Will Apple and Microsoft Ever Become One?

This is a simple question with very complex answers. Technically, before Microsoft ever existed, Bill Gates worked for Apple, on a contract and not as an Apple employee, to develop a floating point basic, since Woz refused to do it. Before Windows ever exited, Microsoft build Word for Macintosh and it does to this date. When Apple was in big trouble, Bill Gates stepped in and invested $125M in Apple. Not that this was a huge money that saved Apple, but it was a show of confidence that Apple will rebound. More important than the relatively small investment was the promise that Microsoft will keep developing Office for Mac for at least 5 more years which in turn signalled that Apple will be around for the long term and the fact that Microsoft believed in their abilities as a company. Between the two of these giants, they have over 2000+ licensing agreements that Apple and Microsoft use routinely and never tell the rest of us what they are. Microsoft has been pushed and challenged by Apple, directly or indirectly to innovate and visa-versa. If there was no OS X in the beginning of the millennium, would Microsoft be pushed to rewrite Windows from ground up and come with a brand new Windows in form of Vista? Would Microsoft go back to the drawing board and really optimize and improve Vista and release Windows 7 that everyone raves about today without the pressure of Apple optimizing and selling Leopard in form of Snow Leopard? Would Microsoft create a product like Zune if it wasn’t because of direct competition with Apple iPod? As I said, the relationship between these two companies are extremely complex and prosperous for both parties. So will they ever come together? Well, the answer to that was is pretty simple: they simply can not afford to openly come together and become one. They need to continue to be competitors and the direct winner of this competition isn’t one of them! They winners will be us – the users of their products.