Speaker 1: Get text with Technology, What textoff Chromos dot Com. He there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Text Stuff. I am your host, Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and today I'm flying solo again and I hope you
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Speaker 1: what you think about it. I'm really eager to hear
Speaker 1: about it. Today. I'm going to talk about something that
Speaker 1: I think is pretty interesting. You know, technology is often
Speaker 1: intertwined with business, and that means rivalries are bound owned
Speaker 1: to occur. Now, there have been some big rivalries in tech,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to take some time to talk about
Speaker 1: a few of the most notable ones. And this is
Speaker 1: by no means a complete list. It's more of a
Speaker 1: sampling and include some rivalries that happened more than a
Speaker 1: century ago. So let's get started with the oldest rivalry
Speaker 1: in my list, that is a railroad rivalry. This started
Speaker 1: way back in eighteen sixty two and President Abraham Lincoln
Speaker 1: signed into law the Pacific Railroad Act. Now, this was
Speaker 1: an act that was meant to create a railroad that
Speaker 1: would unify the rails, so you get a complete transcontinental
Speaker 1: rail line where you could travel from the east coast
Speaker 1: to the west coast. And it meant that you had
Speaker 1: to bridge this huge gap that was started in the West.
Speaker 1: I created these two entities, Union Pacific and Central Pacific.
Speaker 1: Now Union Pacific started in Omahana, Braska, and it was
Speaker 1: to build railroads westward. Central Pacific started in Sacramento, California,
Speaker 1: and it was to build to the east. Now, the
Speaker 1: two companies were fierce competitors because the amount of money
Speaker 1: and land they received from the government. It didn't depend
Speaker 1: on how efficient the systems were. It depended upon the
Speaker 1: number of miles of track they laid. So speed was
Speaker 1: valued higher than safety or efficiency, and the two companies
Speaker 1: began to feverishly lay down track at the expense of
Speaker 1: human lives. So the heads of the two companies were
Speaker 1: collectively referred to as robber barons. If you've ever heard
Speaker 1: that term. It's talking specifically about the railroad tycoons back
Speaker 1: in the UH mid nineteenth century. They were fighting to
Speaker 1: get the most wealth and power. They were engaging in
Speaker 1: all sorts of questionable activities to gain an advantage as
Speaker 1: the two lines of railroads converged. So as an example,
Speaker 1: Union Pacific would build winding paths instead of a straight line.
Speaker 1: Why because it meant that they actually increased the amount
Speaker 1: of mileage of track they were laying down. They were
Speaker 1: maximizing the amount of money and land they were getting
Speaker 1: from the government by making the path longer than it
Speaker 1: needed to be. It was much more lengthy than a
Speaker 1: straight pathway. They also used cheaper materials than they may
Speaker 1: have Well then they should have. Really they were using
Speaker 1: wrought iron for the rails, which was fairly brittle, so
Speaker 1: that was a problem. It would need to be replaced
Speaker 1: before too long. And they were also using very cheap wood,
Speaker 1: particularly because you know they were starting UH in Nebraska,
Speaker 1: so they didn't have access to a lot of wood.
Speaker 1: Nebraska has a lot of planes, so they were using
Speaker 1: stuff like cotton wood, which was fairly brittle, and they
Speaker 1: were using that for their railroad ties. Those are the
Speaker 1: planks that connect the two sets of rails together and
Speaker 1: keeps some space the right way. Uh. They also outsourced
Speaker 1: a lot of the work for getting those railroad ties
Speaker 1: to others in the Nebraska area, and those enterprising individuals
Speaker 1: would take axes in hand, they'd have dollar signs in
Speaker 1: their eyes, and they started hacking down all the trees,
Speaker 1: even if those trees were on private property. In fact,
Speaker 1: it got to a point where they were making claims
Speaker 1: that farmers living in Nebraska didn't have a right to
Speaker 1: claim private property because it had not been fully ratified
Speaker 1: by the government. Yet the folks who are living on
Speaker 1: that property begged to disagree, sometimes for the use of force.
Speaker 1: They would actually fire shots at folks who were coming
Speaker 1: into the land to cut down trees. And eventually even
Speaker 1: Union Pacific said, all right, this, this might be going
Speaker 1: a bit too far. Let's re evaluate how we're doing
Speaker 1: business here. So both companies faced dangers exacerbated by their
Speaker 1: willingness to cut corners to make more money, and both
Speaker 1: were plagued by attacks from Native American tribes. Union Pacific
Speaker 1: often would attempt to fight these attacks off their trains
Speaker 1: that they would use to move along as the track
Speaker 1: was being built were loaded with rifles. Meanwhile, Central Pacific's
Speaker 1: workforce UH they were They were often joined by Native
Speaker 1: Americans because Central Pacific started paying off tribes and having
Speaker 1: them join the workforce. UH. Speaking of workforces, both Union
Speaker 1: and Central used cheap labor. Central Pacifics workforce was primarily
Speaker 1: Chinese augmented by some Native American workers, and Union Pacific
Speaker 1: had hired on Irish laborers who were treated awfully at
Speaker 1: that time, so both groups were even calling them second
Speaker 1: class citizens as being generous. They were treated poorly. Central
Speaker 1: Pacific suffered more losses to their workforce due to accidents
Speaker 1: during the construction figures very not a lot of people
Speaker 1: were particularly concerned about keeping an accurate count of the
Speaker 1: number of deaths from injury, but estimations range from five
Speaker 1: hundred to a thousand employees UH died while trying to
Speaker 1: construct the railroad. Union Pacific they lost more employees to
Speaker 1: disease and murder than they did to accidents. It turns
Speaker 1: out they would stop in a lot of towns. Often
Speaker 1: they would refer to them as the hell on Wheels
Speaker 1: towns where there various workforce members were encountering problems with
Speaker 1: prostitutes or violent criminals, and so a lot of them
Speaker 1: didn't make it. In fact, I think I read one
Speaker 1: estimation that said there was a ratio afford to one
Speaker 1: Union Pacific employees who died from murder to accidents. So
Speaker 1: for everyone who died from an accident, four, we're dying
Speaker 1: from being murdered. So awful awful times. Even when the
Speaker 1: two railroads were getting closer together, the two companies were
Speaker 1: engaged in shady dealings and didn't worry so much about
Speaker 1: the tracks actually meeting up properly, which was the whole
Speaker 1: point of this enterprise in the first place. So the
Speaker 1: two companies were still looking at ways to maximize the
Speaker 1: amount of money and land they could get, rather than
Speaker 1: completing the job as was assigned. And it was only
Speaker 1: when the US government really got involved and made it
Speaker 1: clear that the railroads were going to have to shape
Speaker 1: up that they reached an agreement that Promontory Point in
Speaker 1: Utah was the spot where the two railroads would finally connect. Now,
Speaker 1: by then, both companies had spent huge amounts of money
Speaker 1: and more than a thousand lives had been lost, And
Speaker 1: if you want to look at how much track was
Speaker 1: laid technically Union Pacific one because they had laid more track.
Speaker 1: But the cost of both companies, not to mention the
Speaker 1: cost to everyone else involved in this, whether it was
Speaker 1: the land that it moved through or the people working
Speaker 1: for the companies. It really makes this particular rivalry come
Speaker 1: out as a draw, and not a pleasant one at that. Now,
Speaker 1: the next big rivalry I want to talk about has
Speaker 1: want I mentioned on the show several times before, and
Speaker 1: it's Thomas Edison versus George Westinghouse. Now you might have
Speaker 1: thought I was going to say Nicola Tesla there for
Speaker 1: a second, but honest, honestly, really Tesla. He was a
Speaker 1: brilliant engineer. He was also a brilliant self promoter. He
Speaker 1: was a rock star of his day. But he was
Speaker 1: not a very good businessman. So Edison and Westinghouse were
Speaker 1: the powerhouses behind the two enormous companies battling to supply
Speaker 1: electric power to the United States. So it's really George
Speaker 1: Westinghouse who was the other entity in opposition to Thomas Edison.
Speaker 1: Nicola Tesla played a very important role. But if you're
Speaker 1: looking at the War of the currents, you really should
Speaker 1: say Edison versus Westinghouse, not Edison versus Tesla. Now, this
Speaker 1: war of the currents took place just a couple of
Speaker 1: decades after the railroad Shenanigans I just talked about. This
Speaker 1: would be in the eighteen eighties when Thomas Hasen was
Speaker 1: looking to land an incredibly lucrative deal with the United
Speaker 1: States to build power stations that would supply electricity to
Speaker 1: homes and businesses through direct current. Now, essentially Edison would
Speaker 1: just have to provide the patents and then he could
Speaker 1: rake in royalties for years. He would become insanely wealthy
Speaker 1: if he could land this deal. But there was a problem.
Speaker 1: He was dead set on using that direct current as
Speaker 1: a means of transmitting electricity, and that had limitations. Now,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of advantages to using direct current.
Speaker 1: Most of our electronics use direct current to operate. Anything
Speaker 1: that uses a battery uses direct current. Most of our
Speaker 1: most of the things we rely on use direct current.
Speaker 1: There's usually a device that converts alternating current to direct
Speaker 1: current so that we can actually use it. So if
Speaker 1: we had direct current going straight into our homes, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't need those additional converters and everything would be more efficient.
Speaker 1: It's also a really simple way to generate electricity, but
Speaker 1: they're big drawbacks, and the biggest one is that transmitting
Speaker 1: DC power over distance isn't easy. You lose energy the
Speaker 1: further away from the power source you are, so a
Speaker 1: direct current, you want the load, that is the thing
Speaker 1: that electricity is going to power, to be very close
Speaker 1: to the source. The further away from the source it is,
Speaker 1: the less energy is actually reaching the load, and the
Speaker 1: less effective it is. So in other words, you would
Speaker 1: have to build DC power plants, a lot more of
Speaker 1: them and a lot closer to the loads as you
Speaker 1: go along, and that was not a great solution for
Speaker 1: some people, like it might be fine in an urban
Speaker 1: environment where people are packed in very dense populations, but
Speaker 1: in places like the suburbs or the rural areas, it
Speaker 1: was a lot harder to justify because you couldn't build
Speaker 1: the DC power plants as close to the homes as
Speaker 1: needed to be. So Edison started looking into ways of
Speaker 1: perhaps boosting DC power transmission. One of the people he
Speaker 1: consulted with was Nicola Tesla, and Tesla had recommended that
Speaker 1: Edison abandoned direct current or transmission and switched to alternating
Speaker 1: current or a C electricity instead. Now, one thing you've
Speaker 1: got to make clear, and I've said this before, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people are mistaken about. Tesla did not invent the idea
Speaker 1: of alternating current. He's often given that credit, but that
Speaker 1: is just not true. Alternating current had already been used
Speaker 1: when Tesla was just a kid. He a c had
Speaker 1: existed before Tesla was really born. Didn't start getting widely
Speaker 1: used in Europe until Tesla was a child. But at
Speaker 1: any rate, there were already pre existing alternating current systems
Speaker 1: that Tesla could witness and understand. Now, I don't want
Speaker 1: to take too much away from Tesla, because he did
Speaker 1: have brilliant ideas on how to make alternating current more
Speaker 1: efficient and practical. He actually improved the process dramatically so
Speaker 1: it could be an effective means of transmitting power. It's
Speaker 1: just the principle itself had already existed before Tesla rose
Speaker 1: to prominence. Now, Edison didn't see the benefit of alternating current.
Speaker 1: He dismissed the idea, so Tesla would end up leaving
Speaker 1: Edison's company and try to raise money for his own operation,
Speaker 1: even going so far as to dig ditches for the
Speaker 1: Edison company to raise money for his own company. Now
Speaker 1: we need to talk about George Westinghouse. He was the
Speaker 1: founder of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, and he's
Speaker 1: saw the value of alternating current. He thought that was
Speaker 1: the future, so he bought Tesla's patents. Now Edison suddenly
Speaker 1: took notice because while Tesla he thought was kind of
Speaker 1: a wild, crazy idea man who wasn't a real threat,
Speaker 1: Westinghouse had influence and a lot of money. So now
Speaker 1: Edison actually had a legitimate threat, a legitimate competitor. Tesla,
Speaker 1: while brilliant, wasn't really much of a threat to Edison.
Speaker 1: He couldn't do much on his own. Westinghouse was a
Speaker 1: different story, and Westinghouse was able to secure rights to
Speaker 1: supply power to areas that Edison's power stations couldn't reach,
Speaker 1: like those rural and suburban areas. Westinghouse also started making
Speaker 1: some headway into urban markets, mostly by selling electricity at
Speaker 1: a loss to undercut Edison. So Westinghouse wasn't above doing some,
Speaker 1: you know, some potentially harmful business practices in order to
Speaker 1: eliminate the competition. Edison also not shy about competition. He
Speaker 1: thrived on it. His response was to create a pr
Speaker 1: campaign that claimed a c power was inherently deadly because
Speaker 1: it required high voltage running through the wires. That's how
Speaker 1: alternating current is able to get much better transmission than
Speaker 1: direct current. With alternating current, used transformers to step up
Speaker 1: the voltage until you get to these very high levels
Speaker 1: to run through cable over great distances, and then use
Speaker 1: other transformers to step down the voltage to deliver the
Speaker 1: electricity to houses. And Edison was convinced that this alternating current,
Speaker 1: this high voltage was absolutely deadly and if it were
Speaker 1: put in widespread use, it would cause deaths by electrocution
Speaker 1: across the United States. I assume he believed that. He
Speaker 1: certainly acted as if he did uh, and he was
Speaker 1: inspired to really push that idea. Now something happened that
Speaker 1: was a little bit against more than a little bit,
Speaker 1: very much against Edison's principles. But I think it says
Speaker 1: a lot about his character based upon what he did.
Speaker 1: A dentist actually came up to him and had proposed
Speaker 1: the idea of using electricity as a means of execution,
Speaker 1: using electrocution to kill criminals. He thought that it could
Speaker 1: be a faster and more humane way of putting someone
Speaker 1: to death than the other methods of the era. Now,
Speaker 1: Edison philosophically opposed the death penalty. He was not in
Speaker 1: favor of it, but he also saw in this request
Speaker 1: the possibility of associating Westinghouses alternating current power with electrocution,
Speaker 1: and that led to Edison really pushing this idea, ultimately
Speaker 1: leading to demonstrations public demonstrations in which Edison would electrocute
Speaker 1: various animals, starting off with stray dogs. He would pay
Speaker 1: to have stray dogs rounded up and then electrocute them
Speaker 1: and to demonstrate that alternating current was deadly. Ultimately, the
Speaker 1: big one that everyone remembers is that Edison used the
Speaker 1: alternating current to put six thousand volts into an elephant,
Speaker 1: electrocuting an elephant to death. Um it was an elephant
Speaker 1: that had previously killed three different people, Although the treatment
Speaker 1: of the elephant was a large factor in that, I
Speaker 1: would imagine at any rate, Edison thought of this as
Speaker 1: being completely justifiable, both for the means of putting his
Speaker 1: competitor out of business and to end what he viewed
Speaker 1: as a dangerous technology. Now, Edison even funded the design
Speaker 1: of an electric chair, but he did so behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: so he essentially paid off the inventor, Harold Brown was
Speaker 1: given the task to design an electric chair, and Edison
Speaker 1: was paying Harold Brown to use alternating current in that design.
Speaker 1: So when the murderer, William Kimmler was scheduled to be
Speaker 1: the first criminal to be executed by the electric chair,
Speaker 1: Edison tried to popularize the term westinghoused for electrocution, as
Speaker 1: in Kimmler was to be westinghoused, not just executed by electricity.
Speaker 1: So again pretty negative pr campaign. By the way, that
Speaker 1: execution did not go so well. Kimmler was strapped into
Speaker 1: the chair, the switch was thrown, and Kimdler he tensed up.
Speaker 1: People said that they saw him grip the sides of
Speaker 1: the chair so hard that his hands began to bleed um.
Speaker 1: He was convulsing when the A C dynamo essentially ran
Speaker 1: off juice when they turned the switch off. Uh. They
Speaker 1: were raided to pronounce Kimler dead when he suddenly started
Speaker 1: breathing again, which horrified many of the witnesses. There were
Speaker 1: reports of people fainting or being sick because this supposedly
Speaker 1: humane means of putting someone to death had just dramatically
Speaker 1: had this this reaction of convulsions, and now the prisoner
Speaker 1: was breathing again, not conscious, but was breathing. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: A C dynamo needed to be charged again in order
Speaker 1: for it to deliver another shock. So it took some time,
Speaker 1: and it led some people to fear that Kindler would
Speaker 1: regain consciousness, but they were able to deliver a second
Speaker 1: fatal shock uh and actually complete the execution by electrocution.
Speaker 1: Westinghouse was absolutely horrified by the whole ordeal and said
Speaker 1: that the demonstration showed that electrocution is not a humane
Speaker 1: method humane method of execution, and proclaimed there would never
Speaker 1: again be an execution by electrocution. Now, all of this
Speaker 1: grim theater ended up being unnecessary. Edison's efforts were all
Speaker 1: for not because Westinghouse secured the rights supply electricity to
Speaker 1: the eight Chicago World's Fair. The fair allowed Westinghouse an
Speaker 1: opportunity to generate a huge amount of positive publicity for
Speaker 1: the Westinghouse company and for alternating current, and the transmission
Speaker 1: method was secure, so Westinghouse one out in the short run. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Eventually Edison's company would win out and Westinghouse would kind
Speaker 1: of fade into obscurity, but the actual rivalry during their lifetimes.
Speaker 1: Westinghouse was the clear winner of that one. Alright. So
Speaker 1: those are two classic rivalries from ages past. Now we're
Speaker 1: going to jump forward about a century to look at
Speaker 1: the next one, because, uh, I mean, there are tons
Speaker 1: of different rivalries I could focus on, but some of
Speaker 1: these are really fun and some of them are so
Speaker 1: are very illustrative of how far people are willing to
Speaker 1: go in order to get their ideas across. So that's next.
Speaker 1: One I want to talk about is Motorola versus a
Speaker 1: T and T in the mobile phone wars. And this
Speaker 1: was in the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: when a T and T S research and development arm
Speaker 1: called Bell Labs. We've talked about Bell Labs on this
Speaker 1: show many times. Bell Labs was working on a new
Speaker 1: way to make and receive phone calls, uh, and it
Speaker 1: was a cellular service. It was using a cell methodology
Speaker 1: to transfer phones from one cell to the next to
Speaker 1: allow a continuous phone call whenever a phone was in motion,
Speaker 1: and a T and T S aim was to create
Speaker 1: this technology specifically for car phones. That was really the
Speaker 1: application they were looking at. They weren't thinking about mobile
Speaker 1: phones but car phones. So I guess you could argue
Speaker 1: that car phones are mobile, but you couldn't take them
Speaker 1: out of the car. They would just be, you know,
Speaker 1: built into the car itself. Another company thought there could
Speaker 1: be a different use personal mobile phones, things that you
Speaker 1: could actually carry with you, they wouldn't be stuck in
Speaker 1: the car, and that company was Motorola. So Motorola gave
Speaker 1: the project of developing a truly mobile phone to Martin Cooper,
Speaker 1: and Cooper and his team got to work in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two on developing a phone that could be carried
Speaker 1: on a person and one that didn't require any sort
Speaker 1: of wires connected to a base station, so it would
Speaker 1: be another cell phone type of phone. The phone that
Speaker 1: they designed was officially named the Dina Tack d Y
Speaker 1: in A T A C, and inside the Motorola group
Speaker 1: they referred to it as a shoe phone because of
Speaker 1: the shape of the phone. It was a big brick
Speaker 1: of a thing that looked kind of like the shape
Speaker 1: of a shoe. In nineteen seventy three, the team was
Speaker 1: ready to unveil the project and perform a public demonstration,
Speaker 1: so Cooper had the perfect idea to do this. His
Speaker 1: team installed a cell transmitter on a New York City building.
Speaker 1: They got permission to attach a transmitter to a tower,
Speaker 1: and on April third, Ninete Martin Cooper grabbed the phone.
Speaker 1: It's weighed about two pounds, and took that out to
Speaker 1: the streets of New York City and he used that
Speaker 1: phone to call a person named Joel Ingle. So who
Speaker 1: was Joel Lingle? He was an engineer who worked at
Speaker 1: Bell Labs. So essentially Ingle was a T and T
Speaker 1: S counterpart to motor Rola's Martin Cooper. So Cooper essentially
Speaker 1: calls his his counterpart and to his competitor, and he
Speaker 1: rather cheekily needled Ingle with the reveal that he was
Speaker 1: being called on a mobile phone that wasn't a car phone,
Speaker 1: and then Cooper went on his jolly little way to
Speaker 1: hold a press conference about the developing technology. Now, would
Speaker 1: mobile phones be limited to cars if it weren't for
Speaker 1: motor Rolla and Martin Cooper. Probably not, And even Motorola's
Speaker 1: invention wouldn't be ready for consumers for another ten years
Speaker 1: or so. But the rivalry was a really fun one,
Speaker 1: so I decided I had to include it. In this episode, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got to talk about a little company called Apple.
Speaker 1: Apple has had some of the most famous rivalries in
Speaker 1: technology with lots of different companies, in fact, largely because
Speaker 1: Apple is involved with lots of different types of tech.
Speaker 1: So it's not as simple as Apple versus Microsoft, or
Speaker 1: even Apple versus IBM, but both will play a part.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna give a rundown on some of the
Speaker 1: biggest rivalries involving Apple, including an internal rivalry within the
Speaker 1: company itself. Just keep in mind that a lot of
Speaker 1: these rivalries overlap each other, so it's not like one
Speaker 1: began and ended and then another one began and ended.
Speaker 1: But the first one we need to look at is
Speaker 1: Apple versus IBM. So both companies were aiming to dominate
Speaker 1: the personal computer market. Apple had an early success. They
Speaker 1: had really hit the ground running with the Apple too.
Speaker 1: It was incredibly popular for its time. But IBM was
Speaker 1: a huge company with nearly a century of history behind it,
Speaker 1: and IBM had been building computers for enterprises and felt
Speaker 1: the PC market was the next big thing. So as
Speaker 1: the IBM PC debuted, Apple had to strike back. So
Speaker 1: famous Apple at ran during the Super Bowl and it
Speaker 1: portrayed IBM as the evil Empire. It was sort of Orwellian,
Speaker 1: very faceless, and everyone is just a number, a cog
Speaker 1: in a machine, and the Macintosh computer was positioned to
Speaker 1: be the machine for people wishing to maintain their individuality
Speaker 1: rather than to become a clone. Jobs himself had said
Speaker 1: that if for some reason we make some big mistake
Speaker 1: and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are
Speaker 1: going to enter a computer dark ages. For about twenty years,
Speaker 1: shots were five aired um. IBM fought back by employing
Speaker 1: a former ally of Apple. And that brings us to
Speaker 1: the second big rivalry in Apple's history. And we're talking
Speaker 1: about Apple and Microsoft, and this one is a doozy.
Speaker 1: So the two companies shared a lot of similarities. Microsoft
Speaker 1: was founded on April fourth, nineteen seventy Apple was founded
Speaker 1: on April one, nineteen seventy six, so almost a year later,
Speaker 1: not quite, just barely shy of a year later. So
Speaker 1: Microsoft is just a hair under a year older than Apple. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: two of the co founders, you know, Bill Gates for
Speaker 1: Microsoft and Steed Jobs for Apple, were very similar. Both
Speaker 1: were college dropouts, both had big ideas. Gates's approach was
Speaker 1: to develop software that would run on personal computers in
Speaker 1: the future. Jobs's idea was to develop both software and hardware,
Speaker 1: so he wanted to create the computers along with the
Speaker 1: operating systems and software that was used on them. And
Speaker 1: at first there wasn't a direct rivalry between the two companies.
Speaker 1: In fact, Microsoft developed software both for the Apple to
Speaker 1: computer and the Macintosh. But in the mid nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: Microsoft began to develop Windows, which is a graphical user
Speaker 1: interface operating system. Apple and Steve Jobs in particular, felt
Speaker 1: that Windows bore more than a passing resemblance to the
Speaker 1: mac os, which Microsoft had access to even before the
Speaker 1: operating system came to market. So essentially the accusation was
Speaker 1: that Microsoft was copying Apple. This is kind of funny
Speaker 1: to me, because Apple and itself was kind of copying Xerox.
Speaker 1: But Apple is one of those companies that while Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs felt that that great great minds steal, he wasn't
Speaker 1: too happy when it was being done to him. So
Speaker 1: Apple actually went beyond words with this bad all and
Speaker 1: took it to the courtroom. Apple sued Microsoft or copyright infringement.
Speaker 1: The lawsuit went for several years, but ultimately the court
Speaker 1: decided against Apple. Apple appealed the decision. They even went
Speaker 1: so far as to petition the U. S. Supreme Court
Speaker 1: to hear the case, but they were denied. The Supreme
Speaker 1: Court said no, we're not gonna listen to it, and
Speaker 1: the matter came to arrest. Microsoft helped the PC dominate
Speaker 1: the market over the Macintosh. So Microsoft gets involved in
Speaker 1: IBM and IBM clones and provides this Windows, this graphical
Speaker 1: user interface operating system and helps the PC command a
Speaker 1: huge amount of the market share and shrinking Apple's influence
Speaker 1: to less than ten percent of the overall market, which
Speaker 1: is a big change. This also brings up the internal
Speaker 1: rivalry I mentioned earlier, the one that happened in Apple.
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs was a divisive figure. Seems like it's an
Speaker 1: accurate thing to say he's really passionate salesman, a very
Speaker 1: visionary person as far as product design was concerned. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, people had have criticized Jobs by saying that
Speaker 1: he was more of kind of a grand idea man
Speaker 1: and relied heavily on other people to implement it. But
Speaker 1: his success record shows that, uh that his ideas were
Speaker 1: very popular with people. They were on track. He was
Speaker 1: very concerned with design, and it turns out that concern
Speaker 1: was well founded, but he was also seen as hot
Speaker 1: headed and difficult to work with. This is true both
Speaker 1: in the early days of Apple as well as the
Speaker 1: second reign of Steve Jobs. So he was the founder
Speaker 1: of the company, but he wasn't the CEO by the
Speaker 1: mid eighties. In fact, Jobs had hired on John Scully
Speaker 1: to fill that position in nine three, that's when Apple
Speaker 1: became a publicly traded company. By five, after disappointing McIntosh
Speaker 1: sales figures and complaints from Jobs as employees that Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs was very difficult to work for, Scully consulted the
Speaker 1: board of directors and together they decided that it was
Speaker 1: best to remove Jobs from his leadership position. So technically
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs still worked for Apple, but he was kind
Speaker 1: of pushed to what was called Siberia where he had
Speaker 1: very little influence on anything that was going on in
Speaker 1: Apple and really had nothing much to do. So that
Speaker 1: didn't sit well with Steve Jobs. He actually decided to quit.
Speaker 1: So in the summer he left Apple and he formed
Speaker 1: a new computer company called Next, and he launched a
Speaker 1: little animation studio. You might have heard of called Pixar
Speaker 1: during that time. Meanwhile, Apple didn't do so well without
Speaker 1: Jobs Steve Jobs. That is, there were a series of
Speaker 1: decisions that had kind of watered down the culture of
Speaker 1: the company, including licensing of technology, something that Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: never would have stood for, and the company itself was
Speaker 1: on the verge of collapse in the ninety nineties. That
Speaker 1: was when the board reached out back to Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: and said please come back, originally as sort of an
Speaker 1: interim CEO, but Jobs would of course become the permanent CEO.
Speaker 1: So Steve Jobs agreed to come back and things began
Speaker 1: to turn around, though not immediately. So one of Steve
Speaker 1: jobs first actions, it's kind of a move of desperation. Uh,
Speaker 1: the company was doing really poorly. He ended up turning
Speaker 1: to Microsoft for help. So, even though Apple and Microsoft
Speaker 1: at this point had a rather tumultuous relationship, largely because
Speaker 1: Apple had come after Microsoft so hard in the lawsuit,
Speaker 1: Jobs turns to Microsoft for help, and Apple and Microsoft
Speaker 1: strike a deal. Microsoft invests a sizeable sum of money
Speaker 1: into Apple, and in return, Apple forms of partnership with Microsoft,
Speaker 1: names Internet Explorer as the browser of choice for Mac
Speaker 1: computers as well as integrating other types of Mac software
Speaker 1: into or Microsoft software into the MAX. So this partnership
Speaker 1: lasts for about five years. That's how long the agreement
Speaker 1: was h was supposed to last, and then after that
Speaker 1: they could choose to renew it or not. So once
Speaker 1: those years were up, things went back to being pretty
Speaker 1: rough between Microsoft and Apple. That's when we started seeing
Speaker 1: the Mac versus PC ads coming out, you know, the
Speaker 1: high I'm a Mac and I'm a PC, the ones
Speaker 1: with John Hodgman in them. It's also when Apple made
Speaker 1: the decision to move into a space that Microsoft hadn't
Speaker 1: really cracked yet, which was mobile computing. And that's how
Speaker 1: Apple managed to build momentum and eventually pass Microsoft in value.
Speaker 1: So it was a long battle, and Microsoft dominated the
Speaker 1: market for ages, and really still in the PC market,
Speaker 1: Microsoft is is ahead of Apple. But when you look
Speaker 1: at where most of the movement is going toward, with
Speaker 1: the mobile platforms being way more important than desktop and
Speaker 1: laptops happened to be these days, Apple has kind of
Speaker 1: one you would say that they're currently winning, especially if
Speaker 1: you look at the value of the two companies. Apple's
Speaker 1: value is astronomical. Now when jobs came back to Apple,
Speaker 1: another rivalry started up. That's when Michael Dell of Dell
Speaker 1: Computers made a statement that ruffled some feathers. Dell said
Speaker 1: that if he had been put in charge of Apple
Speaker 1: at that time, when the company was on the verge
Speaker 1: of collapsing, he would have just shut it down and
Speaker 1: returned the money to shareholders. Jobs meanwhile said that Dell
Speaker 1: and Apple were the only two companies in the computer
Speaker 1: industry that we're actually making money at that time. Only
Speaker 1: Apple did it through innovation, while Dell did it by
Speaker 1: quote being Walmart end quote sick burn. Now there are
Speaker 1: other I've alreadies to talk about. With Apple. During the
Speaker 1: mobile era, which I guess we're still in technically, there
Speaker 1: were a couple of big ones. Apple had a real
Speaker 1: problem with Google. Steve Jobs really had a big problem
Speaker 1: with Google. Jobs felt that the Android operating system was
Speaker 1: a complete rip off of iOS and he wanted to
Speaker 1: see it destroyed, famously saying that he would spend every
Speaker 1: penny of Apple's billions of dollars in order to do it,
Speaker 1: and that he would pursue this to his last dying breath. Now,
Speaker 1: Apple really concentrated on going after Android, not by targeting
Speaker 1: Google directly, but instead looking at the companies that actually
Speaker 1: used Android operating system, and specifically they targeted Samsung both
Speaker 1: because there were hardware designs that Apple said infringed upon
Speaker 1: their trademarks and patents uh and there were software issues
Speaker 1: that they said were infringing upon patents. And so the
Speaker 1: patent wars began between Samsung and Apple, and they're so
Speaker 1: extensive that I'm not going to go into them here
Speaker 1: except to say that there have been billions of dollars
Speaker 1: awarded in various cases, sometimes for Apples, sometimes against Apple,
Speaker 1: in different courts around the world. And it's a very
Speaker 1: complicated series of accusations and counter accusations. So it's been
Speaker 1: pretty ugly. Definitely one of the more um notable rivalries
Speaker 1: in recent years. Now. On the social media side, one
Speaker 1: of the great rivalries of the past few years was
Speaker 1: between my Space and Facebook, which might seem hard to
Speaker 1: believe now because a lot of people aren't even aware
Speaker 1: that my Space was a thing at this point or
Speaker 1: haven't thought about it in years, but my Space was
Speaker 1: the dominant player in the game for quite a few years.
Speaker 1: It was hard for someone on my Space to see
Speaker 1: or to imagine that Facebook could possibly get ahead and
Speaker 1: ultimately render my Space obsolete as a social networking site.
Speaker 1: So my Space was founded in two thousand three. Facebook
Speaker 1: would follow a year later, and my my Space incorporated
Speaker 1: a ton of features, some of which weren't really that subtle.
Speaker 1: You could customize your profile page in my Space quite
Speaker 1: a bit. You can put on all sorts of different backgrounds.
Speaker 1: You could include very simple animations in there that would
Speaker 1: make your eyes bleed. You could include clips of music
Speaker 1: that would auto play when you would visit the profile, which,
Speaker 1: let me tell you how fun that was. Facebook, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, was much more minimalist in its design.
Speaker 1: Initially and in the earliest phases, it was not much
Speaker 1: more than a tool to help college kids find a
Speaker 1: date um and in fact, it was only open to
Speaker 1: college students originally. Now During the mid two thousand's, MySpace
Speaker 1: dominated Facebook, and in two thousand five, News Corporation acquired
Speaker 1: my Space for five hundred eighty million dollars in enormous
Speaker 1: acquisition at the time. In two thousand six, MySpace was
Speaker 1: the most visited site on the web. Google was second place,
Speaker 1: but Facebook's design and features were evolving over time. The
Speaker 1: site started opening up to larger and larger populations opening
Speaker 1: up beyond college students, and by two thousand nine, the
Speaker 1: tables had turned and Facebook was receiving more visitors than
Speaker 1: my Space. So the former giant began to see members
Speaker 1: leaving for Facebook. Some of them were following friends who
Speaker 1: had already left my Space, some of them were joining
Speaker 1: friends who had Facebook accounts but had never even bothered
Speaker 1: to build a MySpace account. And in two thousand and eleven,
Speaker 1: News Corporations saw the writing on the wall and sold
Speaker 1: my Space for an undisclosed sum. Now the sum is
Speaker 1: officially undisclosed, but there have been a lot of estimations
Speaker 1: out there, with the lowest being at around thirty five
Speaker 1: million dollars. So remember they bought the company for five
Speaker 1: hundred eighty million selling it for thirty five million. That's
Speaker 1: a huge loss for News Corporation. Since then, my Space
Speaker 1: reinvented itself as a music entertainment destination. That did that
Speaker 1: back in two thousand twelve with the help of Justin Timberlake,
Speaker 1: and all the user generated content that had existed on
Speaker 1: the site has long since been deleted, So all those profiles,
Speaker 1: the messages, the photos, the journal entries, all of those
Speaker 1: things are gone, and that caused a lot of grief
Speaker 1: with people. Some folks were saying, you know, I know,
Speaker 1: I don't go to my space to comment anymore, to
Speaker 1: interact with my friends, but I did still have a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff there that was important to me, like
Speaker 1: pictures of people who are no longer around, or thoughts
Speaker 1: on on subjects that were really important. But I didn't
Speaker 1: have anywhere else. So that caused some consternation when they
Speaker 1: deleted all that user generated information. So how did my
Speaker 1: Space actually fall like that? How did that all happen?
Speaker 1: How could my Space, which had dominated had become the
Speaker 1: most visited website in the world. How it it fail
Speaker 1: so completely to this upstart Facebook. Well, a lot of
Speaker 1: people have put thought to it, and one hypothesis is
Speaker 1: that News Corporation put my Space under the leadership of
Speaker 1: business executives who are used to formulating a strategy and
Speaker 1: executing it. So, in other words, they would sit down,
Speaker 1: make goals, make plans on how to achieve those goals,
Speaker 1: and set forth doing it. And they were very you know,
Speaker 1: kind of locked into those ideas. Meanwhile, Facebook grew up
Speaker 1: in an environment where the company could experiment with ideas
Speaker 1: and discard them if they didn't work very quickly. They
Speaker 1: were very nimble in that way, so they could change
Speaker 1: much more quickly, adapting to what people liked and get
Speaker 1: rid of things that they didn't like, while my my
Speaker 1: Space was bogged down and more of a corporate structure,
Speaker 1: and in the end, Facebook's approach worked in that social
Speaker 1: media sphere and my Space didn't. Some more recent rivalries
Speaker 1: we've seen include companies like Uber and Lift, both of
Speaker 1: which are those car hailing services. You know, you get
Speaker 1: an app on your phone and you can hail a
Speaker 1: car driver from Uber or driver from Lift and use
Speaker 1: that to take you to wherever you're going to go.
Speaker 1: They're very similar services. Both of those services have riled
Speaker 1: city governments and taxi companies. But in two thousand and fourteen,
Speaker 1: Uber really made the news got a lot of negative
Speaker 1: press for this. They had a campaign to throw a
Speaker 1: monkey wrench in lifts operations. Normally, I would say allegedly,
Speaker 1: but memos from Uber leaked and we're published by various
Speaker 1: publications on the web, and so Uber employees or contractors
Speaker 1: were encouraged to use Lift services in an effort to
Speaker 1: recruit drivers away from Lift and over to Uber. There
Speaker 1: were also policies that told contractors to order and then
Speaker 1: cancel lift rights. This had a couple of different reason
Speaker 1: uh you know mo ovations. One was that it kept
Speaker 1: lift drivers busy without having them earn money. So they
Speaker 1: would be responding to a call and driving from one
Speaker 1: point to another to pick up a fair, and then
Speaker 1: the the call would be canceled and so they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be making money. In that meantime, they'd be wasting time
Speaker 1: going from point A to point B. The other reason
Speaker 1: was to help mask the recruitment efforts from Uber executives.
Speaker 1: So rather than allowing Lift to identify a pattern and
Speaker 1: to say, oh, this one person is consistently trying to
Speaker 1: recruit our employees or our drivers over to Uber, let's
Speaker 1: ban them for life. This was a way of trying
Speaker 1: to obfuse skate that. So it's all very spy movie esque.
Speaker 1: Uber employees are contractors were even using burner cell phones
Speaker 1: and varying their behavior to avoid setting patterns to help
Speaker 1: limit the chance of being discovered. Now, Lift even went
Speaker 1: so far as to sue it's own former CEO. The
Speaker 1: executive had jumped ship to Uber, and Lift claimed that
Speaker 1: that executive had shared confidential information about a ride sharing program,
Speaker 1: and this was partially because both Uber and Lift announced
Speaker 1: such a ride sharing program on the very same day.
Speaker 1: And Lift said, well, the whole reason why this happened
Speaker 1: was that someone who had uh confidential information shared it
Speaker 1: with our competitors. So that's unfair and we're suing for it.
Speaker 1: Another big rivalry going on right now is between Netflix,
Speaker 1: Amazon and HBO. So Netflix and Amazon had been battling
Speaker 1: it out for a while trying to secure content that
Speaker 1: is exclusive to one or the other. Um they're also
Speaker 1: creating their own individual original content and trying to kind
Speaker 1: of dominate the streaming market. Meanwhile, HBO is a heard
Speaker 1: the fray with HBO go with his own streaming service,
Speaker 1: and that has prompted Netflix chief Content office sort to
Speaker 1: say the goal for us is to become Hbo faster
Speaker 1: than HBO can become us. Now, whether this means that
Speaker 1: the cable industry as a whole will eventually be completely
Speaker 1: replaced by competing streaming services remains to be seen. We're
Speaker 1: getting a lot of really fantastic content from this, you know,
Speaker 1: Daredevil from Amazon for example, or from Netflix rather for example,
Speaker 1: Amazon is going to bankroll The Man Who Killed don Keyxote,
Speaker 1: the Terry Gilliam movie that has had famously, perhaps infamously
Speaker 1: troublesome uh. Past. So really exciting from a content perspective,
Speaker 1: But it also means that if you want to get
Speaker 1: access to all of these things, you have to subscribe
Speaker 1: to multiple streaming services. So the more crowded this gets,
Speaker 1: the harder it is for the individual consumer. Or you
Speaker 1: have to make tough decisions which once do you subscribe
Speaker 1: to and which ones do you not? Um will it
Speaker 1: all shake out that this is the future of television? Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm interested to see. I would suspect, at least for
Speaker 1: the near future, this is how it's going to go.
Speaker 1: Whether it's sustainable, I don't know. Maybe it's exactly what
Speaker 1: everyone's looking for. I know a lot of people have
Speaker 1: hoped for ala carte cable where they could pick and
Speaker 1: choose which channels they have access. Well, this might be
Speaker 1: the beginning of that world, but it might mean that
Speaker 1: you have to subscribe to all these different individual services
Speaker 1: in order to do it, and if there are a
Speaker 1: lot of them, it may end up meaning that you're
Speaker 1: paying more per month than your cable bill was before,
Speaker 1: so we'll have to see anyway that wraps up this
Speaker 1: discussion about the various big rivalries that have existed in technology.
Speaker 1: Like I said, it was just kind of a sample
Speaker 1: of them. Their ton more out there. And I'm curious
Speaker 1: if you guys have a favorite rivalry that has happened
Speaker 1: in tech, whether it was on this list or not
Speaker 1: on this list. Maybe there's one in particular you would
Speaker 1: like to hear more about where I could go into
Speaker 1: more detail or get someone on to chat with me
Speaker 1: about one of these or another rivalry, or if there's
Speaker 1: any other type of topic you would like me to cover,
Speaker 1: a guest you would like me to interview or have
Speaker 1: as a guest co host. I would love to hear
Speaker 1: all of these things. And you guys are sending me
Speaker 1: great suggestions keeping up. If you want to get in touch,
Speaker 1: my email addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter
Speaker 1: or Tumbler at all three. I use the handle text
Speaker 1: stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really
Speaker 1: sick or more on it and fastens another topic because
Speaker 1: it has to work dot Com