At Apple’s special iPhone/iPad/Apple TV/Apple Watch event yesterday, “Microsoft’s appearance was so very meaningful,” Cade Metz writes for Wired. “At one point, Microsoftie Kirk Koenigsbauer appeared on stage to demonstrate Microsoft Office apps running on the Apple iPad Pro, a new tablet ostensibly aimed at business customers. Technically, the demo was short on new stuff. Office will run on the Pro’s 12.9-inch screen, just like it runs on the smaller screens of current iPads. And one day, it will make nice with the Pro’s new stylus, Apple Pencil. But in the perception game, this was a heavy moment. Microsoft sells its own tablet, the Surface Pro. And it spent years not running Office on Apple hardware. Nonetheless, there was Koenigsbauer, helping Cook put on a show for the technorati.”
“For Microsoft, it was a moment of apotheosis,” Metz writes. “Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO last year, the company has pushed Office onto the iPhone as well as the iPad; open sourced its crown jewels of software development so people can build more Microsoft software that runs on Apple gear; and jettisoned its $7.6 billion effort to dominate the smartphone market with Nokia, a Finnish company famous for recent failure.”
Metz writes, “Kissing Cook’s ring was the next logical step.”
“If you hadn’t noticed before, the mobile wars are over… In today’s world, if Microsofts wants to be on mobile devices, it must jockey for position on the iPhone — just like everyone else. The latest position they’ll all tussle over: ‘3D Touch.’ Apple says that if you press really hard on its apps, other apps will pop up. So, naturally, everyone will want want to be one of those apps,” Metz writes. “Cozying up to Apple isn’t nearly as nice as running a market-dominating operating system. In their dreams, Microsoft and Facebook and Amazon would set their own rules for mobile devices, collect more of their own data, and bootstrap all sorts of their own services. But cozying up to Apple will have to do…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote yesterday in our live event coverage:
Thanks to iPad Pro, Microsoft’s Surface is even deader than it is now – as MSFT employees help sell iPad Pro to the world from Apple’s stage.
Back in January 2005, a lot of people laughed when we wrote this:
As we have always said, even as many short-sightedly waved (and continue to wave) the white flag, the war is not over. And, yes, we shall prevail… No company is invincible. Not even Microsoft.
Who’s laughing now?
SEE ALSO:
Apple iPads had physical keyboards three and a half years before Microsoft’s Surface tablet debut – September 10, 2015
Wired: Hands-on with Apple’s great, big iPad Pro and Apple Pencil – September 9, 2015
Apple introduces 12.9-inch iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard – September 9, 2015