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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.'"
I never would have thought a company with such high integrity would want to do that.
Before bailing out almost bankrupt Jobs and Apple , Gates threatened to drop office. This was well known in 1997. Why are applfanbois whining about it now? I suppose if they scream their revisionism they can erase the painful memory of sleeping with the enemy. Yes. Jobs had to take from Gates and say "Yes Sir, I love it !!!"
I'm sorry, but this level of handwaving won't fly here. "It's Office"? Whoopdeeshit. Name one thing it does that OO.o doesn't that will matter to the average user. Hello? Beuller? Beuller? There's no such thing.
I use OO.o every day, to interoperate with Word and Excel. So far I have had zero problems, except that copying and pasting from OO.o into Dreamweaver results in some spurious HTML crap for which I blame OO.o (a fucking DOCTYPE actually makes it in there!) but that's pretty minimal, frankly. And 99% of users will never do that, nor have the opportunity to because they don't own Dreamweaver.
Is it nice enough for the average user to pay for when they can get OO.o for free? If they actually knew about it, that is? The answer, of course, is no. Most people will never notice a difference, really, between two versions of Office, and one version of Office and a copy of OO.o.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So what? Is any company required to support their competitors? No...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
With your vast mac experience you should realize two important facts. Apple charges double for everything it sells. And Apple users are already used to mac software having fewer features than most comparable windows software. So the profit margin will be much higher and the development costs will indeed be lower. That 7% looks pretty rosy now.
Fine, then. MP3 players. Can you cite a tangible reason (not just "ooh, design! shiny!") why iPods are typically 70-90% more expensive than comparable models from other manufacturers. And lets remember ... NEARLY DOUBLE... not just a little more.
Microsoft's market share did not develop naturally. Everyone knows that. This story was but another chapter on how Microsoft is willing to play dirty to hurt the competition. For instace, during the mid-90s, they were hell-bent on breaking just about every standard they could. Hence Google's "don't be evil."
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts