AHC/WI: Jobs and Gates on the same team?

I'm relatively ignorant of the history of personal computers (this may become obvious by reading this OP) but in my 90's youth (I'm 25) there was something of a war between Microsoft and Apple. A war that, if it still exists, has become more of a cold or tepid war concerning mostly markets that do not exactly directly compete.

I remember computer people in my family arguing loudly over Thanksgiving dinner about the joys and laments of both or either. It was always settled by agreeing that the Mac hardware was superior for graphics and gaming, multimedia creation (i.e. music, art, and digital graphics production capabilities) but Microsoft software was superior for more practical purposes. Over the years both have found their niches and caught their strides in very different areas (See the Xbox and iTunes).

My first question is this: Is it possible for Microsoft and Apple to unite over something in the early eighties - for example: IBM decides not to go with MS-DOS and Bill Gates calls up old friend Steve Jobs to give it to Apple for the Macintosh? - to the point of an early to mid eighties merger? Could Jobs and Gates leave their respective companies to go into business together in the eighties leaving Apple and Microsoft both to crash and burn in the face of this new competitor?

My challenge is this: Make one of the above occur by any means necessary, but retain in this new "Macrosoft" or "Applesoft" (or whatever) some autonomy between the two united entities, enough to avoid certain butterflies concerning their respective OTL achievements. (i.e. it defeats the purpose entirely for the two to merge and then never come up with anything that they did OTL. This company must become the king of personal computing in the eighties and beyond.) In short, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs must work for the same company with a POD no earlier than 1977 or so; and that company must achieve many, most, or all of the things the respective companies achieved in OTL.

My second question is this: What are the effects of such a PC megacorps on data entry, gaming, graphics technologies, the internet, music sharing, etc., etc., etc. into the eighties, nineties, and beyond till now?

Sorry if this has been settled in the past, but my search provided nothing substantial.
 
I don't know anything about the history of personal computers either but I can tell you that any potential merger of Apple and Microsoft would have to tread carefully or risk getting slapped with an anti-trust lawsuit by the DOJ.
 
I'm relatively ignorant of the history of personal computers (this may become obvious by reading this OP) but in my 90's youth (I'm 25) there was something of a war between Microsoft and Apple...

Microsoft and Apple did work together at times.

The BASIC interpreter for the Apple II was developed by Microsoft (around 1980).

Later, in the 1990s, when Apple was in bad shape, Microsoft invested several hundred million $ in Apple.

This may have been intended to sustain the Macintosh. At that time, Microsoft dominated the Macintosh application market with Word and Excel, more than the PC/DOS market, where WordPerfect was dominant. Thus keeping Apple in business was good for Microsoft.
 
I don't know anything about the history of personal computers either but I can tell you that any potential merger of Apple and Microsoft would have to tread carefully or risk getting slapped with an anti-trust lawsuit by the DOJ.

Granted. But consider that between 1977 and 1987 the combined company would surely not be such a conglomerate as it would one day become, and by then, butterflies would surely make sure there would be competition.

Microsoft and Apple did work together at times.

The BASIC interpreter for the Apple II was developed by Microsoft (around 1980).

Later, in the 1990s, when Apple was in bad shape, Microsoft invested several hundred million $ in Apple.

This may have been intended to sustain the Macintosh. At that time, Microsoft dominated the Macintosh application market with Word and Excel, more than the PC/DOS market, where WordPerfect was dominant. Thus keeping Apple in business was good for Microsoft.

I was aware of the latter point (that's interesting about the former), but neither of them really satisfies the OP. I kinda need them to be the same company. Is it possible?
 
My first question is this: Is it possible for Microsoft and Apple to unite over something in the early eighties - for example: IBM decides not to go with MS-DOS and Bill Gates calls up old friend Steve Jobs to give it to Apple for the Macintosh? - to the point of an early to mid eighties merger? Could Jobs and Gates leave their respective companies to go into business together in the eighties leaving Apple and Microsoft both to crash and burn in the face of this new competitor?

To do this, you'd have to change Gates and his outlook on everything a fair bit. You'd have to put him in a position of desperation great enough not to steal from Apple, and you'd also have to give Steve a team that could convince him that "having these Microsoft guys in-house would let us wipe the floor with everyone else". I'd say the former is harder than the latter.

...but retain in this new "Macrosoft" or "Applesoft" (or whatever) some autonomy...

Ah, ASB, I'd think. Apple was surging upward and Microsoft wasn't much yet. They wouldn't be until they made the software they did OTL for Apple, and you can't really have a company with two "heads", anyway. The Microsoft team (and you can probably still call the company a team at that point) being absorbed into Apple as the leaders for the business software group makes sense. Never mind the names (I know they were in jest, but Jobs would never have gone for it :p).

My second question is this: What are the effects of such a PC megacorps on data entry, gaming, graphics technologies, the internet, music sharing, etc., etc., etc. into the eighties, nineties, and beyond till now?

I think you could safely say that Apple never has its "decline" in the late '80s should this happen. The biggest unknown here is if Steve still winds up being fired in '85. That's probably the single most important point in the history of computing OTL. Change that and you change the '90s and everything further on.

Steve gets fired in '85 and goes on to buy Pixar from George Lucas. He tries selling their computers, fails, and then takes a completely different approach: just use the computers instead of selling them. Use 'em to make animation. Boom, Pixar Animation Studios: the defining company in all CG cinema today.

Steve gets fired in '85, finances Pixar, and then creates his second computer company, NeXT. Sporting a *NIX-based OS leagues ahead of anything from either Apple or Microsoft, the NeXTCube is the computer on which the INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT WAS CREATED. No NeXT doesn't mean "no Internet", but it means a VASTLY different Internet. Would the Internet TTL be created on an Apple machine, then, given that there would be no PC against which to compete? Or would it still be created on something *NIX-based and just as obscure as NeXT was? How soon is the Internet adopted in the home, then? And what does it look like on the back end? Remember, this is probably the single most important non-physical infrastructure in the world today, and has been for ~three decades. What does the WORLD look like with an Internet that didn't have NeXT as a foundation?

There are so many variables we can't really do much in the way of saying what would be, but we can say a lot of what won't.

If Microsoft stops existing as its own entity, there's no Internet Explorer to rape innovation and progress on the Internet for a decade (we're still feeling the effects). Nor would there likely be standalone versions of the rest of the software they sell, except for Apple machines (as they would BE Apple, and that stuff would be purchasable as Final Cut and Logic Studios, iWork, and iLife are today).

Again, the biggest thing is if Steve gets fired. A Steve unhumbled could very well strong-arm the company incorrectly that early on, and a Gates no longer desperate for a sale, but rather in a position of power himself, could very well show himself to the board as a suitable replacement.

No fired Steve doesn't mean no Apple, but it means no Jonathan Ive, no modern Apple culture and design aesthetic, and no iDevices. Again, it's pretty much impossible to say what would be, particularly since the Gates/Jobs dynamic in the intervening years could very well lead to a firing and/or return of some sort, but we know that what we see today wouldn't exist at all.

If you want to pin down a few things further along the chain, we can extrapolate from there, but with it being open-ended beyond "get Microsoft absorbed", there are too many unknowns to say what is rather than what isn't.
 
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