On August 6, 1997, something happened in the world of personal computers that no one, but no one had foreseen: the peace between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. There truce between Apple and Microsoft, the two great rivals of Silicon Valley.
Just two years earlier, on the occasion of the debut of Windows 95, Steve Jobs, who at the time was not at Apple for known events, said: “The only problem with Microsoft is that they don’t have style, they have absolutely no style. And I don’t mean it as a minor thing, but a huge thing. Because they have no original ideas and they have no culture in their products. Like the proportion of character spaces that comes from the typography of beautiful books, this is where style comes from. But if it weren’t for the Mac, Microsoft would never have had it in their products and therefore me I think Microsoft’s success saddens me just because they make third-rate products”.
Here, these were the relations between the two (later it seems that Steve Jobs apologized for this release). But in 1996 Jobs had returned to Apple, in 1997 he was back in command and al MacWorld Expo in Boston, announces the turning point. On the giant screen appears Bill Gates’ big brother-like smiley face (photo at the top of the page, “Many Apple fans still remember that moment with horror” says the site Mac History) and Steve Jobs utters the fateful words “We must overcome the vision that for Apple to win, Microsoft must lose. Destructive relationships are of no use to anyone. The era of competition between us is over ”.
Behind the announcement there was an important agreement: Microsoft would continue to develop Office for Mac for 5 years and Apple would make Internet Explorer their preferred browser, the two companies would work on the compatibility of their products and Microsoft would have invested $ 150 million in Apple stock (in addition to the fact that Apple would have given up the pending lawsuit for infringement of several patents and Microsoft would have paid an undisclosed sum at the time).
“We we need everyone’s help, ”said Steve Jobs that day to an astonished audience (someone whistled). That move saved Apple and kicked off the construction of the most capitalized company on the planet.
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