Microsoft Wanted To Drop Mac Office To Hurt Apple

Overly Critical Guy writes to mention that more documents in the Iowa antitrust case have come out. This time, it's revealed that Microsoft considered dumping the Mac Office Suite entirely in a move to harm Apple. "The email complains at poor sales of Office, which it attributes to a lack of focus on making such sales among reps at that time. It describes dumping development of the product as: 'The strongest bargaining point we have, as doing so will do a great deal of harm to Apple immediately.' The document also confirms that Microsoft at the time saw Office for the Mac as a chance to test new features in the product before they appeared in Windows, 'because it is so much less critical to our business than Windows.'"

Comments

I can't imagine

[JustNiz]

Why anyone smart enough to buy a Mac and avoid Windows would then want to buy Office, especially when they can download OpenOffice for free.

Re:I can't imagine

[drinkypoo]

I do not have any objection to using OpenOffice, but on the Mac it still runs in X11, which for me is an instant deal-breaker.

"I do not have any objection, but here is my objection, which is a dealbreaker, but I won't tell you why."

And as for "most people won't notice the difference" - OpenOffice is an excellent product, but particularly on the Mac that simply isn't true at this stage. On Windows, perhaps.

I don't think you are listening. Based on the utter breakdown of logic in your comment I'm not sure you are capable, but I'm going to try again.

Most people use maybe 1% of the features in MS Word. In fact the majority of them don't even need to ever open a menu to do what they do, although many of them will because they are too stupid to mouse over the icons at the top of the window to see what they do (even though tooltips have popped up on them while they were woolgathering in the past.)

As a result, most people would never feel a lack in OO.o. This is what I mean by never notice the difference.

Sure, they might notice that the app didn't look like the rest of their apps. But would they notice any other differences? Even apps that all use the same API on OSX can behave VERY differently from one another because so many choices are left up to the programmer. Programmers are generally in favor of this, but I think it is a disservice to the user. Mind you, it's no more a disservice than when Microsoft does it.

Once upon a time Apple had strong human interface guidelines. Apple itself followed them and expected others to do so. Today, Apple has apparently forgotten everything it ever knew about interface design and consistency. They don't follow their own guidelines. They don't follow very simple rules about interfaces - the dock is the prime example of a poorly designed interface.

Most users use an office suite to do very simple, stupid things. They don't need Office. OO.o is, frankly, overkill for them. Most people never even use a spreadsheet. They'd be served fine with just Abiword.

Re:Final Cut Pro 5 for Windows?

[eln]

The Mac is not a serious platform for office productivity.

Re:Now Steve? NOW?

[slickwillie]

Is this the right time to release OS X for PC's?

Why wait?

Re:Nature of the beast....

[Frosty Piss]

No - but generally business decisions should be geared toward producing a better product than your competition rather than looking for ways to eliminate the competition so you can sell your product no matter how bad it is.

Are you suggesting that Open Office is a better product than MS Office? That it is more functional? That it has tighter code that performs faster smother and more efficiently than MS Office code? I think virtually everyone except the most delusional Zealots disagree with you.

Re:Nature of the beast....

[Frosty Piss]

MS Office has loads of competition besides OO.org including Mac produced software. WTF?!

Spoke like a true Zealot, since in a factual way it isn't so.