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Microsoft's Mac Business Unit
An anonymous reader writes "Today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an interesting piece on the folks who work at the Mac Business Unit for Microsoft."
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More like "from the bread-and-butter-dept". Microsoft's Macintosh division is one of its most profitable, and a profit-making division at Microsoft is getting be something of a rarity what with the company loosing money through the nose in countless divisions. In fact, I believe there's only one division more profitable- the OS division.
That's one of the reasons for the symbolic deal a few years back where MS bought $150M in Apple stock(by the way, that's not even a fraction of Apple's CASH reserves, so sit down all you "MS bailed out Apple" morons) and committed on paper to releasing Office for the next however many years(and to do so on the Mac first, as has always been the case).
Please help metamoderate.
I don't see why people are all surprised and start making jokes when they find out that Microsoft Corporation owns a few dozen Apple computers.
;-)
Surprise surprise -- Apples are largely the top-rated boxes for computer graphics and animation. And I'm sure some of that goes on at Microsoft, even if only in the human resources, marketing, and administrative departments.
Microsoft's a big company and makes decision based on how they help the company's bottom line. And Macs are great with certain tasks, so why not use them?
The fact that they have a business unit should be no surprise to those of us who actually have jobs and work for a software company!
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
False
True, at least in my opinion. Appleworks is stagnant, and hasn't even integrated some standard OS X features yet. Realtime spell-checking comes to mind, I'm fairly sure I was doing that using 1st Word Plus on an 8Mhz Atari ST 512k more than ten years ago...
Cheers,
Ian
Methinks Appleworks will eventually become a version of openoffice, but only after the OSS community ports it to aqua. Apple feels like its dev time would be better speant on stuff like iLife that may make people actually switch to the mac, which a decent version of appleworks won't as MS office is pleanty good enough, even if apple doesn't profit off it directly.
"Aggressor Squadron"
(Yes, yes, it's not for the same thing, I know. Go back to your 'Dew.)
What I say is that Microsoft should recognize the superiority of the Apple platform. They would probably earn a better reputation if they only developed software for the Mac. They'd probably make MORE moneyb if they developed software in an honest manner.
J.Yes, that's the joke. Thank you for that.
The only problem is that that statement belies a complete ignorance of the economics and corporate ties of the auto industry.
GM, Ford, Volkswagon, Honda, Toyota, etc, all make parts for "competitors."
It's called doing business and making a profit. What does GM care if the motor they're making money on has someone elses label on the hood?
What does Microsoft care if office is running on a Mac as long as they get the same cut they would if it were running under Windows?
Either way they derive profit, market share and mind share.
KFG
I have no idea why the parent is "funny". Everyone knows Microsoft makes Mac software, and without question, they have labs that have everything from Macs to vanilla Linux machines, Sparc Stations and everything else. Any company that does not investigate it's competition is beyond ignorent. People cut Microsoft a lot, but stupid people they are not.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Since most big companies won't even consider buying a computer that doesn't run Office, Microsoft greatly extends the potential customer base for Macs. Of course they lose a few sales for Windows XP in the process. But given the relative market share of Windows and Mac, they probably don't lose much sleep over this.
If it were just a matter of getting Office on as many desktops as possible, there would have been a Linux port long ago. But unlike MacOS, Linux is a threat to Windows' dominance.
People get those rates because of deals that companies like Dell, HP, etc. negotiated with Microsoft. I am sure Apple could negotiate a similar deal. I would also point out that most people who buy Office for Windows buy in bulk. There are for more corporate users than home users. Full Office is pretty much a waste for most home users that don't use their computer for business. I can't remember the last time my Aunt Myrtle put together a PowerPoint presentation.
I also see no reason why they shouldn't discriminate.
From the article: ...they recounted with pride such tales as the colleague who broke up with a girlfriend who bought a Windows PC.
This kind of statement really doesn't help the Mac cause... To a non-Mac user, it freaks me out, to tell you the truth. It seems too cult for my tastes.
Add your consipiracy theory here.
already done and it's no conspiracy, it's about un-sane technical choices:
On mac, ie is not tied to the os.
Now, If you want to know why they tied the browser to the os, there you can have a few conspiracy comments, but it's no theory: it was documented in some trial you might remember.
Anybody with ... access to the specs
.DOC format isn't.
Ah, there's the rub, isn't it? The specs for a GM compatible alternator are available. The spec for Word
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Had Microsoft released Office for Linux, nobody would be contemplating switching to Open / Star Office today. Linux users passed the word about a decent little program made by a company in germany. Sun bought it and now companies are accessing what they truly need in an office suite. My employer now uses more Star Office than MS Office. And we haven't bought anything newer than Office 2000.
If MS had created an Office for linux, nobody would have much noticed Star Office. MS has probably slowed Linux on the desktop a small amount by not releasing an Office for linux, but they have caused longer term damage to their main cash cow office. Add product activation and increased license restrictions to mix and soon MS Office is gonna be feeling the pinch. Why spend $400 when you have free? Or for that matter, $400 vs $79 for the clipart and a database included.
I've gotten the feeling for a long time that Microsoft is more comfortable selling Mac Office as a home-office software product than as a Corporate desktop product. For this reason, they don't really emphasize the 'corporate desktop' connectivity features on Mac Office, which is really important for Windows Office.
---
Also, even if Office goes away for Mac I don't think its going to be much a problem. OpenOffice is making great strides, I have had several clients switch to OpenOffice and save thousands of dollars as opposed to going to Office 2003. Most of my clients don't need anything other than a word processor and spread sheet on most of their desktops.
On the other note, of my clients, the video production folks are buying macs in droves and spending an average of $7000 a peice for them. Why? Final Cut Pro is the defacto small shop editing software for video production companies. Even major motion pictures are being edited on the machines and that market's not going away so long as Apple continues producing excellent software.
Furthermore, there is something going on your not reading about much: The rest of the world is going to LINUX as their OS of choice. Microsoft maybe able to bribe some back to their side, but largely, I think the desktop market over the next five years outside of the United States is going to Linux. I also see some larger companies going to Linux as well as soon as a clear defacto desktop enviroment emerges.
Discovered this while working and studying in Germany. The german college I attended for a semester had two Linux labs and one Windows XP lab. The students spent more time usually typing up papers in StarOffice on SuSE Linux than in MS office and Windows.
Mac and BSD dying threads just aren't true. I switched myself from Linux to Mac about two years ago and never looked back. So far I have been very impressed with my iBook and now Powerbook.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Firstly, internally, Microsoft uses SQL Server and Exchange pretty much exclusively for their respective purposes (for both development and enterprise). Exchange is perfectly capable of handling all of microsoft's employee's email around the globe.
Secondly, if there are no MS products in use at Sun, how do you recon they develop and test their Java software?
The argument against this which I have heard in the past is that Access relies heavily on backend DLLs shipped as part of the Windows OS, and hence would require more work to port to Mac than the other Office apps.
Having said that, I've never been convinced of this argument, as the same is true of IE, but of course that didn't stop a Mac version of IE being developed.
My suspicion has always been that not porting Access is a strategic decision by Micro$oft to keep the SME market away from Macs - I have absolutely no evidence for that, I just haven't heard a better competing theory.