Soft Arts

“WHERE IS HE!? WHERE IS VENTURE!?”

I’ve spent some time thinking about the whole Apple vs Google, Microsoft vs Apple, and Microsoft vs Google thing, and have a few thoughts on the enemies and one’s relationship to them to share.

Enemies

1.  You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

2.  In order to have an enemy, one must be somebody. One must be a force before he can be resisted by another force.

3.  Choose your friends carefully. Your enemies will choose you.

4.  If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

Very few healthy people go through life looking to make enemies, but there are times that enemies happen anyway. As the quotes above indicate, once you start to get good at something, enemies will start to crawl out of the woodwork. People will start to compete with you, and will eventually begin to focus a lot of attention on bringing you down, or defeating you. This can often be caused by simply trying to be as good at what you do as possible, and it has very, very little to do with whether or not you want to be friends with them.

Archenemies

Beyond casual enemies, there is the Archenemy. This goes beyond simple competition and starts to delve into full blown hatred and obsession. Famous Archenemies include Darth Vader/Obi Wan Kenobi, Holmes/Moriarty, Rene Belloq/Indiana Jones, and quite possibly Lennon/McCartney. 

Arch nemeses are friends from a long time ago that have more or less equivalent powers, but also have opposing ideologies. They are therefore always fighting with each other. 

Professor Xavier and Magneto are each other’s arch-nemesis. They play chess together and have been friends for a long time, but they completely disagree about the relationship that mutants should have with humans, so they are always fighting.

Wikipedia notes six possible reasons that parties can become Arch-Nemeses, and claims that at least three of them must be met to truly qualify as an Archenemy:

“There are many reasons one particular antagonist would stand out from the rest of the hero’s rogues gallery as the archenemy. Some of them include:

1.  Posing the greatest threat, such as seeking global domination or terrorism rather than simple larceny (e.g. Doctor Doom and the Fantastic Four/Professor Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes).

2.  Competitive combative contests, where both vie for similar goals, such as the love or approval of an individual or group (e.g. Rene Belloq and Indiana Jones).

3.  Most often recurring enemy (e.g. Bowser and Mario).

4.  Caused, or at least connected to, traumatic events and tragedies in the hero’s life (e.g. the Joker and Batman, the Green Goblin and Spider Man).

5.  Serves as an “evil twin” to the hero (e.g. Flexo and Bender).

6.  Once had a good relationship, such as an amicable or romantic relationship, with the hero (e.g. the Master and the Doctor).”

Proper selection of a suitable arch-nemesis requires discriminating taste and patience.

One implication of #5 that is important to note is peerage: the person you accept as the Moriarty to your Holmes is a reflection on YOU, so you must choose them carefully. When the august personages that someone of your stature naturally attracts meet your foe, they should awestruck by the charisma, intelligence, and diabolical style of your Enemy, not left wondering why such obvious trash seemed worth your time.

If you have to explain to a Prince that the fellow guest you dispatched in a saber duel during their masquerade ball was your sworn enemy, make certain that it won’t be an embarrassment to you. Someone has to really be on the same level as you to be taken seriously as an arch-enemy, otherwise they are merely a turd that refuses to flush.

Google is Apple’s Archenemy. Microsoft is…not

 I find it highly unlikely that Apple wanted to be enemies with Microsoft or Google: at one time Microsoft was given very privileged information about the upcoming Macintosh computers so that they could develop applications for it.  One can make similar observations about Google: Eric Schmidt at one time sat on Apple’s Board of Directors, and the iPhone still ships with tight integration of Google’s mapping and search services.

Between Google and Microsoft, only Google is really impressive enough to warrant potential Arch-Nemesis status. Taking a company like Google to task and besting them makes Apple look good. 

On the other hand, if Apple really showed any hint of being the slightest bit threatened by Microsoft, a company run by a blustering fat douchebag spouting empty platitudes while producing inferior crap, Apple would ultimately end up diminishing themselves just by engaging with them. The best way to deal with them is to ignore them, or at least enjoy their humorous antics.