The great divorce

The nuptials were announced before a stunned crowd of thousands in August 1997. The moment was so dramatic that it made the cover of Time. It was a marriage of convenience, but it set the stage for the major technology-related events of the late 1990s – the renaissance of the Macintosh and Microsoft’s final victory over Netscape in the browser wars.

The “marriage” in question was a five-year deal, an arrangement between Apple and Microsoft that guaranteed Apple fresh versions of the all-important Microsoft Office suite. In exchange Apple stabbed Netscape Communications in the back by ditching Netscape’s Navigator as the default Mac browser. In the end, the deal gave Apple enough of a boost from Office 98 and Gates’ kind words to sustain itself through its darkest hour, before a wave of candy-colored computers put the Mac maker back on a path to sustainable success.

But this was not a marriage based on love, and like any relationship built around a short-term need, it was doomed to end before it even began.

Rumors of trouble in the romance had been swirling for nearly a year, as Microsoft groused about sales of its latest version of Office. Last summer the deal tying Apple and Microsoft together ended, without either side seeking a renewal. There was some hand wringing in the tech press about this, but both sides played down the situation. It’s now clear that Apple was ready to be free from the arrangement, and geared up its software team as the deal’s expiration was set the stage for a formal separation.

That separation came last Tuesday at the Macworld conference, where Apple declared its independence from Microsoft. Two new software products, which take clear aim at the low-hanging fruit of Microsoft’s Mac product line, stunned the Macworld crowd, and may harbinger the coming of a political shift in the computer industry which could finally take a bite out of Microsoft’s seemingly undefeatable dominance.

The products themselves, Safari, a strikingly-fast web browser for Apple’s Mac OS X, and Keynote, a stellar presentation program that runs circles around Microsoft’s universally loathed PowerPoint application, are nothing phenomenal – but the change they potentially portend could be. The important factor isn’t that they represent Apple’s independence from the monopolists in Redmond – no, the key is their connection to the burgeoning open source and free software movements.

Safari is built upon a free software codebase called KHTML, which was designed by volunteers from around the world. Keynote saves its documents in a format based on the accessible XML standard, meaning the data structures are open to inspection and modification by users of other programs. And Keynote can open and convert PowerPoint presentations – so Apple’s new tool will let users take files from the proprietary Microsoft format and translate them into open documents.

And perhaps more importantly, the symbolism of Apple dropping its visible reliance on Internet Explorer in order to take up arms with the open source guerillas turns the politics of high tech on its head. The lines in the sand between the Microsoft behemoth and its competitors are shifting. An alliance is forming that could finally break Gates’ stranglehold on the industry. Instead of fighting Microsoft alone, and being beaten, those who dare to think differently are lining up along the open source front.

Though it would be absurd to expect Apple, the most proprietary of computer companies, to move all its programs to a free software licensing system such as that of Linux, that doesn’t change the fact that Apple is now clearly willing to work with the open source movement to combat Microsoft. Separately Apple and other companies that have confronted Microsoft have all been defeated. Together with many of these companies – including Sun and Netscape – and the hackers and hobbyists who have made Linux a workable desktop environment, Apple can make a stand.

Against Apple, Microsoft cannot compete in the realms of interface or multimedia authoring. Against the open source movement, Microsoft cannot compete on price or resourcefulness. With Apple and the open source movement teaming up, Microsoft’s ability to corrupt open standards with Windows dependencies is weakened. Between Apple, OpenOffice.org, the Mozilla Organization and the Linux movement, the emerging anti-Microsoft coalition has Bill Gates flanked on all sides – operating systems, office software and web browsers. And this is a good thing.

For an industry where Microsoft is accountable, where its ability to leverage its monopoly is weakened, would be a good thing. Even if Linux never catches on, or the Mac stays sidelined, having alternatives to Microsoft’s products on the market, particularly open ones, will force the company to be more honest and flexible.

The great divorce of Apple Computer and Microsoft was formally announced on Jan. 7. Though they’re parting, they promise to remain friends – Microsoft will still be making Office for the Mac, and Apple’s iPod for Windows continues to sell quite nicely. It’s not that they don’t love each other – they’ve just grown apart.

Microsoft has grown into a bully that views standards as obstacles to worldwide domination. And Apple has grown into an ally of the only movement still standing in Bill Gates’ way.