get stronger when Apple presents its solution for mixed reality, which is expected in 2022 and will go directly against Microsoft's HoloLens. There will certainly be an interesting fight for AI and, last but not least, also for cloud infrastructure.
So if Apple manages to sell more Macs years later, does it have to be investigated by the antitrust authorities right away?