Why Save Apple? Nearly All Of Silicon Valley Seems To Be Rallying Around Troubled Company

It was only days ago that high-tech industry leaders appeared to hover over Apple Computer Inc. like anxious vultures, waiting for it to collapse so they could steal the company’s business.

But now nearly all of Silicon Valley seems to be rallying around Apple.

Arch-enemy Microsoft Corp., the software giant run by megabillionaire Bill Gates, on Wednesday agreed to invest $150 million in Apple in a deal that ensures the beleaguered company’s survival, at least for the next few years. Executives from other major software and hardware companies have also joined the Apple camp in a bid to turn around huge losses and sliding market share.

Why the switch?

The short answer: There was none.

Apple already was cooperating with Microsoft and other rivals, who despite public sniping have long recognized that killing Apple could hurt them.

Despite loud gripes from some ardent Macintosh fans, their favorite company’s alliance was less a deal with the devil than the latest example of how interdependent the computer world has become.

In a paradox peculiar to the industry, the fast pace of technology has forced rivals into a dizzying array of alliances to get access to the latest software and computer advances from the other side - technology they neither have the cash, time or resources to develop alone.

Beyond the Apple alliance, many companies that seem like enemies are friends in other places - ranging from Internet browser rivals Microsoft and Netscape to Intel and Digital, a large customer of Intel chips that has also sued the chipmaker for patent infringement.

To be sure, if Apple went out of business Microsoft presumably could benefit over the longer term, as former Mac users rushed to switch to machines running on Windows operating software.

But the pact gives Microsoft a short-term edge that is tough to ignore.

Despite their public feud, Microsoft already has a 130-person unit devoted to formating Windows software for Macintosh machines.

Though Microsoft operating systems run 90 percent of the world’s personal computers, the company still considers users of Apple’s Macintosh machines an important market for its business and Internet software.

With Wednesday’s pact, Microsoft agreed to offer new versions of its Office software programs for the Macintosh on the same schedule as programs for use on the Mac.

“You could argue Microsoft has some mixed goals here,” said Rob Enderle, an industry analyst with Giga Information Group, based in Santa Clara, Calif. “But fundamentally, since they’re making a lot of money off of Apple, there’s really no benefit to Apple going away.”

But alliances are never neat.

Joining Apple on Wednesday as one of its four new activist directors was Larry Ellison, chief executive and founder of Oracle Corp., the biggest independent software company after Microsoft.

That could put Ellison, a strident critic of Microsoft, in direct conflict with Gates.

As part of Wednesday’s deal, Apple agreed to work with Microsoft on a version of Java, the Internet programming language, promoted by Microsoft.

Ellison is promoting a different version of Java.

Misperceptions about the industry’s polarization are also fanned by people’s fanatical passion for the technology they rely on. The take-no-prisoners view espoused by so many Mac users is encouraged by high-tech companies.

Consider the enduring “1984” commercial for Apple that aired on the Super Bowl telecast that year and introduced the Macintosh computer.

The Orwellian-style ad showed a woman shattering a mammoth TV screen which carried the image of a Big Brother-like speaker who had a rapt audience.

The act symbolized the freedom that the Macintosh personal computer would give users who otherwise had to work on computer systems made by Apple’s bigger rivals like IBM.