Apple refused a major pass to Microsoft

During the Apple against Epic Games trial, new documents previously unknown to the general public had to be revealed for the purposes of the investigation. We learn that Cupertino wanted to involve Microsoft in the presentation of the iPad at the Worldwide Developer Conference in 2012, which the firm ultimately refused. Officially, did not in fact consider himself “enough”ready” to talk about its tablet solutions.

Later, during discussions at the highest level, Kirk Koenigsbauer - current executive at Microsoft - was able to speak with Phil Schiller and Eddy Cue. The first was marketing director at the time, while the second is still head of the software division at Apple today. The positions all designated to try to negotiate thethirty percent commissionlevied on each in-app purchase in iOS.

C'est not

Koenigsbauer therefore tried, but ultimately achieved nothing. The response of his interlocutors? “We run the store, we collect the revenue”: quite simply. To be translated into French as “we manage the App Store, we collect the revenue“. Indeed, we remind you: this is only the basic principle of the machine which runs both the Google Play Store on Android and video game stores like the PlayStation Store.

This is not the first time that an anecdote between the two west coast giants has reached us. Last year, we were able to learnwhat were the rather original recruitment methods used by Microsoftto recruit its talents thanks to the testimony of… Scott Forstall.

Apple and Epic, it hasn't always been gloomy

Other content revealed during the hearings demonstrated that before their quarrelsinternational in scope, Tim Sweeney's studio and Apple had relatively cordial relations. In any case, this is what electronic messages exchanged between opponents may suggest. For example, Tim Cook's teams had considered a collaboration at the time of the creation of ARKit. A physical meeting would also have taken place. However, it is difficult to know how far the communications continued.

Since then, ARKit has been successfully exploited via the LiDAR radar installed at the top ofl’iPad Pro M1.