Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you? It's time for a
Speaker 1: tech Stuff classic episode. This episode originally published on June two,
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen. It is titled text Top Rivalries. I'm
Speaker 1: sure we could add to this list in the years
Speaker 1: since it originally published, but let's take a listen. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about something that I think is
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Technology is often intertwined with business, and that
Speaker 1: means rivalries are bound to occur. Now, there's been some
Speaker 1: big rivalries in tech, and I wanted to take some
Speaker 1: time to talk about a few of the most notable ones.
Speaker 1: And this is by no means a complete list. It's
Speaker 1: more of a sampling and include some rivalries that happened
Speaker 1: more than a century ago. So let's get started with
Speaker 1: the oldest rivalry in my list, that is a railroad rivalry.
Speaker 1: This started way back in eighteen sixty two and President
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Pacific Railroad Act. Now,
Speaker 1: this was an act that was meant to create a
Speaker 1: railroad that would unify the rails, so you get a
Speaker 1: complete transcontinental rail line where you can travel from the
Speaker 1: east coast to the west coast. And it meant that
Speaker 1: you had to bridge this huge gap that was started
Speaker 1: in the West. I created these two entities, Union Pacific
Speaker 1: and Central Pacific. Now Union Pacific started in Omaha, Nebraska,
Speaker 1: and it was to build railroads westward. Central Pacific started
Speaker 1: in Sacramento, California, and it was to build to the east. Now,
Speaker 1: the two companies were fierce competitors because the amount of
Speaker 1: money and land they received from the government. It didn't
Speaker 1: depend on how efficient the systems were. It depended upon
Speaker 1: the number of miles of track they laid. So speed
Speaker 1: was valued higher than safety or efficiency, and the two
Speaker 1: companies began to feverishly lay down track at the expense
Speaker 1: of human lives. So the heads of the two companies
Speaker 1: were collectively referred to as robber barons. If you've ever
Speaker 1: heard that term, it's talking specifically about the railroad tycoons
Speaker 1: back in the uh mid nineteenth century. They were fighting
Speaker 1: to get the most wealth and power. They were engaging
Speaker 1: in all sorts of questionable activities to gain an advantage.
Speaker 1: As 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 were the
Speaker 1: planks that connect the two sets of rails together and
Speaker 1: keep 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 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: willing us to cut corners to make more money, and
Speaker 1: both were plagued by attacks from Native American tribes. Union
Speaker 1: Pacific often would attempt to fight these attacks off. Their
Speaker 1: trains that they would use to move along as the
Speaker 1: track was being built, were loaded with rifles. Meanwhile, Central
Speaker 1: Pacific's workforce, UH they were they were often joined by
Speaker 1: Native Americans because Central Pacific started paying off tribes and
Speaker 1: having them join the workforce. Uh. Speaking of workforces, both
Speaker 1: Union and Central used cheap labor. Central Pacifics workforce was
Speaker 1: primarily Chinese augmented by some Native American workers, and Union
Speaker 1: Pacific had hired on Irish laborers who were treated awfully
Speaker 1: at that time, so both groups were even calling them
Speaker 1: second class citizens as being generous, they were treated poorly.
Speaker 1: Central Pacific suffered or losses to their workforce due to
Speaker 1: accidents during the construction figures very not a lot of
Speaker 1: people were particularly concerned about keeping an accurate count of
Speaker 1: the number of deaths from injury, but estimations range from
Speaker 1: five hundred to a thousand employees uh died while trying
Speaker 1: to construct the railroad. Union Pacific they lost more employees
Speaker 1: to disease and murder than they did to accidents. It
Speaker 1: turns out they would stop in a lot of towns.
Speaker 1: Often they would refer to them as the hell on
Speaker 1: wheels towns where there various workforce members were encountering problems
Speaker 1: with prostitutes or violent criminals, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: them didn't make it. In fact, I think I read
Speaker 1: one estimation that said there was a ratio of four
Speaker 1: to one Union Pacific employees who died from murder to accidents,
Speaker 1: So for everyone who died from an accident. Four We're
Speaker 1: dying from being murdered, so awful awful times. Even when
Speaker 1: the two railroads were getting closer together, the two companies
Speaker 1: were engaged in shady dealings and didn't worry so much
Speaker 1: about the tracks actually meeting up properly, which was the
Speaker 1: whole point of this enterprise in the first place. So
Speaker 1: the two companies were still looking at ways to maximize
Speaker 1: the amount of money and land they could get, rather
Speaker 1: than completing the job as was assigned. 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.
Speaker 1: Now by then both companies had spent huge amounts of
Speaker 1: money and more than a thousand lives had been lost.
Speaker 1: And if you want to look at how much track
Speaker 1: was laid, technically Union Pacific one because I had laid
Speaker 1: more track. But the cost of both companies, not to
Speaker 1: mention the cost to everyone else in evolved in this,
Speaker 1: whether it was the land that it moved through or
Speaker 1: the people working for the companies. It really makes this
Speaker 1: particular rivalry come out as a draw, and not a
Speaker 1: pleasant one at that. Now, the next big rivalry I
Speaker 1: want to talk about, as want I mentioned on the
Speaker 1: show several times before, and it's Thomas Edison versus George Westinghouse.
Speaker 1: Now you might have thought I was going to say
Speaker 1: Nicola Tesla there for a second, but honest, honestly, really Tesla.
Speaker 1: He was a brilliant engineer. He was also a brilliant
Speaker 1: self promoter. He was a rock star of his day.
Speaker 1: But he was not a very good businessman. So Edison
Speaker 1: and Westinghouse were the powerhouses behind the two enormous companies
Speaker 1: battling to supply electric power to the United States. So
Speaker 1: it's really George Westinghouse who was the other entity in
Speaker 1: opposition to Thomas Edison. Nicola Tesla played a very important role,
Speaker 1: But if you're looking at the War of the currency,
Speaker 1: really should say Edison versus Westinghouse, not Edison versus Tesla. Now,
Speaker 1: this War of the currents took place just a couple
Speaker 1: of decades after the railroad shenanigans I just talked about.
Speaker 1: This would be in the eighteen eighties when Thomas Hasen
Speaker 1: was looking to land an incredibly lucrative deal with the
Speaker 1: United States to build power stations that would supply electricity
Speaker 1: to homes and businesses through direct current. Now, essentially Edison
Speaker 1: would just have to provide the patents and then he
Speaker 1: could rake in royalties for years. He would become insanely
Speaker 1: wealthy if he could land this deal. But there was
Speaker 1: a problem. He was dead set on using that direct
Speaker 1: current as 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 fined 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. We'll
Speaker 1: be back with more of this classic episode of tech
Speaker 1: stuff after this quick break. Now we need to talk
Speaker 1: about George Westinghouse. He was the founder of the Westinghouse
Speaker 1: Electric and Manufacturing Company, and he saw the value of
Speaker 1: alternating current. He thought that was the future, so he
Speaker 1: bought Tesla's patents. Now Edison suddenly took notice because while
Speaker 1: Tesla he thought was kind of a wild, crazy idea
Speaker 1: man who wasn't a real threat, Westinghouse had influence and
Speaker 1: a lot of money. So now Edison actually had a
Speaker 1: legitimate threat a legitimate competitor. Tesla, while brilliant, wasn't really
Speaker 1: much of a threat to Edison. He couldn't do much
Speaker 1: on his own. Westinghouse was a different story, and Westinghouse
Speaker 1: was able to secure rights to supply power to areas
Speaker 1: that Edison's power stations couldn't reach, like those rural and
Speaker 1: suburban areas. Westinghouse also started making some headway into urban markets,
Speaker 1: mostly by selling electricity at a loss to undercut Edison.
Speaker 1: So Westinghouse wasn't above doing some, you know, some potentially
Speaker 1: harmful business practices in order to eliminate the competition. Edison
Speaker 1: also not shy about competition. He thrived on it. His
Speaker 1: response was to create a pr campaign that claimed a
Speaker 1: C power was inherently deadly because it required high voltage
Speaker 1: running through the wires. That's how alternating current is able
Speaker 1: to get much better transmission than direct current. With alternating current,
Speaker 1: used transformers to step up the voltage until you get
Speaker 1: to these very high levels to run through cable over
Speaker 1: great distances, and then use other transformers to step down
Speaker 1: the voltage to deliver the electricity to houses. And Edison
Speaker 1: was convinced that this alternating current, this high voltage was
Speaker 1: absolutely deadly and if it were put in widespread use,
Speaker 1: it would cause deaths by electrocution across the United States.
Speaker 1: I assume he believed that he certainly acted as if
Speaker 1: he did uh, and he was inspired to really push
Speaker 1: that idea. Now something happened that was a little bit
Speaker 1: against more than a little bit, very much against Edison's principles.
Speaker 1: But I think it says a lot about his character
Speaker 1: based upon what he did. A dentist actually came up
Speaker 1: to him and had proposed the idea of using electricity
Speaker 1: as a means of execution, using electrocution to kill criminals.
Speaker 1: He thought that it could be a faster and more
Speaker 1: humane way of putting someone to death than the other
Speaker 1: methods of the era. Now, Edison philosophically opposed the death penalty.
Speaker 1: He was not in favor of it, but he also
Speaker 1: saw in this request the possibility of associating Westinghouses alternating
Speaker 1: current power with electrocution, and that led to Edison really
Speaker 1: pushing this idea, ultimately leading to demonstrations public demonstrations in
Speaker 1: which Edison would electrocute various animals, starting off with stray dogs.
Speaker 1: He would pay to have stray dogs rounded up and
Speaker 1: then electrocute them, and to demonstrate that alternating current was deadly. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the big one that everyone remembers is that Edison used
Speaker 1: the 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 share, 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 Kimdler 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. Kidler 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 pronounced 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 right to supply electricity
Speaker 1: to the eight Chicago World's Fair. The fair allowed Westinghouse
Speaker 1: an opportunity to generate a huge amount of positive publicity
Speaker 1: for the Westinghouse Company and for alternating current, and the
Speaker 1: transmission method was secure, so Westinghouse one out. In the
Speaker 1: short run anyway, eventually Edison's company would win out and
Speaker 1: Westinghouse would kind of fade into obscurity. But the actual
Speaker 1: rivalry during their lifetimes, Westinghouse was the clear winner of
Speaker 1: that one. Alright. So those are two classic rivalries from
Speaker 1: ages past. Now we're going to jump forward about a
Speaker 1: century to look at the next one, because, uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: there are tons of different rivalries I could focus on,
Speaker 1: but some of these are really fun and some of
Speaker 1: them are so are very illustrative of how far people
Speaker 1: are willing to go in order to get their ideas across.
Speaker 1: So that's next one I want to talk about is
Speaker 1: Motorola versus a T and T in the mobile phone wars.
Speaker 1: And this was in the late nineteen sixties and early
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies when a T and T S research and
Speaker 1: development arm called Bell Labs. We've talked about Bell Labs
Speaker 1: in the show many times. Bell Labs was working on
Speaker 1: a new way to make and receive phone calls, uh,
Speaker 1: and it was a cellular service. It was using a
Speaker 1: cell methodology to transfer phones from one cell to the
Speaker 1: next to allow a continuous phone call whenever a phone
Speaker 1: was in motion. And a T and T S aim
Speaker 1: was to create this technology specifically for car phones. That
Speaker 1: was really the application they were looking at. They weren't
Speaker 1: thinking about mobile phones, but car phones. So I guess
Speaker 1: you could argue that car phones are mobile, but you
Speaker 1: couldn't take them out of the car. They would just
Speaker 1: be you know, built into the car itself. Another company
Speaker 1: thought there could be a different use personal mobile phones,
Speaker 1: things that you could actually carry with you they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be stuck in the car, and that company was Motorola.
Speaker 1: So Motorola gave the project of developing a truly mobile
Speaker 1: phone to Martin Cooper, and Cooper and his team got
Speaker 1: to work in nineteen seventy two on developing a phone
Speaker 1: that could be carried on a person and one that
Speaker 1: didn't require any sort of wires connected to a base station,
Speaker 1: so it would be another cell phone type of phone.
Speaker 1: The phone that they designed was officially named the Dina
Speaker 1: Tack d y in A T, A C H, and
Speaker 1: inside the Motorola group they referred to it as a
Speaker 1: shoe phone because of the shape of the phone. It
Speaker 1: was a big brick of a thing that looked kind
Speaker 1: of like the shape of a shoe. In nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: the team was ready to unveil the project and perform
Speaker 1: a public demonstration, so oh Cooper had the perfect idea
Speaker 1: to do this. His team installed a cell transmitter on
Speaker 1: a New York City building. They got permission to attach
Speaker 1: a transmitter to a tower, and on April third, Ninete
Speaker 1: Martin Cooper grabbed the phone. It's weighed about two pounds,
Speaker 1: and took that out to the streets of New York
Speaker 1: City and he used that phone to call a person
Speaker 1: named Joel Ingle. So who was Joel Lingle? He was
Speaker 1: an engineer who worked at Bell Labs. So essentially Ingle
Speaker 1: was a T and T S counterpart to motor role
Speaker 1: as Martin Cooper. So Cooper essentially calls his his counterpart
Speaker 1: and to his competitor, and he rather cheekily needled Ingle
Speaker 1: with the reveal that he was being called on a
Speaker 1: mobile phone that wasn't a car phone, and then Cooper
Speaker 1: went on his jolly little way to hold a press
Speaker 1: conference about the developing technology. Now, would mobile phones be
Speaker 1: limited to cars if it weren't for Motorola and Martin Cooper.
Speaker 1: Probably not, And even Motorola's INVENTIONED wouldn't be ready for
Speaker 1: consumers for another ten years or so. But the rivalry
Speaker 1: was a really fun one, so I decided I had
Speaker 1: to include it in this episode. Okay, we've got to
Speaker 1: talk about a little company called Apple. Apple has had
Speaker 1: some of the most famous rivalries in technology with lots
Speaker 1: of different companies, in fact, largely because Apple is involved
Speaker 1: with lots of different types of tech, so it's not
Speaker 1: as simple as Apple versus Microsoft, or even Apple versus IBM,
Speaker 1: but both will play a part. So I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: a rundown on some of the biggest rivalries involving Apple,
Speaker 1: including an internal rivalry within the company itself. Just keep
Speaker 1: in mind that a lot of these rivalries overlap each other,
Speaker 1: so it's not like one began and ended and then
Speaker 1: another one began and ended. But the first one we
Speaker 1: need to look at is Apple versus IBM. So both
Speaker 1: companies were aiming to dominate the personal computer market. Apple
Speaker 1: had an early success. They had really hit the ground
Speaker 1: running with the Apple too. It was incredibly popular for
Speaker 1: its time. But IBM was a huge company with nearly
Speaker 1: a century of history behind it, and IBM had been
Speaker 1: building computers for enterprises and felt the PC market was
Speaker 1: the next big thing. So as the IBM PC debuted,
Speaker 1: Apple had to strike back. So famous Apple at ran
Speaker 1: during the Super Bowl, and it portrayed IBM as the
Speaker 1: evil Empire. It was sort of Orwellian, very faceless, and
Speaker 1: everyone is just a number, a cog in a machine.
Speaker 1: And the Macintosh computer was positioned to be the machine
Speaker 1: for people wishing to maintain their individuality rather than to
Speaker 1: become a clone. Jobs himself had said that if for
Speaker 1: some reason we make some big mistake and IBM wins,
Speaker 1: my personal feeling is that we are going to enter
Speaker 1: a computer dar ages for about twenty years. So shots
Speaker 1: were fired. Um IBM fought back by employing a former
Speaker 1: ally of Apple. And that brings us to the second
Speaker 1: big rivalry in Apple's history. And we're talking about Apple
Speaker 1: and Microsoft, and this one is a doozy. So the
Speaker 1: two companies shared a lot of similarities. Microsoft was founded
Speaker 1: on April fourth, nineteen seventy. Apple was founded on April one,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, so almost a year later, not quite,
Speaker 1: just barely shy of a year later. So Microsoft is
Speaker 1: 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 Steve 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 of
Speaker 1: the future. Jobs As idea was to develop both software
Speaker 1: and hardware, so he wanted to create the computers along
Speaker 1: with the operating systems and software that was used on them,
Speaker 1: and at first there wasn't a direct rivalry between the
Speaker 1: two companies. In fact, Microsoft developed software both for the
Speaker 1: Apple to computer and the Macintosh. But in the mid nineties,
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. We've got more to say
Speaker 1: in this classic episode of tech stuff after these quick messages.
Speaker 1: So essentially, the accusation was that Microsoft was copying Apple.
Speaker 1: This is kind of funny to me because Apple and
Speaker 1: itself was kind of copying Xerox. But Apple is one
Speaker 1: of those companies that while Steve Jobs felt that that
Speaker 1: great great minds steal, he wasn't too happy when it
Speaker 1: was being done to him. So Apple actually went beyond
Speaker 1: words with this battle and took it to the courtroom.
Speaker 1: Apple sued Microsoft or copyright infringement. The lawsuit went for
Speaker 1: several years, but ultimately the court decided against Apple. Apple
Speaker 1: appealed the decision. They even went so far as to
Speaker 1: petition the U S Supreme Court to hear the case,
Speaker 1: but they were denied. The Supreme Court said no, we're
Speaker 1: not gonna listen to it, and the matter came to arrest.
Speaker 1: Microsoft helped the PC dominate the market over the Macintosh.
Speaker 1: So Microsoft gets involved in IBM and IBM clones and
Speaker 1: provides this Windows, this graphical user interface operating system and
Speaker 1: helps the PC command a huge amount of the market
Speaker 1: share and shrinking Apple's influence to less than ten percent
Speaker 1: of the overall market, which is a big change. This
Speaker 1: also brings up the internal rivalry I mentioned earlier, the
Speaker 1: one that happened in Apple. Steve Jobs was a divisive figure.
Speaker 1: Seems like it's an accurate thing to say he's a
Speaker 1: really passionate salesman, a very visionary person as far as
Speaker 1: product design was concerned. Um, you know, people had have
Speaker 1: criticized Jobs by saying that he was more of kind
Speaker 1: of a grand idea man and relied heavily on other
Speaker 1: people to implement it. But his success record shows that,
Speaker 1: uh that his ideas were very popular with people. They
Speaker 1: were on track. He was very concerned with design, and
Speaker 1: it turns out that concern was well founded. But he
Speaker 1: was also seen as hot headed and difficult to work with.
Speaker 1: This is true both in the early days of Apple
Speaker 1: as well as the second reign of Steve Jobs. So
Speaker 1: he was the found of the company, but he wasn't
Speaker 1: the CEO by the mid eighties. In fact, Jobs had
Speaker 1: hired on John Scully to fill that position in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, that's when Apple became a publicly traded company.
Speaker 1: By night five, after disappointing McIntosh sales figures and complaints
Speaker 1: from Jobs as employees that Steve Jobs was very difficult
Speaker 1: to work for, Scully consulted the board of directors and
Speaker 1: together they decided that it was best to remove Jobs
Speaker 1: from his leadership position. So technically Steve Jobs still worked
Speaker 1: for Apple, but he was kind of pushed to what
Speaker 1: was called Siberia where he had very little influence on
Speaker 1: anything that was going on in Apple and really had
Speaker 1: nothing much to do. So that didn't sit well with
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs. He actually decided to quit. So in the
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen eighty five, he left Apple and he
Speaker 1: formed a new computer company called Next, and he launched
Speaker 1: a little animation studio you might have heard of called
Speaker 1: Pixar during that time. Meanwhile, Apple didn't do so well
Speaker 1: without Jobs, Steve Jobs, that is, there were a series
Speaker 1: of decisions that had kind of watered down the culture
Speaker 1: of the company, including licensing of technology, something that Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs never would have stood for, and the company itself
Speaker 1: was on the verge of collapse in the ninety nineties.
Speaker 1: That was when the boards that reached out back to
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs and said please come back, originally as sort
Speaker 1: of an interim CEO, but Jobs would of course become
Speaker 1: the permanent CEO. So Steve Jobs agreed to come back
Speaker 1: and things began to turn around, though not immediately. So
Speaker 1: one of Steve jobs first actions, it was kind of
Speaker 1: a move of desperation. Uh, the company was doing really poorly.
Speaker 1: He ended up turning to Microsoft for help. So, even
Speaker 1: though Apple and Microsoft at this point had a rather
Speaker 1: tumultuous relationship, largely because Apple had come after Microsoft so
Speaker 1: hard in the lawsuit, Jobs turns to Microsoft for help,
Speaker 1: and Apple and Microsoft strike a deal. Microsoft invests a
Speaker 1: sizeable sum of money into Apple, and in return, Apple
Speaker 1: forms of partnership with Microsoft, names Internet Explorer as the
Speaker 1: browser of choice for Mac computers, as well as integrating
Speaker 1: other types of Mac software into or Microsoft software into
Speaker 1: the max. So this partnership lasts for about five years.
Speaker 1: That's how long the agreement was UH was supposed to last,
Speaker 1: and then after that they could choose to renew it
Speaker 1: or not. So once those years were up, things went
Speaker 1: back to being pretty rough between Microsoft and Apple. That's
Speaker 1: when we started seeing the Mac versus PC ads coming
Speaker 1: out on the high I'm a Mac and I'm a PC,
Speaker 1: the ones with John Hodgman in them. It's also when
Speaker 1: Apple made the decision to move into a space that
Speaker 1: Microsoft hadn't really cracked yet, which was mobile computing. And
Speaker 1: that's how Apple managed to build momentum and eventually pass
Speaker 1: Microsoft in value. So it was a long battle and
Speaker 1: Microsoft dominated the market for ages and really still in
Speaker 1: the PC market, Microsoft is ahead of Apple. But when
Speaker 1: you look at where most of the movement is going toward,
Speaker 1: with the mobile platforms being way more important than desktop
Speaker 1: and laptops happened to be these days, Apple has kind
Speaker 1: of one you would say that they're currently winning, especially
Speaker 1: if you look at the value of the two companies.
Speaker 1: Apple's value is astronomical. Now. When jobs came back to Apple,
Speaker 1: another rival restarted 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 rivalries to talk about with Apple. During the mobile era,
Speaker 1: which I guess we're still in technically, there were a
Speaker 1: couple of big ones. Apple had a real problem with Google.
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs really had a big problem with Google. Jobs
Speaker 1: felt that the Android operating system was a complete rip
Speaker 1: off of iOS and he wanted to see it destroyed,
Speaker 1: famously saying that he would spend every penny of Apple's
Speaker 1: billions of dollars in order to do it, and that
Speaker 1: 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 could 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. It's an
Speaker 1: enormous acquisition at the time. In two thousand six, my
Speaker 1: Space was the most visited site on the web. Google
Speaker 1: was second place, But Facebook's design and features were evolving
Speaker 1: over time. The site started opening up to larger and
Speaker 1: larger populations, opening up beyond college students and By two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, the tables had turned and Facebook was receiving
Speaker 1: more visitors than my Space. So the former giant began
Speaker 1: to see members leaving for Facebook. Some of them were
Speaker 1: following friends who had already left my Space, some of
Speaker 1: them were joining friends who had Facebook accounts but had
Speaker 1: never even bothered to build a MySpace account. And in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, News Corporations saw the writing on the
Speaker 1: wall and sold my Space for an undisclosed sum. Now
Speaker 1: the sum is officially undisclosed, but there have been a
Speaker 1: lot of estimations out there, with the lowest being at
Speaker 1: around thirty five million dollars. So remember they bought the
Speaker 1: company for five hundred eighty million selling it for thirty
Speaker 1: five million. That's a huge loss for News Corporation. Since then,
Speaker 1: my Space reinvented itself as a music entertainment destination. That
Speaker 1: did that back in two thousand twelve with the help
Speaker 1: of Justin timber Lake, and all the user generated content
Speaker 1: that had existed on the site has long since been deleted,
Speaker 1: So all those profiles, the messages, the photos, the journal entries,
Speaker 1: all of those things are gone, and that caused a
Speaker 1: lot of grief with people. Some folks were saying, you know,
Speaker 1: I know, I don't go to my Space to comment
Speaker 1: anymore to interact with my friends, but I did still
Speaker 1: have a lot of stuff there that was important to me,
Speaker 1: like pictures of people who are no longer around, or
Speaker 1: thoughts on on subjects that were really important. But I
Speaker 1: didn't have anywhere else. So that caused some consternation when
Speaker 1: they deleted all that user generated information. So how did
Speaker 1: my 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 could 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 I 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 Left 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 reasons,
Speaker 1: uh you know, motivations. One was that it kept Lift
Speaker 1: drivers busy without having them earn money. So they would
Speaker 1: be responding to a call and driving from one point
Speaker 1: to another to pick up a fair and then the
Speaker 1: the call would be canceled, and so they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: making money in that meantime, they'd be wasting time going
Speaker 1: from point A to point B. The other reason was
Speaker 1: to help mask the recruitment efforts from Uber executives. So
Speaker 1: rather than allowing Lift to identify a pattern and to say, oh,
Speaker 1: this one person is consistently trying to recruit our employees
Speaker 1: or our drivers over to Uber, let's ban them for life.
Speaker 1: This was a way of trying to obfuse skate that.
Speaker 1: So it's all very spy movie esque. Uber employees are
Speaker 1: contractors were even using burner cell phones and varying their
Speaker 1: behavior to avoid setting patterns to help limit the chance
Speaker 1: of being discovered. Now, Lift even went so far as
Speaker 1: to sue its own former CEO. The executive had jumped
Speaker 1: ship to Uber, and Lift claimed that that executive had
Speaker 1: shared confidential information about a ride sharing program and this
Speaker 1: was partially because both Uber and Lift announced such a
Speaker 1: ride sharing program on the very same day, and Lift said, well,
Speaker 1: the whole reason why this happened was that someone who
Speaker 1: had uh confidential information shared it with our competitors. So
Speaker 1: that's unfair and we're suing for it. Another big rivalry
Speaker 1: going on right now is between Netflix, Amazon and HBO.
Speaker 1: So Netflix and Amazon had been battling it out for
Speaker 1: a while trying to secure content that is exclusive to
Speaker 1: one or the other uh um. They're also creating their
Speaker 1: own individual original content and trying to kind of dominate
Speaker 1: the streaming market. Meanwhile, HBO is a nerd the fray
Speaker 1: with HBO go with its own streaming service, and that
Speaker 1: has prompted Netflix chief content officer to say the goal
Speaker 1: for us is to become HBO faster than HBO can
Speaker 1: become us. Now, whether this means that the cable industry
Speaker 1: as a whole will eventually be completely replaced by competing
Speaker 1: streaming services remains to be seen. We're getting a lot
Speaker 1: of really fantastic content from this, you know, Daredevil from
Speaker 1: Amazon for example, or from Netflix rather for example, Amazon
Speaker 1: 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.
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 can 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. I hope you enjoyed that
Speaker 1: tech Stuff classic episode about text top rivalries. If you
Speaker 1: have suggestions or topics I should cover in future episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, do not hesit hate to reach out
Speaker 1: and let me know about it. The best way to
Speaker 1: do that is on Twitter. The handle for the show
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Y. Text Stuff is an I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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