Swindon & Wiltshire News
Expert opinion: Forget Ebony and Ivory – now it’s Microsoft and Apple
“Ebony and ivory, live together in perfect harmony” sang Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder way back in 1982 in a duet about keyboards (but the musical sort, not the kind integrated with the Apple III, or the IBM rival pre-loaded with Microsoft’s fledgling MS-DOS operating system).
Yet it’s a song whose sentiments both tech behemoths have paid little heed to. For more than 30 years the companies have been fierce rivals, often clashing in court over one infringement or another.
And at its tenderest, the relationship could only be described as frosty, with the late Apple founder Steve Cook slamming Microsoft for having “absolutely no taste”, while Bill Gates said: “There’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it’”.
Apple’s big media event at the beginning of September was notable for the launch of the new El Capitan operating system for the Mac – which became available on September 30 – and the launch of iOS 9, which iPhone and iPad users are no doubt familiar with by now.
But at that event, something really remarkable happened: Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate VP of Microsoft’s Office division, strode across the stage to be warmly greeted by Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, and the two of them sat down to discuss Microsoft Office for the iPad Pro.
Apple – conscious of the fact that its enterprise market (providing hardware and software to businesses) accounts for $25 billion of its income every year – knows that for the iPad Pro to be a hit with business users, it has to seamlessly run a version of Microsoft’s Office Suite.
Microsoft, meanwhile, knows that Apple has a fair chunk of the mobile and tablet market, and that the iPad Pro will be a formidable rival to any Surface tablet it produces for the business market.
Both companies have a Cloud-first strategy. It makes complete sense for these rival companies to join forces. And Cloud is the key here. Ten years ago, it was hard to get Microsoft and Apple products to ‘talk’ to each other. Even the lack of a right button on the Apple mouse caused consternations among PC users. Today, Apple products and Microsoft applications work seamlessly together.
The good news for business users – whether you belong to the Apple tribe, or the Microsoft gang – is that all our engineers are accredited by either Microsoft or Apple. In fact, Thirdline is one of the UK’s only IT companies accredited by both Microsoft and Apple – a position we attained well before the truce!
For more information about integrating Apple or Microsoft products and services into your business, call Tim at Thirdline on 0800 082 2420 or email tim.harris@thirdline.eu
