Top-secret emails revealed! How did Steve Jobs save the endangered Apple?

When Microsoft's market value exceeded the $2 trillion mark a while ago, Apple was mentioned in many reports. Not only was Apple the first US listed company with a market value of over $2 trillion, but the years of grievances between Microsoft and Apple were also brought to light.

The companies were founded at about the same time, and their founders, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, were born in the same year. In addition, one focused on PC system and software development, while the other focused on the development and sales of personal computers, so cooperation was inevitable.

However, cooperation and competition coexisted, and the Macintosh computer was the biggest conflict between Apple and Microsoft in the early days . At that time, Bill Gates took the opportunity to provide software for Apple to continuously explore the excellent configuration system of Apple Macintosh machines. Based on this, he cooperated with IBM to develop IBM computers with Windows operating system, which also affected Apple's computer market.

For this, Jobs once angrily scolded Bill Gates: "You promised not to copy the Macintosh computer, but now you have copied the Macintosh computer! You betrayed us. How can we continue to cooperate with you? Can we still trust you?" But Bill Gates did not give in, and Microsoft and Apple broke up for a time.

However, as the saying goes, there are no permanent enemies in the business world. In the years after Jobs left Apple, Apple's development plummeted. It was not until Jobs took over as CEO in 1997 to save Apple that the situation between the two sides gradually eased.

At that time, Microsoft had already become a monopoly in the IT industry. In order to reorganize Apple, Jobs gave up all legal action against Microsoft for "copying" the Macintosh computer and sought cooperation with Microsoft. Microsoft also actively cooperated, and the two sides reached a settlement.

At this point, are you curious about how Jobs worked with Microsoft at that time? Recently, a netizen @TechEmails shared an email from 1998 on Twitter. It was the minutes of a meeting between Microsoft executives and Jobs to discuss cooperation. This was also the second year after Jobs returned to Apple .

The email was written by Ben Waldman, director of Microsoft's Macintosh business, who was attending the meeting at the time, and sent the content discussed with Apple at the meeting to Bill Gates and others.

The meeting lasted about three and a half hours and mainly discussed two issues:

For easy reference, Ben Waldman summarized the three-hour meeting and distilled it into five key points:

(1) Based on what we know so far, I think Apple's OS plans are a positive thing (eliminating Rhapsody and making MacOS a preemptive memory protection/multitasking OS) , and after more details, I think we should support it and announce plans to develop Office and IE for it . As for whether we can get anything in return for supporting Apple, I think it is unlikely: at most we can solve some minor problems.

(2) Apple will bundle ClarisWorks (now renamed "AppleWorks") software with its new sub-$100 computers, but honestly, I don't think Apple has much choice given that Intel computers in the same market also include such products.

Apple claimed they didn't want to compete with us on Office, so they wouldn't promote AppleWorks, and even agreed to include an "upgrade to Office" incentive on the computer of our choice, which included coupons and a 3MB QuickTime to promote Office on the go .

(3) Jobs wanted to hear our proposal for closer Internet collaboration in exchange for our QuickTime support.

(4) Apple's NC plan has been shelved. Jobs said this was for marketing reasons, not technical reasons. He said Apple lacked understanding of how to sell servers, clients and software: "Let Intel go ahead and explore first . "

(5) Apple should realize that their lack of interest in IE causes me concern.

As a participant and direct contact person for cooperation with Apple, Ben Waldman wrote some of his ideas at the end of the email, which are expected to be mentioned in the next cooperation meeting with Apple.

First, Microsoft provided IE browser to Apple on the first day of its new operating system plan in exchange for Apple's strong support for IE and taking measures to encourage them to use IE instead of competing browsers. However, Ben Waldman believes that Apple is very likely to remove other browsers from the operating system released in the summer.

Second, while accepting Apple's installation of ClarisWorks on computers, limit the impact of ClarisWorks on Office . Microsoft can make Office more attached to Apple computers through cooperation with dealers or incentives on the computers themselves.

What Microsoft needs to understand is whether this computer with Office at a higher price will cannibalize sales of other Mac computers, that is, whether it can use Apple to bring Microsoft into new areas that it had not previously been able to reach.

Some people may say that Microsoft should suggest that Apple use Microsoft's MS Works instead of ClarisWorks for free to ensure market share, but Ben Waldman believes that this will not work because Microsoft's MS Works is still in the profit stage and cannot be easily provided for free.

In addition, although users of MS Works are more likely to upgrade their office software to Office, Apple should not be willing to bundle MS Works because MS Works' performance is indeed not very good and it does not have Internet support.

In addition, they asked Apple whether it was possible not to bundle ClarisWorks with its new operating system. If Apple disagreed, they asked Apple to promise not to bundle ClarisWorks software with other computers except for designated models, and not to allow Apple to conduct in-depth development of ClarisWorks, but simply port it to the new operating system.

Finally, there is a small tip in this email: When Ben Waldman introduced the participants of this meeting, he marked Ken Bereskin, Apple's senior product marketing manager for Mac OS X, as "a fool" .

Reference link: https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1412448981574209537

This article is reproduced from CSDN, author Zheng Liyuan.

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