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."

Comments

I feel a disturbance in the force...

[Spy der Mann]

...as if millions of slashdotters applied for testing jobs at Microsoft and then were suddenly silenced.

How ironic...

[tdvaughan]

It looks like the Mac Business Unit alone is responsible for at least 1% out of Apple's 5% market share!

Well OF COURSE they have a Mac lab!

[Locke2005]

Where do you think the Vista user interface design team has been spending all it's time?

The last guy who did this got fired.

[justinarthur]

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?

Re:The last guy who did this got fired.

[Babbster]

Even more than what he took pictures of, it sounds like the primary concern is the overall security of the area. Loading docks are where you find perhaps the biggest danger of theft in any business ("it fell off the truck"). Publishing pictures of a company's loading dock/area could expose security flaws...insert joke about Windows security here...and give evildoers a way to plan a theft.

Microsoft Advocacy

[MrNonchalant]

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.

Door label

[Wm_K]

Off the record but I've heard that the label on the Mac lab door actually reads "the copy room"

Linux Lab

[Anne_Nonymous]

Here's a tour of Microsoft's Linux Lab:






Cool, huh?

Microsoft on Macs and a Google blog?!?

[truthsearch]

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?

PR crap

[metamatic]

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.

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.