If you Google the date of July 3, 1991, you won't find much of interest, but I couldn't let Independence Day pass without noting the importance of that date in tech history. That's the day that IBM, Apple and Motorola rocked the industry by announcing plans to cooperate on a line of products and technologies. Apple would use IBM's chips, IBM would incorporate the Mac into its enterprise computers, and the two companies would cooperate on some joint ventures in software development and multimedia.

Ultimately, little came of the deal. The joint venture companies -- Kaleida and Taligent -- fizzled. Apple continues to use IBM-designed chips, although it's moving to Intel next year. The Mac never became an important player on the corporate desktop.

But I think this was a turning point for the industry in two respects. One is that it was the first time IBM had even acknowledged the existence of PC competition and actively engaged a competitor in a joint venture. Prior to the Apple deal, IBM was an arrogant and imperious company that tried to do everything its own way. Even in 1991, it was still trying to shove proprietary designs like the PS/2 and OS/2 down the throats of unwilling users. The Apple deal was the computer industry equivalent of the toppling of the Berlin wall. It gave an important seal of approval to the concept of "co-opetition," or cooperating with one's competitors, and that concept is a widely accepted way of doing business today.

The deal was also an early acknowledgement by two prominent companies that interoperability was important to users. At that time, the industry was still fragmented into many competing and incompatible camps and the chaos was driving users crazy. IBM's stepping forward to embrace a competitor's products signaled the beginning of an end to all this.

It was certainly an interesting time for IBM. The company was about to enter a business vortex that would lead to an $8 billion loss the next year and the removal of its chief executive. But the IBM that was reborn from that crisis was one that was serious about open systems and interoperability and that is much better positioned to thrive in the long term. Like glasnost, the Apple deal was the first step in changing calcified thinking, but that change led to much bigger impacts across the industry.