Another history of the Internet: the root cause of Apple's victory over Microsoft

Anyone who wants to know the history of the winner should read the articles written by Tim Wu and John Gruber, they talked about how Apple left other companies behind since the 1990s S.

Wu does not seem to fully understand the true meaning of open and closed systems. He cited multiple definitions of open and closed systems in his article. However, although Apple has a closed system, but they still achieved great success. Apple's success proves that it is not important to use an open system or a closed system. What's important is that Apple is always able to quickly publish excellent products. The speed mentioned here means that Apple is always the first product in the industry to deliver novelty and excellence to the market, take the lead in the competition. Gruber's point of view can mainly be attributed to: "A company headed by a talented person generally performs better than a company headed by others ." I agree with this opinion very much.

However, this theory is not applicable in one field, that is, the Internet.

Therefore, I believe that, in the 1990s s, when Microsoft and Intel's Alliance eroded Apple's Mac market share, it marks the end of an era, and the world finally ushered in the Internet era.

When talking about competition between Apple and Microsoft, if you leave the Internet and browsers alone, it is like ignoring the role of a referee when talking about football. Simply talking about the differences between a development system and a closed system, or talking about hardware and software, as well as who the company CEO is, is naive and ridiculous.

If there is no Internet, Apple will not be able to succeed.

Before the emergence of the Internet, the product that consumers are most concerned about is office. In that era, office became the biggest driver to attract people to buy Windows computers and beat Mac in the competition.

In the 1990s s, I was still in college, and now I can recall a lot of the fierce competition between windows and Apple at that time. At that time, everyone said that Mac computers were better, but office-like functions were indeed the weakness of Mac. At that time, converting document formats in two operating systems was extremely difficult. In general, if you want to use the office function, you must purchase a Windows computer. Mac is a computer for college students to use for drawing, while a computer running Windows is a computer suitable for adults.

Of course, the difficulty of document conversion has improved in the 1990s S. However, the goal of purchasing computers has changed. At that time, people purchased computers to use the Internet, which made apple suffer for a while. Their market share plummeted, and some people even began to argue that Microsoft no longer needs to develop Mac-based office for Apple computers, they believe that Mac will completely disappear from the market soon.

However, during this period, Apple ushered in a turning point and brought them back to life. In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to Apple. He forced Microsoft to continue developing office products for Apple computers. Wikipeida records:

On MacWorld Expo in 1997, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would cooperate with Microsoft. The cooperation covers Microsoft's continued development of office products for Macintosh over the next five years, with an investment of $0.15 billion for Apple. In return, Apple will allow Microsoft to use Apple's patents. In addition, the cooperation includes that IE will become the default web browser for Macintosh. Microsoft's president Gates also made a speech on the big screen of the Conference. He introduced Microsoft's software products for Macintosh and said that he was very pleased to help Apple regain success. After Gates finished his speech, Steve Jobs told the audience:

"If we want to move on and get apple back on track, we have to give up something. We will give up the idea that Apple will win and Microsoft will lose. We need to know that if Apple wants to succeed, it will continue to work hard. If others are willing to help us, we will be very willing to accept help because they can help us do what we cannot do. If we mess up our jobs ourselves, it's just our own problem. It's irrelevant to others. This is what we should think about. We want to have office products on Mac, so we need to give enough respect to the companies that have invented the Office and thank them for their love for the software they have invented. Therefore, the era of competition between Apple and Microsoft is over. Cooperation with Microsoft will allow apple to continue healthy operation and continue to contribute to the entire industry ."

But what's more important is the emergence of the Internet. I still remember that at that time, if the office was not installed on a computer, it would not be a complete computer. Now the situation has changed. I have never installed office in the last two computers I have used.

It is the Internet that has actually changed Apple. browsers have replaced office and become the most important software in computers.

Suddenly, the role of the computer has changed, and its primary function is not to process documents, but to process documents and browse webpages. Mac is just a simple upgrade of the office, and then they launched an excellent web browsing software. With the continuous development of the Internet, office has become increasingly unimportant over the past five years.

The rise of the Internet and the decline of office are the root cause of Apple's success. Because they can provide consumers with excellent Internet user experience. A few years ago, people often said, "I want to buy a Mac, but office is too important for me ." Now, what people say has become: "I want to buy a Mac, but this is too expensive ."

Apple is struggling in the post office age and the pre-Internet age. In the post-Internet era, Apple has won. However, people will always ignore the primary cause of Apple's success.