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Apple and Microsoft's Rivalry Had Cooled. Now It's Back and Getting Testier (bloomberg.com) 43

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
After collaborating on various projects for several years, the relationship between Microsoft and Apple is getting testier again. From a report: [...] Around the time the PC character reappeared, Microsoft began bad-mouthing Apple to regulators, saying the company's App Store was anti-competitive. The Redmond, Washington, software giant had thrown in its lot with Epic Games, which was suing Apple for booting its Fortnite title from the App Store and accusing the iPhone maker of monopolistic behavior. A Microsoft executive has since testified against Apple at the trial, now in its second week, telling the court that Apple's tight control of its App Store had hurt Microsoft's own gaming efforts. The tensions are unlikely to ease once a verdict comes down because Apple and Microsoft are both looking to dominate the next big things in tech -- from artificial intelligence and cloud computing to gaming, tablets, custom processors and mixed-reality headsets.

The renewed antipathy between Apple and Microsoft started about a year ago. Microsoft had developed a cloud gaming service for iPhones and iPads called xCloud. One app would let users pay a monthly fee to Microsoft and stream dozens of different gaming titles from the cloud. The service was supposed to do for gaming what Netflix did for video, appease gamers and turn Apple devices into a more powerful gaming platform backed by Xbox, one of the hottest names in the industry. But Microsoft never launched the service in its intended form, having failed to persuade Apple to loosen App Store rules forbidding all-in-one gaming services. Originally, Microsoft was barred from launching any cloud-based games at all. But a few months after concerns over the ban on streaming apps went public, Apple tweaked the rules.

Microsoft can now launch a cloud gaming service, but each game must be downloaded separately, defeating the purpose of an all-in-one solution. Now Microsoft is rolling out the service on Apple devices via the web, a much less optimal experience than a real app. Around the same time, Microsoft President Brad Smith began urging U.S. and European antitrust regulators to examine Apple's practices.
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Apple and Microsoft's Rivalry Had Cooled. Now It's Back and Getting Testier More

Apple and Microsoft's Rivalry Had Cooled. Now It's Back and Getting Testier

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  • Apple Arcade (Score:3)

    by lazarus ( 2879 ) on Monday May 17, 2021 @01:18PM (#61393858) Journal

    It probably doesn't help their case that they rolled out their own gaming subscription service called Apple Arcade. When you own the delivery system I guess you get to set your own rules --- rules that benefit you first and foremost.

    I don't think this is going to go well for Apple. But, like Microsoft before them they will probably be better for it in the long run.

    • Each Apple Arcade game is individually approved into the store, just as they are asking other game subscription services to do. They may get blow-back but it won't be because they are treating themselves differently.

      • AFAIK apple arcade is a collection of apps that run natively rather than being streamed. What Microsoft is proposing doesn't involve running anything native, rather it's all streamed. In effect, it's the same thing as Netflix as at the end of the day, you're just looking at streamed video, albeit with a different "codec". The only effective difference between this and Netflix is that the end user can interact with the content. Yet for Netflix they allow multiple titles in one single app.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          The only effective difference between this and Netflix is that the end user can interact with the content.

          Interactivity has been a discrete threshold for gatekeeping since 1985. This is when video game console makers started to make a deliberate effort to lock out unapproved software and tightly regulate who can publish, what can be published, and how often each studio can publish. This contrasts with VHS and DVD, which have more or less a uniform royalty structure and no restrictions on content other than those imposed by the country of publication.

  • Creedence and Clear Water (Score:3)

    by RamenMan ( 7301402 ) on Monday May 17, 2021 @01:26PM (#61393878)

    This lends credence to Microsoft's support of Epic.

    These game streaming/download systems are a huge boon to consumers. They are being blocked doubly by Apple. Apple undoubtably wants to 'invent' another product of game streaming, just like they 'invent' everything else. If you don't find game streaming, or 'renting' to be valuable, that's fine. But hundreds of millions of people do like this plan. **

    I still would like to see all of the other big names in tech pull their support for the Apple platform. Epic, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc. etc. Drop iPhone support completely. If Apple sees value to these apps, maybe they will work with these companies. If not, then the consumers who find Instagram, Google services, etc. to be important will move to the platform where these apps are available.

    ** I am an Xbox Game Pass subscriber- I've been on the service since the beginning. For me and my kids this is absolutely incredible. When I can tell my kids, "sure, go ahead and download it" from a huge library, that is great. I do know that some people want to 'own' their games, but I prefer the rental paradigm.

    • I am wary of Microsoft's true motives. Right now they are yelling about Sony and Apple, because they're in the "Embrace" phase of their traditional "embrace, extend, extinguish" cycle. Whether they follow through all the way to the "extinguish" phase, only time will tell.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        I am curious how Microsoft intends to frame things so that it can both attack Apple's behavior but not threaten its own.... unless microsoft has suddenly become ok with people publishing applications for xbox that bypass their own system and licensing scheme.
      • The people running the show at msft are not gates/ballmer disciples any longer.
    • I prefer to "own" because I don't have too much time for videogames and prefer to play just a few select titles. In my use case I heavliy suspect I'd end up paying more if I used something like game pass. Of course no hate from me. It's cool that more options exist and to each their own

  • Apple and Microsoft, Complex Buisness relationship (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday May 17, 2021 @01:27PM (#61393884)

    We like to think of two big companies as a Single Person, who will like or hate someone, then act accordingly towards their fiend or rival.

    Big companies like Microsoft and Apple, have a lot of hands in the pot, where they are both each others best customer and partner and their biggest rival.
    As each company expands and enters different markets, they find they are in competition more as they cross each others lines, however they both seem to have a lot of need for each other as well.

    Microsoft has made a lot of money for Office for the Macintosh, and sometime the Office version for the Mac is superior to the Windows version, as it is in Microsoft best interest in the Office Unit, to make the best product possible for the Mac, because Macintosh's are popular enough, to bring in a lot of money for the office, and its user base is very doubtful is going to switch to Windows anytime soon, and making a poor version of office, or not making it at all, will just force Apple users to switch to an other tool, such as Star/Open/LibreOffice.

    Big companies that have a lot of units, contain interesting relationships between companies, where they can sue the pants off of and be the biggest customer.

    • They also have a weird symbiotic relationship when it comes to mobile devices.

      Apple has a total stranglehold over the most desirable part of the user base for mobile (forget total numbers, price-conscious Android users don't matter and aren't influential), so Microsoft has to kind of tread carefully there to avoid trying to alienate Apple or the valued iPhone owners with planned incompatibilities.

      I'm sure Microsoft would *love* to force users into Outlook for iOS by ditching ActiveSync compatibility but thi

  • In the book "Accidental Empires" by Robert X. Cringley, he examines the history of some tech companies. Apple and Microsoft are like high school teenagers where friendly, have a fight over something else, form new alliances, then make up.

    Apple once made nice with IBM, then Intel, and Microsoft--but in one memorable instance, Apple and Microsoft united against Adobe over fonts, printer technology, then Apple made nice with Adobe. This episode is another chapter of "As the world between Apple-Microsoft turns

  • ...get the popcorn, love it love it!

  • Black Mirror - Bandersnatch got an pass so but will they be able to do more stuff like that?? or will they need to make it show like that it's own app?
    But apple tv will be able to have stuff like that as part of it's own main app.

  • It's spats like this which is why browsers are the behemoths they are.

  • "Cooled" (Score:3, Funny)

    by systemd-anonymousd ( 6652324 ) on Monday May 17, 2021 @02:00PM (#61394002)

    I don't think it's fair to call it "cooled" when it's more like "Apple has absolutely dominated all consumer-driven purchases of electronics. The remaining Microsoft customers, when queried, all unanimously responded with: 'well, I guess if I HAVE to run Windows 10, I will, and the Surface Pro would be pretty sweet with Windows 7 on it.'"

    So, "cooled" in the same way that a boxing rivalry cools when one of the two contenders is lying face-down in his own drool.

    • Your statement doesn't make sense. They are talking about cooled as in the corporate relationships between the companies. Which has nothing to do with product sales. However, Windows 10 doesn't own 78% of the market because people put up with it. It's because people actively seek out Windows 10 systems. Microsoft has never been good at product sales other than the console market with the Xbox line which usually competes fairly well in the same market space as Sony and Nintendo. However, their OS and Office
  • Needs to come back.

  • The two bad guys are fighting!

    We should probably side with Microsoft in this one. Microsoft wants a hegemony over general purpose computing, but Apple wants to normalize the loss of it altogether.

  • Neither of these companies, or for that matter, Google, have the customers best interest at heart. When MS$ dominated with their Windows monopoly, they intentionally put PC database companies out of business either by making their product incompatible with theirs, or difficult to make things work on their product. When that did not work, they would buy them out and shut them down, in the first place R:base, and in the second, FoxPro. Apple had a decent product with the IMac. A nice clean (from the user

  • Apple is doing literally exactly what Microsoft was banned from doing in the 90's.

    Can you imagine what the tech world would look like today if MS had won their antitrust battle and been allowed to use their Windows monopoly to pick and choose and set the rules for what software could run on it. They would have banned iTunes/iPod, would have greatly limited the functionality of Mozilla/Firefox, and would have made IE functionally incompatible with any services from Google.

    Basically we would still be using Ac

  • Hypocrites (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Monday May 17, 2021 @03:05PM (#61394214) Journal

    I think Microsoft's demands are totally reasonable, just like it's totally reasonable for them to allow the Steam platform to run natively on XBox so people can buy games through Steam where Microsoft has zero control over what Steam sells, and Microsoft gets none of the revenue. So why don't you go first in opening up your milk cow platform, Microsoft.

    • Maybe. The one argument against that is that consoles are sold at a loss, and they expect to recoup their losses on game sales, and the same is not at all true for apple. Then again, maybe it's time for game consoles to be sold at realistic prices, though if that happened you'd see PlayStation and Xbox consoles selling in the $1000-$1500 price range. I am part of the PC Master Race so I don't have any dog in that fight, but I'm a bit doubtful that consoles priced like that would sell very well given their f

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 )

        The one argument against that is that consoles are sold at a loss, and they expect to recoup their losses on game sales, and the same is not at all true for apple.

        I'm not sure using "retail dumping" as an excuse to protect your business model is a very good argument when talking about anti-competitive practices of a rival.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Maybe. The one argument against that is that consoles are sold at a loss, and they expect to recoup their losses on game sales, and the same is not at all true for apple. Then again, maybe it's time for game consoles to be sold at realistic prices, though if that happened you'd see PlayStation and Xbox consoles selling in the $1000-$1500 price range. I am part of the PC Master Race so I don't have any dog in that fight, but I'm a bit doubtful that consoles priced like that would sell very well given their f

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
      You mean Windows, the closest equivalent here?
      Xbox is a console, not meant to be general computing. iPad, is definitely marketed as general computing though (what's a computer?)
      The closest equivalent to Steam not being on Xbox, would be, IDK, xCloud not on the Apple Pippin.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 )
        Xbox isn't a general computing device because the manufacturer does not allow it to be. However once you buy it, you should be allowed to do whatever you want with it. This idea of protecting consoles walled gardens because they are not "general computing devices" is bullshit mental gymnastics from people who want to have their cake and eat it too. Just because console companies sell at no profit or a loss is not excuse either. In most industries that would be blatantly anti-competitive since it creates a b
        • They could be if significant changes were made to them but the OS that comes with them is geared towards max gaming performance. I acknowledge that the console makers want them to be walled gardens but that is not the only reason for other software not being allowed to run on them. But, in Apple's case, their walled garden disallows software to run on their devices by decree, not because of capability shortcomings.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by EvilSS ( 557649 )
            You could use the xbox dev kit to make all sorts of software, not just games. But make an office suite and see if it gets accepted. Ditto for making your own software store (what Epic really wants out of all of this on mobile, along with being allowed to be installed by default by phone makers for Android). For that matter, why even use their OS? I mean, other than because they won't allow you to load another onto it.
    • I haven't bough a console since the first Xbox, and haven't bothered with consoles since. Are you saying that no games on Xbox can be bought on disc? And no game can be developed to play on an Xbox without going through whatever marketplace (Xbox live?) to be sold?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        Are you saying that no games on Xbox can be bought on disc?

        Microsoft presses all Xbox discs on behalf of licensed publishers. Only Microsoft has the private key needed to master a disc that a retail Xbox console will recognize.

        • Yes, but is that as closed as the Apple App store?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tepples ( 727027 )

            Qualification to develop disc games or downloadable games for a major video game console is even more closed than qualification to develop apps for iOS App Store and Mac App Store.

    • Microsoft has already done this, it's called Xbox Dev Mode. And if Steam wanted to, they could make a Steam for Xbox store, or anyone could make a 3rd party Xbox store. There isn't anything stopping you really.
      MVG did a video showing RetroArch running on an unmodded Xbox here: https://youtu.be/psTunlgKOMM

  • Waaaa, Apple won't open its store and let us use it in the way we want to sell our closed-proprietary gaming system.

  • Nothing running in the background and more limited possibilities for telemetry, no app to update. Sounds good to me for something that's online-only anyway. Now mobile data caps are the biggest problem.

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