Microsoft vs. Apple's "Thunder"

jaymzter writes "Cnet has an interesting article on Microsoft's attempt to steal the thunder from the upcoming Macworld show, and also to slap Apple down for not showing enough gratitude. What's really interesting, is that Microsoft supposedly helped Apple 'fix' Mac OS X, and that Microsoft doesn't think Apple is pushing Mac OS X hard enough. Oh, the tangled webs we weave." Strange story. Basically its a battle of PR.

Comments

Re:Microsoft supposedly helped Apple 'fix' OSX ?

[dhovis]

Actually, I think it had more to do with the Carbon APIs. Microsoft refused to rewrite Office in Cocoa, but it wanted to use some of the features from Cocoa. That is why the feature sets of Carbon and Cocoa have been converging.

Besides, when it came out, Office v.X was the most complex Carbon program to date. I'm sure Microsoft's Mac programmers found lots of bugs in the APIs and reported them back to Apple. Office v.X came out shortly after 10.1, and required 10.1 because it fixed a ton of bugs overall, but particularly with the Carbon API.

I think that is probably what Microsoft's contribution to OS X was.

Anyway, if Office v.X is not selling well, it is probably due to the OUTRAGEOUS price. $500? I bought it at the educational discount and that was still $200. I only paid $1500 for my iBook, I'm certainly not going to pay 1/3 of that again for Office.

Re:My other computer is a mac...

[aftk2]

It's funny that you mention standards, and then deride the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer, which is a far more W3C-standards-compliant (here's a breakdown of CSS capabilities for most modern browsers) than IE 5, 5.x, and 6 for Windows. Netscape 6/Mozilla's even better.

I thought I'd take some time to address the claim of Windows Internet Explorer dominance (even if off-topic), since I see it often.

It's been my experience that Microsoft's Macintosh projects are far better than their Windows counterparts.

Re:Love this quote ...

[overunderunderdone]

Especially considering MS poured the money in for purely (mostly, whatever) selfish reasons - we can assume the DOJ trial would look much different today had MS not participated in the 'wonton act of goodwill

It wasn't really about the trial either. It was part of an out-of-court settlement of a patent dispute. In fact the publicly announced $150 million was rumored to be just the public tip of a larger behind the scenes patent cross licensing agreement that let MS off the hook for patent infringment in Windows95 (that rumor was confirmed by Steve Jobs' soto voice comments on some business shows hinting that there was a lot more money coming Apple's way than just the $150 Million - though that might have been spin)

Re:That Microsoft cares is interesting

[Ranger Rick]

FUD? Is that anything like the Apple switch commercials?

No, FUD is when they lie. The people in the switch commercials actually switched... I hated macs until MacOSX. MacOS9 is an ugly, unstable conglomeration of patches, but I was convinced by MacOSX to finally buy one, and I haven't gone back.

On the other hand, the article said stuff like:

The new version supports enhanced Quartz 2D font smoothing that greatly improves the look of Web pages. But rather than reciprocate, Apple has been cutting deals with one of Microsoft's chief rivals.

...which is pure FUD. What kind of reciprocation are you supposed to get for flipping a bit on a layer that's only provided for compatibility? The Quartz 2D font smoothing is for people that are too lazy to port their application to MacOSX native APIs. (Well, not that Quartz isn't native, but it's a continuation of the fugly MacOS < 10 APIs.)

Before Microsoft released this amazing new update to IE that turns on font smoothing, you could get it already by tweaking a system property. MS did *nothing* other than change a configuration file.

The article is full of things that MS is trying to take credit for. Yes, I'm sure porting Office to OSX found bugs and they reported them to Apple, but that doesn't make MS some kind of partner in OSX development like the article suggests.

Re:I can't imagine...

[BitGeek]

Apples market share is about %20.

The "%5" figure comes form "computers sold this year" and does not include computers sold thru the Apple store, small local apple dealers and apple retail stores. That %5 is the percentage that Ingram and tech data sell that are Macintoshes, ignoring the huge numbers of machines sold thru apple's online stores and other retail locations.

Or, put another way, Apple has %5 of the NEW IBM PC market, not %5 of the PERSONAL COMPUTER market.

Also, since Macintoshes last a lot longer in use than PCs- at least twice as long- at any point in time, the number of Macs out there to sell into are going to be a lot more than the percentage of machines recently sold.

This is a serious problem because marketing dweebs everywhere are underestimating the installed Mac base by %75.

Just like there are far more Linux boxes than there are computers sold with linux pre-installed in the market.

Note that this under reporting of Linux and MacOS both helps Windows, and of course the companise doing this under reporint- IDC and Dataquest are doing so under contract from microsoft to do "market research".

The funny thing is that when Jobs talks about getting the "other 95 percent" he's being ironic, but nobody seems to realize it.