Microsoft and Apple are BFFs!
The bitter rivalry between the two software and hardware giants has been one filled with conflicts over the years, each slinging punches at another's operating system, shonky hardware or over-the-top prices.
You've only got to look at Apple's I'm a PC/Mac advertisements (like this jive at Vista's User Account Control), or Microsoft's PC shopping (where a Mac is conspicuously absent), to see that there's more than just a little grudge going on here and one that's about to be exacerbated.
In response to Apple's latest strategy of building Apple Stores around major urban centres, so too is Microsoft, but it's not that they're simply building a Microsoft store - but that they're building it right next to an Apple Store.
They're not going to stop at just the one, selecting many spots around existing Apple Stores in shopping centres and busy city streets to directly compete against Apple.
It could be argued that it's simple coincidence that the first store happened to wind up next to Microsoft's largest competitor, but that so many other stores are also going in just makes it unmistakably planned (and even a little amusing).
Head over to The Business Insider to catch a little more tomfoolery.
*Edit for clarification*
This is about the Apple and Microsoft stores in America, not Australia.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012