The Apple-Microsoft Tech Feud Resurfaces After Changes to App Store Rules

By Noah Rothstein

Apple and Microsoft have reignited tensions that date back to the formative days of the two tech giants.

In its legal fight with Fortnite creator Epic Games, Apple accused Microsoft of being the puppet master behind the game maker’s case. Epic Games accused the iPhone maker of anticompetitive practices, while Microsoft blamed Apple for restricting its ability to reach users with its own videogame service.

Apple has defended its tight controls over its App Store as offering users greater privacy, protection, and cybersecurity. Others, including Facebook and Epic Games, claim the company unfairly wields its power to control access to more than one billion iPhone users.

Both Microsoft and Apple are positioning themselves for a battle over the augmented and virtual reality market. On June 24, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella launched Windows 11, taking a swipe at Apple’s control over its iPhone App Store without mentioning the rival company directly.

“The world needs a more open platform — one that allows apps to become platforms in their own right,” Nadella said during a virtual event.

Apple and Microsoft are the oldest of the modern tech titans, founded back in the mid-1970s. Jobs and Gates feuded for years, where Jobs at one point accused Microsoft of stealing Apple’s ideas and having a poorly designed product. They publicly called a truce around 1997, soon after Jobs returned to run the company he helped create. That year Gates invested $150 million in Apple, giving a badly needed cash infusion and a lifeline for Jobs’s second act.

The companies still took occasional swipes at each other. Apple ran TV spots making fun of PC users, prompting Microsoft to launch a countercampaign.

Jobs at one point reflected that the rivalry had become unhealthy.

“If the game was a zero-sum game, where for Apple to win Microsoft had to lose then Apple was going to lose,” he said in a joint interview with Gates at a Wall Street Journal conference in 2009. “We tried to patch things up.”

Now the two contenders have become America’s principal business superpowers, the only two U.S. companies to be valued at around $2 trillion or more. Both have more than 140,000 employees on their payroll, and their combined annual sales top $400 billion.