A detailed account of the open and covert struggles between Apple and Microsoft over the years

On October 7, Microsoft held a new press conference in New York, launching a number of hardware devices equipped with Win10. The series of highly targeted new products released by Microsoft at the press conference made the competition between Microsoft and Apple in hardware and ecosystem increasingly fierce. In fact, this war without gunpowder has already quietly begun.

Apple entered the Chinese public's consciousness not because of its Mac computer series, but because of its music player iPod. This expensive player immediately became the object of imitation in the music player industry. Microsoft naturally would not give up this booming market at the time. In 2007, it launched the Zune player to compete with the iPod, but unfortunately this product series only lasted for the second generation.

Windows Phone (WP) is a mobile phone operating system launched by Microsoft, but few phones support this system except its partner Nokia. In 2014, Microsoft decided to acquire Nokia's mobile phone business when Nokia was in decline, and used Lumia as the brand name of its mobile terminals. Microsoft said that in the future, Lumia will fully support the same Windows 10 operating system as the PC, hoping to keep pace with the iPhone's iOS.

Microsoft launched the new Microsoft Band 2 at the press conference, targeting Apple's iWatch. In addition to the curved screen design that makes the overall look more rounded, the voice assistant Cortana also has similar functions to Siri. Users only need to speak commands without having to operate on the small screen.

At Apple's press conference in early September this year, a huge iPad Pro was unveiled, and it was equipped with a corresponding keyboard. This move made Microsoft's flagship product Surface Pro a little overwhelmed. The subsequent demonstration of the new iPad by Microsoft Office executives was even more surprising. When fans thought that Microsoft and Apple were going to put aside their grudges, Microsoft spoke out a month later, saying that the iPad Pro was completely incomparable to the Surface Pro. While launching the Surface Pro 4, it also stated that the Pro's opponent was the Macbook Air, and it vowed to defend its position in "productivity" to the death.

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Apple launched the Apple Pencil at its September conference, which is designed to help users better write documents and spreadsheets, draw images, and design pictures. A month later, the speaker at Microsoft's conference joked about the recent appearance of a pencil without an eraser while pulling out the new Surface Pen, which has an eraser function at the end, supports voice assistants, and has a one-year battery life.

One more thing is a classic quote from Steve Jobs at a press conference. He often gives everyone a surprise at the press conference. This time, Microsoft also played this trick at the press conference, and the first Surface book launched surprised the audience. This Surface, positioned as a laptop, retains the screen and base separation setting, and the hardware pricing is similar to Apple's MacBook Pro. It can be seen that Microsoft is determined to compete with Apple in the high-end laptop market.