Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Will Apple and Microsoft Renew their Vows?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the match-made-in-hell dept.

krugdm writes "Remember about five years ago when Apple announced their deal with Microsoft where Apple agreed to bundle IE with new Macs and drop a patent lawsuit, and the guys from Redmond were to continue to develop Office for the Mac as well as purchase $150 million in Apple stock? Well, that deal expires this summer. describing the love-hate relationship the two companies have had in the time since 1997 and wonders whether the pact will be renewed."

38 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. this is the single most important question by elliotj · · Score: 2, Insightful

    to the future of the Mac platform.

    I think MS will continue to support the platform b/c they really don't want it to die for various reasons (anti-trust...mac apps make $ etc)

    Still, Apple should be rolling up its sleeves and Aqua-izing Open Office ASAP.

    1. Re:this is the single most important question by FatRatBastard · · Score: 2

      Still, Apple should be rolling up its sleeves and Aqua-izing Open Office ASAP

      I don't think they'll be doing that any time soon. They already have AppleWorks, and it does a pretty good job of opening MS Office docs. I'd expect them to beef up Works if they were going to push Office type apps.

    2. Re:this is the single most important question by questionlp · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Outside of Microsoft, other important things for the Mac OS X platform include the release of a fully native versions of Adobe Photoshop, Adobe PageMaker and Adobe Premiere (although Final Cut Pro might work in some cases)... and some other key tools. It seems to me that Quark and Macromedia have been more active in releasing native applications for Mac OS X (I haven't followed that scene too much, so I could be somewhat wrong there).

      Office and Internet Explorer are fairly important to the platform, but not always as important as the tools for AV technicians, 3D artists, graphics designers, and page layout designers.

    3. Re:this is the single most important question by pressman · · Score: 2

      Can AppleWorks save out to .doc format? If it could do that reliably, that would be quite the coup.

      --
      Pooty tweet
    4. Re:this is the single most important question by FatRatBastard · · Score: 2

      Why yes it can. Now, how well it does with complex documents I have no idea, but for your average everyday .doc document (at least all the one's I've seen at work and play) it works dandy.

    5. Re:this is the single most important question by pressman · · Score: 2

      Well that's just ducky! Thanks for answering that for me.

      It is true that you learn something new everyday!

      --
      Pooty tweet
  2. The courts scare Microsoft by Lewisham · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Although Microsoft like to pretend otherwise, the courts do scare them somewhat. The fact they "develop" for multiple platforms forms an important building block in their case, and in any subsequent (and inevitable) case.

    MS will continue to develop, they just might not ink it.

  3. Apple has more leverage though by gouldtj · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We'll see. Apple has alot more leverage in this deal now that it has been ruled that Microsoft is a monopoly. MS needs to have Office on Mac, otherwise they are only choosing one platform for their office suite. I don't think that they are going to port it to Linux anytime soon, but I could be supprised.

  4. Here's hoping they don't. by vonkraken · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I would hope that the relationship would disolve this summer. It would behoove Apple to make sure that Microsoft did not establish a toehold in the OS itself. How many Microsoft apps out there require some sort of tie into the underpinning of the OS to function? Quite a few. How long would it be before Office Mac requires you to modify OS X to run it? That would be a horrible sight. If Apple utilizes AppleWorks and OpenOffice to get the access needed to the Office and Microsoft formatted files, then that is all that is needed (assuming that MS doesn't deliberatly break/change formats to prohibit 3rd party apps from reading files). Features that only Microsoft has can be replicated with time. I am positive that with some hard work, all other Office alternatives could strive and succeed at becoming as bloated as Office. Some patience will serve Macintosh users well in this case.

    Cheers,

    Von Kraken

    1. Re:Here's hoping they don't. by 90XDoubleSide · · Score: 3, Interesting
      As a long term strategy, it's in Apple's best interest to package software which will also run on Linux boxes.

      Why? If you want people to shell out $ for your OS, you have to prove that it is better (for what they are doing) than the free alternative. I would be appalled if apple made Mozilla the default browser for OS X, since your bundled software is supposed to show off the OS. While Mozilla has the best rendering engine around (I always use it to test my web pages first, and then go into other browsers and see what won't work :), even with the recent enhancements to the interface, it has one of the worst attempts at an Aqua UI of any major app on the platform (including Java ones). Change that abomination at the top of my window to an NSToolbar, use Quartz for text, and clean up the default theme (circa Netscape Communicator) and we'd have a good default browser for OS X; if Apple had a sincere desire to do this, they could devote some engineers to working on the Mozilla project. It seems far more likely, however, that Apple would bundle OmniWeb, since they have already started bundling Omni apps with their new machines. If they could just finish the JS and CSS support, OmniWeb could also make a great default browser. Just dump that crap version of IE that hasn't been changed in over a year!

      --
      "Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
    2. Re:Here's hoping they don't. by NutscrapeSucks · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "If they could just finish the JS and CSS support, OmniWeb could also make a great default browser."

      I'm sorry, but that ain't going to happen any time soon. OminWeb has some great end-user features, but their HTML engine is essentially roughly at the Netscape 3.0 level. The _only_ thing it has going for it in the page rendering department is the Fuzzy Text. Considering it took Netscape, a much larger company, many years to develop a renderer that meets modern specs, I don't think we will see anything mindblowing out of Omni soon.

      A much more interesting project is Chimera, which is a Mozilla fork to (really) support Aqua. Personally, I would have liked to see the smart folks at Omni get involved something like this under the NPL, but instead their shareware plans will probably be obliviated.

      (And while all of these browsers are great, I doubt IE is going away anytime soon, because it's defaultness was pretty much the cornerstone of the Apple-MS deal.)

      --
      Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
    3. Re:Here's hoping they don't. by 90XDoubleSide · · Score: 2
      I'm sorry, but that ain't going to happen any time soon.

      You haven't used a nightly build any time lately, have you. They are well on the way to both and I would set a target of Q3 or Q4 this year for full CSS support and acceptable scripting support.

      --
      "Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
    4. Re:Here's hoping they don't. by ptrourke · · Score: 2

      I'm sorry, but that ain't going to happen any time soon. OminWeb has some great end-user features, but their HTML engine is essentially roughly at the Netscape 3.0 level. The _only_ thing it has going for it in the page rendering department is the Fuzzy Text.

      OmniWeb's support of Unicode (thanks to Cocoa) is second to none on the platform; even Mozilla doesn't compete (IE doesn't have it at all). So if you ever use non-Latin languages, you're much better off with OmniWeb. (Actually, they do have a good deal of CSS support, too, though nothing to compete with Mozilla or IE; so I'd say that parts of it are at Netscape 4, parts at Netscape 3, and parts at Netscape 6.5 or higher).

    5. Re:Here's hoping they don't. by ptrourke · · Score: 2

      Apple buy Corel? Why? WordPerfect hasn't gained any real ground as an application since 8.0; even an old WordPerfect hand like me can't stand using WP10 anymore. It's like using WordStar in 1995.

      And the other Corel applications are all competitors with Adobe, and I don't think Apple wants to push Adobe out of the Mac market (given the importance of Adobe's apps to Mac's core users, graphics pros).

  5. open source by passion · · Score: 3, Insightful

    the other aspect to consider is that Mac OS X is POSIX compliant. Many open source apps can be ported (see the other story posted today). I could see how AbiWord, or many other open source Office apps could kill the need for purchasing M$ products.

    Now we need to get people to start saving as *.rtf instead of *.doc (which works just as well), and we'll have the keys to the kingdom.

    --
    - passion
    1. Re:open source by Guy+Harris · · Score: 2
      the other aspect to consider is that Mac OS X is POSIX compliant. Many open source apps can be ported (see the other story posted today). I could see how AbiWord, or many other open source Office apps could kill the need for purchasing M$ products.

      Of course, the POSIX-compliance would be sufficient only if the office apps aren't graphical apps. :-)

      (I.e., there's more to the API used by GUI applications than the "core OS" API. GUI apps from POSIX+X either have to be made to use the native MacOS X GUI APIs, or need to use a toolkit that can hide the native GUI APIs or drawing layer, or need to be run under an X server.

      AbiWord, for example, currently appears to require an X server on MacOS X, according to the AbiWord download page.)

    2. Re:open source by passion · · Score: 2

      Very true, though I did use the word "port" instead of "recompile". I'm not an X hacker, but I would imagine that the APIs for XWindows and Aqua would have similar philosophies. I would assume both would have elements such as "Create_new_window", and "Build_new_menu", and "Get_mouse_click", etc.

      I could see how the event handlers would be rather different, but once 1 or 2 apps are ported, then writing a developer's tutorial on how to port shouldn't be too far behind.

      I'd volunteer to do this myself, but I don't know X nor Aqua, and my work would probably be redundant anyways.

      --
      - passion
    3. Re:open source by Guy+Harris · · Score: 2
      Very true, though I did use the word "port" instead of "recompile".

      The port would probably be non-trivial, unless the X applications were written with, say, GNUstep.

      I'm not an X hacker, but I would imagine that the APIs for XWindows and Aqua would have similar philosophies. I would assume both would have elements such as "Create_new_window", and "Build_new_menu", and "Get_mouse_click", etc.

      I wouldn't necessarily assume that they're similar enough that a port wouldn't require a significant amount of effort.

  6. Re:Something will happen, that's for sure.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Okay, it's a pipe dream. Won't happen. But this is what I imagine...

    Rumors are circulating wildly about the new Apple / Microsoft alliance leading up to MacWorld New York.

    Steve Jobs comes on to the floor. He reminds people of the productive business relationship that Microsoft and Apple have had. The benefits that have been nurtured by the mutual cooperation for the past five years. He asks that the lights go down and they start to show the message that Bill Gates delivered five years ago.

    After 30 seconds or so. A woman wearing red running shorts and carrying a sledgehammer comes storming through the crowd and hurls it up at the giant screen. Shattering things and leaving the crowd in shocked silence before erupting in massive noise.

    Jobs goes on to announce that despite the working together, only one partner has grown as a result: Microsoft. He wants to end that.

    He announces a three pronged attack:
    1) Open Sourcing AppleWorks 7 to be the new free business app of choice on Windows, Linux, and Mac's that will kill reliance on MS Office.
    2) A port of Mac OS X Server (not client) to be licensed to any WinTel maker at the same rates as MS Windows Server.
    3) The start of an aggressive new ad campaign that really crucifies the Windows as being fundamentally insecure and poorly designed.

    Wild fantasy. Nothing like this will happen, but that's what I imagine in my wildest dreams. :-)

  7. MSN Messenger by cappadocius · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Another sign of trouble: MSN Messenger 2.1 has been shipping with Office v. X since November, but only version 2.0 is available for download.

    Who actually still uses MSN messenger? Fire is far superior to any other messenger I have used before.

    --

    omnia tua castra sunt nobis

    1. Re:MSN Messenger by Graymalkin · · Score: 2

      Fire is also buggy as shit and jumps off a virtual cliff at random times because it felt like it for some reason. I've begun to think that Fire's developers were trying write a clone of Lemmings and ended up with an IM client. I know plenty of people who've had to stop using Fire because it couldn't do something as simple as receive a message from an MSN user. If you're going to write a third party client for somebody else's network you should AT LEAST be able to talk with the first party clients on that network. Maybe the next version will kick ass and be the best thing since buttered toast but as for right now, no thank you.

      --
      I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
  8. Apple needs to wait for Outlook by OctavianMH · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Apple doesn't have a hope in the world of getting toeholds in business markets, and even mobile professionals to some point, until there's a functional OSX equivalent to Outlook. Exchange servers are the lifeblood of a great many organizations. And hey, it does a pretty darn good job. Arranging meetings via shared calendars is priceless. IMHO.

    So, in short, Apple needs to bide its time until an Exchange aware PIM is available..via an Entourage upgrade, separate app, whatever!

    --
    "In the end, we all fall back on fiction." -- Lonely Planet
    1. Re:Apple needs to wait for Outlook by ellem · · Score: 2

      Two words:

      Lotus Notes

      Nice server in Domino, secure, fast and if not on NT stays up for quite a while (does very well on W2K tho)

      Further Lotus Notes can do anything Exchange can do and about a million things it can not. Is a Notes developer needed? Well yeah, but I'd rather have that then have to spend 3 days down everytime some kid in Thailand has the day off from school.

      --
      This .sig is fake but accurate.
  9. If ClarisWorks &c didn't cut it. . by Bastian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Apple didn't have a want for office applications a few years ago, and yet it still became dependent on Microsoft Office support to be a viable desktop choice in a business environment, and is rapidly becoming so at home.

    Like it or not, the percentage of documents out there in Microsoft formats is rapidly reaching 100%. This isn't an issue that will just go away if firms or consumers switch office suites. And although we would love to think otherwise, StarOffice's compatibility with Office documents isn't 100%, probably isn't even serviceably good for businesses that want to run smoothly, and is and definitely not serviceably good for the majority of users out there who aren't up to speed with the world of compatibility issues.

    Believe me, if it were otherwise, the college I work at would have switched over by now rather than bow down to a license change in Microsoft Office that just cost us about $50,000.

    The fact of the matter is, even if the documents being produced internally aren't in office format, other firms and people are used to it. There are organizations out there that require all documents sent to them to be in Microsoft Office format. If you send them a *.rtf file, you'll get it sent right back to you. It's foolhardy to think that anyone can budge *.doc files given all the inertia they have developed.

    The fact of the matter is, Apple needs Office about as much (possibly more) as it needs Internet Explorer. If businesses and schools start phasing out their Apple hardware because of office suite incompatibilities, their target market will start getting more and more used to PC's and very well may make their next computer a PC.

    1. Re:If ClarisWorks &c didn't cut it. . by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 2

      It's worth noting, I think, that until a couple of releases ago, ClarisWorks/AppleWorks had some of the best file format compatibility around -- you could write to and read from an astonishing variety of formats with great accuracy. They stopped doing that in, IIRC, the last-but-one release of AppleWorks, presumably since at the time they were buddy-buddy with M$ and wanted to encourage everyone to switch to Office. Now ... well, we'll see. I'd be willing to shell out some decent money for a copy of AppleWorks that could read and write Office-and-everything-else documents accurately.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    2. Re:If ClarisWorks &c didn't cut it. . by Desperado · · Score: 2

      As a new Mac user (I got an iBook for Christmas) I can't compare Apple Works' file format compatibility a couple releases ago to the current release. But, the version that came bundled with my iBook can import an impressive number of formats including *.doc and it does it very well.

      When I import it looks like an independent conversion engine is invoked.

      Maybe you should put some sample docs on a floppy (well maybe not on a floppy) and try out the conversion capabilites of the iBook version of Apple Works at your nearby Apple store/CompUSA. I think you might be pleasantly surprized.

      --
      If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.
    3. Re:If ClarisWorks &c didn't cut it. . by Graymalkin · · Score: 2

      The .doc translation is actually pretty recent (well at least the ability to read Word97/2k .doc files) and has only been included since AW v6.1. I was sort of disappointed because when I used ClarisWorks way back when it had great Office compatibility and then I bought AW 6.0 and it didn't even support .doc files at all. There's a large number of AW users who are pissed off at Apple because there were so many versions of AW that went by without proper file support for popular formats. If you're a longtime Mac user bragging about you brand spanking new PowerMac and then can't even open a Word document much to your chagrin it is going to leave a bad taste in your mouth.

      --
      I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
  10. Re:Probably no "deal" but we will still get Office by 90XDoubleSide · · Score: 2

    Are your online bank/finance sites just rejecting you because they don't know your broser (i.e. you must download Netscape or IE as oppesed to just not working because of JavaScript problems)? If so, just get OW 4.1b1 or a nightly build of 4.1, go to Preferences>Compatibility, and have it identify itself as some browser they do support.

    --
    "Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
  11. Re:Something will happen, that's for sure.... by 90XDoubleSide · · Score: 3, Informative
    Actually, he said they have no taste, not they have no class (although I'm sure that's been said as well ;). Probably an error in Revenge of the Nerds, which is largely "based on actual events" aka "poorly researched." The whole quote goes:

    "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their product. So I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success: I have no problem with their success. They've earned their success, for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products."
    --Triumph of the Nerds PBS documentary interview (May 1996)

    --
    "Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
  12. appleworks by spike666 · · Score: 3, Informative

    AppleWorks is nice, it doesnt support powerpoint, but it does word and excel formats. no, its not open source, but its cheap (~US$80) and smaller than Office (ok thats not hard)

    plus its fully cocoa so it can make the fonts look nice.

    1. Re:appleworks by ptrourke · · Score: 2

      Last I checked, AppleWords is Carbon, not Cocoa. http://osonline.org/mac/index.phtml?storyID=570

  13. This reminds me of the Linux Zealots by ellem · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "As soon as we have 'an Office' we'll take over the desktop!"

    As we all know Star Office was not that product.

    OS X has Office. It is vital to keep that product. It is the application that can swing things in a *nix on the desktop way.

    OS X is an excellent platform (I say as I post from my G4 running 10.1.3) and I would be happy to see it gain prominence. I have gotten a few Windows folks to purchase iBooks recently and they have been estatic.

    Word, Excel & PowerPoint no matter how bloated, over accesorized or even potentially dangerous (via macros) are the most important products to move OS X out of the hands of a few weenies and onto the desktops of corporate America.

    That and a really good pr0n viewer.

    --
    This .sig is fake but accurate.
  14. Why wait? by Doktor+Memory · · Score: 2

    Outlook 2001 for MacOS runs just fine under Classic in OSX. Sure, it would be nice to have a native Carbon or Cocoa version, but if you've got an overwhelming need to connect to an Exchange server from a Mac, it does the job just fine.

    --

    News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.

  15. retro me, satanas by Doktor+Memory · · Score: 2

    Two words: Lotus Notes

    Three words: WORST PROGRAM EVER.

    The fact that Notes/Domino is generally perceived as Exchange's primary competition is the reason that Exchange has completely dominated the corporate messaging market despite its many horrible, crippling flaws. Personally, I'd choose either Exchange or a messy suicide over having to use Notes ever again.

    --

    News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.

    1. Re:retro me, satanas by Doktor+Memory · · Score: 2

      Notes has a larger installed base than Exchange by a significant amount, although most of it is inside the walls of very large corporations.

      I'd be really curious to see some backing for those figures. I'd be even more curious to see how those figures look after you factor IBM's internal use of Notes (and, to be fair, Microsoft's internal use of Exchange) out of the equation.

      I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, it's just completely the opposite of my admittedly anecdotal experience.

      And I will certainly stand by my assertion that Exchange is by leaps and bound the superior product, Outlook worms and all.

      --

      News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.

    2. Re:retro me, satanas by Doktor+Memory · · Score: 2

      R5 and Rnext have fixed a number of issues

      I really hope that's shorthand for "completely scrapped the existing interface and rewrote it from scratch." Because that's really just about the only way you could fix it.

      --

      News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.

  16. Not quite--Adobe at the forefront by JimRay · · Score: 2

    I'm not an adobe apologist or anything. In fact, I'm often more likely to use Macromedia products (web developer...). However, Adobe has really stepped up to the plate on getting their stuff carbonized. InDesign, LiveMotion, GoLive, Illustrator ALL OS X ready. And Photoshop 7 is supposedly just around the corner. Macromedia really needs to get off their duff and carbonize Flash and Dreamweaver, or they'll find Adobe converts.

    --
    My other computer is your Windows box
  17. Re:Something will happen, that's for sure.... by plastik55 · · Score: 2, Informative

    You do know that there is already AppleWorks for Windows?

    --

    I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!