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A Tour of Microsoft's Mac Lab
I'm Don Giovanni writes "David Weiss of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) gives a virtual tour of Microsoft's Mac Lab at Redmond, reportedly one of the largest Mac labs outside of Apple (includes 150 Mac minis!)." Great pictures. From the article: "The first area in the Mac Lab is what we call the Sandbox. This is where we keep all significant hardware configurations Apple has released that run our products. We'll use the Plasma display to, watch DVDs and play games, uh er, I mean, do important training presentations. ;-) It's actually very useful because everyone can be in front of a computer and still see the main screen and follow along. Often other groups at Microsoft (the games group, hardware drivers group and even the Windows media group) will come and schedule time in the Mac Lab to test their software on the different hardware configurations."
...as if millions of slashdotters applied for testing jobs at Microsoft and then were suddenly silenced.
It looks like the Mac Business Unit alone is responsible for at least 1% out of Apple's 5% market share!
Where do you think the Vista user interface design team has been spending all it's time?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Now that iTunes and other apps run in Windows, does Apple have a Windows lab?
Between this and the story we heard yesterday from the ex-Unix Microsoft programmer, do you get the feeling that some sort of viral/undercover "come work at Microsoft" marketing is going on?
This is very interesting to see since the last guy in the news to blog about Microsoft's Macs got fired for it. Perhaps this is the rebound from the bad press they recieved over that incident?
This seems like it's part of a broader wave of MS advocacy and transparency that has unfolded over the past year or so. Although I still don't like Microsoft terribly much, these glimpses inside have given me some pause. The employees and culture seem actually decent enough.
Off the record but I've heard that the label on the Mac lab door actually reads "the copy room"
I love the comment:
"Mac Office is one of those "software in the large" projects. There's really no way a team of our size would be able to adequately test all of Office without the use of automated testing. Every day we get a new build of Office from the build machines, we copy it to our Xserve RAID connected to our dual G5 Xserve for access by our 249 automation machines. We then run thousands and thousands of tests on the new build. Typically we get 4 builds of Office each day: English Ship, English Debug, Japanese Ship and Japanese Debug. We run our entire battery of tests against all the builds and then report any failures to testers via email. The testers investigate the failures, log any bugs and then move on to their other duties as testers. This turns out to be very effective, if used properly, and over time it allows testers to focus on things humans do best, while letting computers verify the repetitious and mundane, but necessary, testing. It all started with our Blue and White G3s years ago. At first when testers would upgrade their test machines, instead of recycling the machines, "The Lab" would get them to add them to our automation machine pool. I think we had about 20 machines to begin with."
So how is it when I attempt to view a word document I always manage to hit the error. I'm not being a wiseass - it's not every time. But if this takes place, why do I see so many difficulties when I attempt to view a word-for-windows document?
I usually see that Linux and Windows advocates are fairly reserved and sensible. Many other enthusiasts such as the OS/2 fanatics observe this behaviour also. I can't really say the same thing for many mac enthusiasts.
It is the owner that crashes the system. If you are enough of an idiot to put 50 background processes in Windows you sho
An entire room filled with bright, cheerful Microserfs wearing shirt padding and plastic bald caps greet me as I enter the Fucking Kill You Lab in Redmond's well-lit East Campus. Before I can say a word, chairs fly across the room in all directions as each vows to Fucking Kill (TM) Google, Apple, Sun, Linus Torvalds, and inexplicably, Olestra.
Fucking Kill You Lab director Thaul Purrott tells me that this is "the future of Windows innovation" and not surprisingly, customer support just as an airborne chair caster nearly decapitates him.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
But no Coke Zero? Lame.
However, Apple doesn't develop systems software for Windows that require in-depth knowledge about hardware drivers.
But Apple still needs to test on a representative variety of hardware if Apple wants to make its applications robust against defective drivers that are, unfortunately, common in the Windows world.
"As the sphygmascope snakes up the rectum of 'Buster,' the purebred black Labrador Retriever belonging to the world's richest man..."
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
So how is it when I attempt to view a word document I always manage to hit the error.
Until some breakthrough in formal verification occurs in the next few years, testing cannot assure 100 percent coverage of all combinations of cases that may appear, especially when an app has to interact with buggy device drivers. As for your problem, have you tried opening it and saving it in OpenOffice.org Writer?
Here's a tour of Microsoft's Linux Lab:
Cool, huh?
Safari basically replaced it.
A Microsoft employee is reporting on Mac use from a site owned by Google? Hang on, I think I see a pig passing by my 4th story window...
Why is his blog not on an MSN domain or something like that?
Developers: We can use your help.
Yeah, right. The Windows media group have given up on Windows Media Player for the Mac, so what are they testing?
And since when does the Microsoft games group develop anything for the Mac? Halo was ported by Westlake Interactive and MacSoft, and they dropped the Mac port of Flight Simulator decades ago. So what games are actually written at Microsoft for the Mac?
Drivers? They licensed the code for their Mac mouse drivers from Alessandro Montalcini. Maybe they do a little testing now and again, but most of it is just USB HID anyway. Do Microsoft make any other hardware for the Mac?
Internet Explorer? Oh, sorry, they dropped that too.
The whole thing smells like PR crap designed to make Microsoft look like a major developer of Mac software, when in truth all they really work on these days is Office.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I wonder why they couldn't keep developing Internet Explorer??
Because (to paraphrase their official statement) they could not hope to compete, because they couldn't get the kind of access to OS X that the Safari team could.
It's actually kind of funny when you remember that Microsoft always disputed other Windows developers' claims that they couldn't compete against Microsoft's own Windows applications for much the same reason. The term "Chinese wall" comes to mind.
~Philly
Away with you and your foul mouth! We're better off without IE.
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
I'd be interested to know why the Windows Media group is in the Mac lab. They did such a poor job on their Mac port that they are now directing people to 3rd party software.
That has got to be one of the lamest excuses ever. Loading docks are not secrets anywhere. They are public places you advertise so that the public can send things you buy and pick up things you sell.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
He continued, "and it hardly costs a thing compared our other labs. It takes one fifth the man hours to keep up and the hardware works for year and years due to it's modularity and minimalism," but the PR department cut that out.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Level 1
[George Bush finally admits to hearing voices.]
I believe the term is pseudo-branding. They want to be associated with iMac and Apple so everyone will think they're way kewl and begin to think of the iPod as a Microsoft product.....
Just like everywhere at Microsoft, we get all-you-can-drink beverages.
Does that include beer?
Gotta have that buzz when you're developing!
Maybe you could share with the rest of us what, exactly, Safari needs to know about OS X that Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and any other browsers don't or can't?
The claim against Microsoft is valid. Try this on Windows. Open Internet Explorer, and go to the Windows Update site. Note how you're able to download and upgrade your operating system through the browser. Now try it on Firefox. It won't work. Surprise.
Now try the same thing on your Mac. Open Safari and... oh wait - Safari is just a web browser, and System Updates are handled through an entirely different mechanism built into the Operating System! How surprising.
Don't worry, Slashdot won't tell. It doesn't want any of those same friends finding out the two of you were more than friends either. Oh, and Slashdot was just faking it with you, and only got real satisfaction from your friends. :)
Microsoft has just released their much anticipated hands-free cordless mouse. Warning, it may hurt a little at first.
That's odd, because last I checked, the code that drives Safari (not the GUI but the frameworks that do all the actual work) are based on KHTML and open source. If Apple wanted to use a bunch of undocumented APIs to make Safari better than everyone else's software, an open-source project would probably not be the place to do it.
I posted a relatively innocuous comment to that story earlier today, it was censored and did not appear. It read, in its entirety, "There is one thing conspicuously absent from the pictures: people."
I must have hit a nerve. Sure the story was about the lab. But don't people use the lab? There are a couple of people who appear way in the background of one pic, so small you can hardly see them, but otherwise the pictures are totally devoid of human life. I am sure the set of photos required clearance from Microsoft management, did they object to publishing photos of their personnel as some sort of security risk? Microsoft has been conspicuously touchy about bloggers describing their Mac facilities, remember the blogger who got fired from his temp job for posting a pic of G5s on the MSFT loading dock? So it wouldn't surprise me if the absence of people in the photos was a deliberate choice by MS management. And that is a lot more intriguing than the pics of a bunch of server racks.
Maybe you could share with the rest of us what, exactly, Safari needs to know about OS X that Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and any other browsers don't or can't?
Maybe you could reread my post, since I'm not the one making the claim and am merely repeating what Microsoft's rep said in the linked article?
~Philly
You're spot on, and that's why so many people rolled their eyes at Microsoft's obviously false reasoning for dropping IE for OS X. It's not that anything was kept from them - they've got access to the same APIs that Safari has. It's just that they can't compete with Safari and Firefox, and without the massive head start of pre-installation, IE just can't make a blip on the OS X radar.
... why Vista is late!
"This is where we keep all significant hardware configurations Apple has released that run our products. We'll use the Plasma display to, watch DVDs and play games, uh er, I mean, do important training presentations."
I wish I could filter out the annoying Pickens articles...
"It's actually kind of funny when you remember that Microsoft always disputed other Windows developers' claims that they couldn't compete against Microsoft's own Windows applications for much the same reason. The term "Chinese wall" comes to mind."
Amusingly enough, both Opera and Firefox are proof that both those claims are frivilous.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
...of why I think the Mac community would be compromised by using Office X and other products from Microsoft's Mac Business Unit.
/Applications, none of them have pledged allegiance to a corporate parent that churns out horrifying simulacra of Mac users' innovations. On top of that, given that they are run by Windows users, how easy would it be for one of them to allow a "friend" to dummy up a Trojan, have another "friend" port it to the Mac, and then allow another "friend" to unleash a remote controlled hell on our AppleTalk private networks? After all, they are "blood", right?
As I mentioned in one of my comments about this issue, I do not trust Windows users. They do not think like us. They are not like us. They are as close to "alien life forms" as we can get without having to leave this planet.
Seriously, they do not share our values. They hate that we have good taste. They like to keep their windows maximized. Hell, most of them are perfect little squares in perfectly square holes and if you go to PC strongholds like Staten Island you'll see most of the media they consume is produced by Mac users, as the Windows demographic is incapable of creativity in music, the arts, entertainment, interior design, etc.
They are backwards. They live in the 11th Century. They've contributed nothing meaningful to humanity for hundreds and hundreds of years. While we different thinkers are out writing AppleScripts, making HyperCard stacks, mixing in Logic Pro, editing collaboratively in SubEthaEdit, proofing rainbow banners in Illustrator, creating wealth through a variety of postmodern/postindustrial models, winning Nobels and Pulitzers and Tonys and Pritzkers along the way, the PC users are sitting on their asses downloading the fruits of our labor (how else do you explain so many being able to reference Futurama, bash the New Yorker, etc.?) The only thing they have in their favor is old, fat, whitebread bankrolls accumulated on slavery and imperialism and, personally, I wish their inherited wealth would run dry. Sure, we'd have a hell of a headache funding our next indie production, but so would the whole world, and when faced with true adversity the ingenuity of Mac users truly comes to the fore.
Anyway, back on point. Why don't I trust the Mac Business Unit?
Because to have PC-type people financing our films, our music, in charge of our manifestos and marches, is a disaster waiting to happen.
Whereas we may allow products from other dull, dogma-bound companies into our
Which leads me to how people in our own community are encouraging PC-type people to switch to Mac.
If you go back and do some checking of stories, you will see that in most cases where lifelong Windows users suddenly buy Macs, or people who are Linux to the core suddenly pirate OS X from the internet, it is almost all done in cahoots with another recent switcher on the "inside" or one that "knows" someone on the inside.
So if we have Linux and Windows types of people facilitating the poseur-ishness of another Linux or Windows user because he has "control" and "power" just how far a stretch is it to say the MBU at Microsoft won't do the same when it comes to our Macs? HMMMMM?!?!?!
But on the other hand, I should have guessed, since they do make Mac software, that there should be a bunch of Macs of all models to test the software.
So that begs this question: Apple builds all the Macs. This means that there are basically a finite number of possible configurations for a Mac. It could be 100 or 1000 or 10000, depending on how far back you want to go, which Mac OSes you want to support, etc., but somewhere along the line, there is only so many ways that a Mac might be set up. On the other hand, there is basically an infinite number of possible configurations for a PC. Just think how many motherboard manufacturers there are, how many different versions each has turned out, how many x86 processor clones there are, how many versions of the x86 architecture since, say, the Pentium, how many different video configurations, how many sound cards, how many of each thing, and you'll come to the conclusion that if there are, say, 2 billion PCs in the world in current operation, then there must be about 2 billion and 1 configurations out there. So as I began to say, this Mac lab thing begs the question: How many different configurations of PCs does Microsoft have in its PC lab for testing Windows, Office, and all their other thousand and one apps?
With Microsoft having the largest Mac and Linux labs, no wonder they forgot they've a Windows release to finish.
-Kurt
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
What's even funnier is that IE 6 for the Mac was already coded and ready to ship, but they decided to shelve it instead of release it.
Hey! That's building 115! I just started working in there a few weeks ago :-) The building also houses the Managed Solutions teams.
http://brandonbloom.name
Holy White-Balance, Batman!
-MJ
You mean, the Microsoft folks don't know how its possible to write a modern browser without having full access to the underlying OS? :)
Over the years, Microsoft has acted to thwart Quicktime and has employed both punitive and exclusionary tactics. It has gone as far as introducing technical problems and misleading error messages (DR-DOS anyone?) which impair Quicktime's performance and impede Apple's ability to develop for MS platforms.
Don't take my word for it. See that and very many other examples in the court's records (warning for PDF).
Furthermore, Microsoft has repeatedly pressured apple to give up Quicktime and cede the multimedia playback market to Microsoft. When MS saw how much better Quicktime was that its own crap, MS tried to steal Quicktime. When that didn't work, MS then tried to block Quicktime for Windows.
MS' antics hurt the market, hurt the end users, and run up tax-funded court costs.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Microsoft released IE 5 for OS 9 on March 27, 2000, and OS X betas shipped with IE 5.
.9.3 for OS X on August 4, 2001.
.7 on March 6, 2003.
.6 followed soon after on May 16, 2003.
The Omni Group, which had previously released Omniweb on OpenStep, had Omniweb 4 running on OS X's betas.
Mozilla released version
Opera released Opera 5.0b1 for OS X on August 31, 2001.
Apple released the first Safari beta on January 7, 2003.
Camino (then Chimera), which was meant to be a lighter version of Mozilla Phoenix, released version
Firefox (then Phoenix) first created an alpha for OS X on April 7, 2003. Firebird
Microsoft officially dropped Mac IE development on June 13, 2003. As of April 21, 2006, all of the other listed browsers are still being updated.
Albuquerque PC
Microsoft's "official statement" is BS. Firefox seems to be doing rather well in the OS X world, as is Camino. I run a site that is mostly for Mac network people in education, and I've noticed an increasing number of Mac Firefox and Camino users. Personally, I think Microsoft dumped Internet Explorer because it sucked and it would have cost money to make it as good as Safari or Firefox... and the Mac market was too small to justify putting money into it.
Music - www.richardmac.com
All that work, and Microsoft Office: Mac with network homes still sucks shit. I could also complain about the Office Installer that is a "drag" installer, but then on first use it just runs a script to install crap everywhere. Yeah, that doesn't count--for it to be real drag installer, it has to be a drag uninstaller, too.
I would be willing to give MS a pass on network homes, as maybe it's a little exotic; but it's not that bad of an idea, and no other application seems to be as confused by it as Office.
--
$tar -xvf
I know the Virginia Tech Math Emporium, a large computer lab there, has about 550 iMac computers in it.
e ch/
http://www.apple.com/education/profiles/virginiat
Now, I'm no expert, but it also might have something to do with the fact that Microsoft concluded that their IE team was good and that they could use good people on projects that made money. Some previous IE team members went to MSN for OS X (which has since been put down) and at the very least Tantek Çelik (who wrote a lot of the Tasman rendering engine, in its day amazing) found out about IE being EOLed by it being in the news.
Basically, Microsoft decided that they had won the browser wars and they stopped trying and put their resources elsewhere - both on Mac and Windows. There were some plans to start trying again on the Mac (recall that it took longer before the Win/IE team rose from the ashes), but Microsoft quickly embraced Safari instead. The sad part is that some Mac users still use Mac/IE, despite it being antique. (This is probably why Apple stopped shipping it in OS X 10.4.)
Microsoft's stated reason isn't a lie, but taking it as the definitive truth about how web browsers are made or why Microsoft stopped IE is a mistake.
I thought it was going to talk about MS' strategies to "speed up" the performance of Vista.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.