Microsoft is buying $150 million worth of Apple stock at market price. “Microsoft is making an investment in Apple. What Microsoft had to do in return was make a $150 million investment in Apple, which essentially allowed the company to avoid the financial collapse. Then, a dedicated version of Microsoft Office for Mac OS X was also offered to Apple users as part of a five-year collaboration. We believe that Internet Explorer is a really good browser, and we think it’s going to make a fine default browser,” Steve Jobs told the audience in this surprise announcement. Since we believe in choice, we’re going to be shipping other Internet browsers, as well, on the Macintosh, and the user can, of course, change their default should they choose to. “We have taken a look at browsers out there and Apple has decided to make Internet Explorer its default browser on the Macintosh. With a low stock price and struggling financially, Apple appointed Steve Jobs as an interim CEO in an attempt to save the company.Īnd the solution he found, and which he announced at MacWorld, was a partnership with Microsoft that allowed the software firm to expand in the world on Mac OS X quite substantially.įirst of all, according to the partnership between the two, Internet Explorer became the default browser on the Macintosh. It was something nobody would have ever imagined happening, but which Apple really needed due to its financial trouble. It all started in 1997 at Apple’s MacWorld conference in Boston when Steve Jobs made a surprise announcement and Bill Gates himself took the stage to discuss Microsoft’s plans for Mac OS X.

Microsoft and Apple are no longer the fierce rivals they used to be and, in fact, the two companies are now even collaborating on a series of projects supposed to make their products work better one with another.īut there was a time when many considered Microsoft and Apple the biggest enemies in the tech industry, not only because of the history between the two, but also as a result of the competing products they launched.Īnd yet, Microsoft somehow managed to expand in Apple’s walled garden, making its software available for Mac OS X users at a time when pretty much every fanboy of the Cupertino-based tech giant hated the software firm with all their guts.

Explorer browser for mac