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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.'"
Really, is there anyone who has used Office on the Mac and knows anything about Micro$haft who hasn't thought this?
February 7, 1997 - Steve Jobs returns to Apple
June 27, 1997 - Bill Gates sends email explaining threats made to Apple of pulling the plug on Office for Mac.
August 6, 1997 - Apple and Microsoft announce $150 investment of Microsoft in Apple.
What happened between June 27 and August 6?
Of course they found emails saying this. It's blatantly obvious to any armchair strategist. The only way you wouldn't find an email somewhere in the MS vault saying something anti-competitive is if the entire organization had been coached not to use this type of language. In fact, this is how corporate America operates today. Employees at market leader companies are specifically taught not to use phrases like crush, damage, etc when refering to the competition in electronic communications. It's perfectly fine to advocate these types of tactics in verbal communications, though.
Everyone these days knows enough not to say anything incriminating in emails, but rather to save it for face-to-face meetings.
Apple did the same thing when it bought Emagic, cancelling development of the Logic digital audio workstation for Windows. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes me want to switch to Linux's free alternatives, even when they're less user-friendly.
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It's been rumored for years that Microsoft was going to dump the Mac version of office. When MS bought out Connectix, thus acquiring the Virtual PC line of products, I remember seeing alleged quotes from Bill Gates that MS was going to stop Mac Office development and just ship VPC with a Windows version of Office.
Ironically, Microsoft Excel was released for the Mac in 1985 and didn't arrive on Windows until 1987, while PowerPoint was first released on the Mac in 1987 and not released for Windows until 1990. (Admittedly, PPT was originally developed by another company and then purchased by MS.)
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This is nothing new. Almost 10 years ago MS was going to completely step away and that would have killed Apple, but they didn't: http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,1101970818 ,00.html . In many ways, MS has given Apple ten years to get its shit together from a MS perspective (ie. be a worthwhile platform for MS to support) but has this really happened?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
To be honest, I use my MS OFfice installation on my Parallels instance, as it's much faster and usable than the Mac Office 2004. I'm planning to give Office 2008 (which should be universal) a bit of a look, and approach that with an open mind, but for now I'm happier with using the Windows version under my VM.
Ouch!
Yes, it would definitely hurt Apple sales.
Of course, there is software like NeoOffice, Pages and Keynote.
But people *want* MS Office, and in corporate environments, people *need* MS Office.
The OSX Version of MS Office is still not 100% compatible with the Windows version, but it's still better than NeoOffice.
And "MS Office runs on OSX" is a strong selling point. People familiar with Windows and Office are thinking "cool, Office runs on OSX, I won't feel lost if I ever switch to OSX".
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Halo development for Macintosh was not canceled when Microsoft bought Bungie.
Yes, it was.
Halo was released for the Mac in December, 2003.
True, and in fact, I worked as an alpha and beta tester for the company that did the port (look for my name in the credits). The important thing to note is that MS *did* cancel all development for the platform and decided at a later date to allow the existing code to be brought to the Macintosh through a third party developer who did all the work required.
I don't believe a Linux version was ever being developed by Bungie.
To my peripheral knowledge, there were active efforts at Bungie to bring a number of their titles to Linux and Halo was one of them.
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The day that Office for Mac gets killed will be the day that iWork gets released as a complete, full-featured, Office-killer suite. We know that Apple has a spreadsheet app waiting to be released. It is inconceivable that they would not have the rest of the suite at least in closed beta. I, for one, would love it if Apple would go ahead and release that suite soon.
That said, killing Office for Mac would cause microsoft to lose those profits, and probably lead to more people switching to Apple. Microsoft knows that Apple can make a slick GUI for almost anything, and they know that their Office GUI is anything but slick. That's why there was all the crap about the ribbon. They don't want to incite Apple to do anything smart, like releasing a better product than MS Office.
If MS dropped Mac Office support, Apple would likely do everything they could to maintain their ground, and rather than reinvent the wheel, it would make sense to throw their support to OpenOffice development. It could quickly become superior to MS Office across the board, and it could probably do it before the last version of Mac Office becomes antiquated.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple did reinvent the wheel rather than support an office suite that would benefit Linux, their main competitor in the not-windows category.
How is this any more malicious than Apple preventing X86 Mac OS from running on non-Apple hardware? Or refusing to license FairPlay? Or locking out third-party applications on the iPhone?
Office is Microsoft's IP, and like all their products, it exists primarily to provide a raison d'être for their main cash-cow: Windows licenses. Why should Microsoft increase the value of anything that can become a threat to their business?
You'd think that, over the years, that Apple would have created their own version of Office software that works with MS-Office file formats like OpenOffice.org did? Or at least work with OpenOffice.Org to bundle OOO with OSX instead of MS-Office and break that stranglehold Microsoft has on Macintosh users forcing them to use MS-Office for Macintosh?
Odd, Microsoft does not make MS-Office for Linux, *BSD Unix, Solaris, and other operating systems and it does not even seem to harm them and their marketshare keeps increasing anyway. I highly doubt that dropping MS-Office for the Macintosh would harm Apple, it would more likely harm Microsoft because Microsoft just cut out a lot of profits from the sales of MS-Office for the Macintosh.
Logically it would make good business sense for Microsoft to make MS-Office for other platforms as well, which would increase their profits.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I know the parent didn't make reference to this, but a lot of people think it, so:
In August 1997, Microsoft purchased $150 million in non-voting Apple stock.
As of the prior quarter, Apple had $1.2 billion in cash on hand .
The money didn't "bail Apple out", as some people think. It was a symbolic gesture. The symbolism of the "badly needed" "investment" (which really wasn't needed from a financial standpoint) renewed peoples' faith in Apple, renewed the faith that Microsoft and Office would still be on the Mac platform, etc.
So while you could argue that the gesture was needed (and I'd tend to agree), the money itself wasn't.
And Microsoft made out like bandits on that investment.
I think this problem is symbolic of much larger one in which entire industries are out to "hurt" their competitors, but also their very customers. Look at the way the computer industry, the telecom industry and the entertainment/industrial complex has worked to limit our choices, roll back our access to new technologies, and lock us in to carefully controlled uses of their products. Equipment is hamstrung, demand is ignored, products are made less friendly to the user but more friendly to the profit margins. While trumpeting technological advances, they ship products that don't work or don't work well. There is outright hostility to those of us who are the ones pumping money into these industries. The entire model of supply and demand/free market is turned on its head and WE become the consumables.
I don't want to make too big a jump here for those of you who are happy as clams as long as you can go to the best buy and get a 52" something that sets you back a month's pay, just to find that it can't do the things you really want it to do because those features are "just around the corner". The next release, the coming upgrade, THAT's the one you really want. But this fundamental change in the flow of power from the consumer to industry is being mirrored in the realm of public life. Politics are no longer about us. Elections are held but voters are optional. With all the things happening in the world, all the stories that could be told, every single media outlet has the same half-dozen stories on the front page. I used to wonder why some insignificant event would suddenly show up as the most important story in every single newspaper and news show. Now it becomes clear: as long as there's something to show us, it doesn't matter if it's the things that matter. As long as we watch. As long as we consume, as long as we pay, and most important, as long as we get up to go to work tomorrow so we can keep making those credit card payments.
I'm sorry that I'm making these big jumps from this rather unsurprising story about one company doing something to hurt another. The thing is: I just don't believe it. Microsoft, Apple, how different are they really? Smart people have epic battles in these pages arguing the benefits of one platform over another as if it somehow matters, or if one will somehow defeat the other. To them, it's all good as long as we keep upgrading, keep paying, keep working. We have become the consumables.
Now go read another story and let me finish my drink in peace. Tomorrow's another working day.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If Steve Jobs had a secret Intel port of Mac OS X going on for years, is it so hard to imagine that he might have a secret office suite project going on in case Microsoft dumps Apple? The only reason he wouldn't release it would be because Microsoft's support for Apple is good for sales and Apple's own office suite would be for a ``use only in case of emergency'' scenario. I mean, even if it were vastly superior to Microsoft Office, it would be a hard sell.
I think there are many things I'd fault Microsoft for, but dropping Office for Macintosh isn't one of them. The problem with Office is its proprietary and closed formats, and those don't get fixed by having a Mac version.
While Apple fans like to talk about Apple vs. Microsoft, Apple's actions suggest that they would really simply like to be part of a cozy little duopoly with Microsoft.
documents were created with typewriters or written by hand. Then Wordstar happened. No-one gave a shit about layout and preservation of fonts when converting to/from WordPerfect. It was good enough if the text contents got transferred during a transfer. It still applies today. The fact is that the exact layout and preservation thereof during a transfer is nice to have, but not essential.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I have been of the view that OpenOffice can deal with just about every MS Office document, since the days of StarDivision's StarOffice 5.1 (remember that?).
.doc format is undocumented, even internally within MS, but using an entire MS Office suite, provided by one of MS's largest partners (EDS), it is a horrible, ugly mess. We have documents embedded within documents; opening an embedded document means that I have to enable/disable macros within the new document. Unfortunately, it doesn't work, so you double-click the icon, click "Enable", nothing happens, double-click the icon again, and the embedded doc opens. This is apparently "correct behaviour".
n ters_hp3180), and in the end, I gave up, scp'd the .doc to the Linux box and opened it in OpenOffice.org, to print it direct. It was a steaming mess, nothing like the original MS Word document.
.doc files in OOo, just to find a random blank page part way through, which I could not delete. I had assumed that that was a flaw of OOo, but I've had the same problem with MS Word documents in MS Word!
However, I have also been a *nix user all that time. For the past 18 months, my work has required me to work with MS Office (and therefore, Wintel desktop).
I had not realised quite how bad the situation was; I know that the
We also have various templates, which I naively assumed could be edited as required, by an untrained user (such as myself; I'm certified in WfWG3.11, but nothing since from MS!). This is the corporate standard, after all. But no, I have to admit failure. I cannot edit our templates. Maybe that's me, maybe it's MS. I can configure cross-site clusters, but I can't edit an MS Word document. I don't think that the deficiency is in my own IT knowledge.
I have to be open - I don't much care for Windows, it's not a huge dislike, it's just not a big part of my life. I find configuring Samba/CUPS on my Ubuntu print server rather difficult to do (http://steve-parker.org/urandom/?y=2007&m=01#pri
So, I am finally forced to agree that OOo is no replacement for corporate uses of MS Office. It's not OOo's problem, though; it's MSO's problem. It's an undocumented pile of layers upon layers upon layers, dating back to the late 1980s.
Ugh. I can't deal with MS Office docs using OpenOffice.org, but then again, I can't do much with them using MS Office, either.
The key problem seems to be the format, more than the app itself. Neither app fully understands the format, and so neither app quite manages to display it properly.
In the past, I've opened
Let alone the issues about how future generations are going to access this information, the fact that the corporate standard is MS Office, seems to be a classic example of following the herd over the cliff.
I am still waiting for the perfect (or even near-perfect) office suite. OOo is the closest, with open (if complex) code, and an open (and well-documented) file format.
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To keep this in historical context, in June 1987, the current version of Mac Office was version 4.2.1. It was a direct port of the Windows version and released in 1994. As such, it did not behave or look like a Mac application. By 1997 the age of the program and its poor reputation contributed to poor sales. Office 98 was certainly was under development, but had not yet been released at this point. Office 98 proved to be a successful release due to its feature set and mac-like interface. At the time of this email howerver, the success of both Office on the Mac and the Mac in general were very much in question. It also makes sense to test new features on the Mac version, which is geared much more for home use than its Windows counterpart.
Apple then would have come out with something compatible, better, and free. Look at keynote, for example.
The same could be said of Apple in relation to iTunes and Windows Vista... Apple had AMPLE time to review and build in a fix for iTunes so that it wouldn't nuke iPods when used with Windows Vista, but it didn't. It said "we're still working on it", creating FUD with Windows Vista, and basically doing what Microsoft is accused of saying in a document (not like it actually did anything at all with Mac Office). I'm not defending anyone... just trying to put things back into perspective.
I think at the time (1997) MS Office for the Mac was unprofitable, and probably was the major motivation for possibly discontinuing support for Office on the Mac. I think it was mostly because of the low market share of Macs back then. But I think over time after the development of Office X and MacOSX it has become more profitable because it had features that the MS version of Office didn't have. However, MS may decide to kill MS Office on the Mac for the same reason they killed IE on the Mac: Apple's development of a competing product, i.e., iWork.