Apple vs Microsoft
In 1976, Apple Computer was founded, and, within a few short years,
it could rightfully claim to be the company that brought PCs into the
mainstream--first with the tremendously popular Apple II series and
later with the Macintosh and its graphical user interface. The Newton,
iMac and iPod later added to Apple's reputation for pushing the
envelope.
The prior year, Paul Allen and Bill Gates were busy writing a version of BASIC to run on the hot PC of the time, the Altair. For much of the 1970s and '80s, Apple and Microsoft peacefully coexisted, with Apple focusing on hardware and the Mac OS, while Microsoft developed applications for the Apple and other machines. Microsoft later went on to develop the enormously successful Windows OS, which now runs some 90 percent of the world's PCs (compared with Apple's share of under 5 percent).
Both companies are clearly technology pioneers that have secured their places in the PC revolution. But, just for the sake of argument, if you had to pick just one company to label the most successful, which would it be?
Do you value more the one that kick-started the revolution in 1976
with the original Apple computer and continues to innovate with
products such as the iPod, or the one that eventually sold hundreds of
millions of copies of its operating system, arguably bringing computing
to the masses?