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Wow.
I feel so dirty.
If Scoble throws a chair, does Microsoft Management give a shit?
Seems like Jobs has a real short memory about all that. Why does this always have to be about "Microsoft supports this, or I'll throw a chair" - what does it get Microsoft at Apple - nothing - no one likes being rescued - it's too embarrassing.
I hope that will change.
Also, why does MS need Apple? Somebody has to come up with the ideas for MS to build products. Apple has come up with more than most.
Sounds like Scoble's been spending some time with Steve Gillmor!
How about "they got to make lots of money selling copies of Mac Office to Mac users"?
And the fact is that Microsoft handsomely profited from their investment in Apple, because the share price was far higher when they sold than when they bought in.
Look, the bottom line is money from a Mac user doesn't spend any differently at the store than money from a Windows user. Microsoft likes getting money. Ergo, if there are more Mac users, you'll see more Mac software from Microsoft, because they want that money.
Now, part of the problem is that outside of the MacBU, Microsoft has next to no credibility with Mac users. The MSN for Mac software they came out with (that was baiscally a dumbed-down version of Entourage+the remnants of MacIE) ? Flop- it doesn't even work any more. MSN Messenger? Still not doing video, which puts it WAY behind Yahoo, AIM and iChat (come FREAKIN' on, it's not THAT hard to port a video codec- Apple had to do the same thing with QuickTime on Windows, and they did that years ago). And let's not even start on Windows Media Player, which is sucking serious wind.
So it seems to me Brandon's right in 3- it's going to have to be the folks in MacBU who handle the Mac side of things, because they are the only folks who really have credibility in the Mac market.
If by some miracle Windows marketshare did start to slide from its 94% dominance, it would be far more in Microsoft's interest to have it slide towards the Mac - a platform for which they sell a lot of profitable copies of Office - than Linux, a platform they sell absolutely nothing for.
And with the gross margins on software much higher (80-90%) than those on hardware (20-25%), if someone buys a low-end Mac + Office at the same time, Microsoft actually makes more on the sale than Apple. And more Apple sales would mean a proportionate increase in Office sales.
Plus, silly personal rivalries aside, Microsoft has a lot to gain from Apple. Not just as a useful guide for OS enhancements but as credibility as a cross-platform solution provider. Apps that support the Mac tend to be favored over those that are tied solely to another OS. Companies don't like to be locked down.
In fact, they'd better start throwing bodies (and not chairs) at Mac support, because if Google's efforts with OpenOffice.org gain traction in the Linux enterprise world, and they include an Aqua face for the Mac port, Office could lose a compelling argument: easy cross-platform computing.
FolderShare isn't a website. Windows Live isn't a website.
Not sure what you were getting at there.
Ask more questions, Robert.
Your first step should be to learn more, were such a surprising choice to be made.
Question your own authority. Try it, it's good.
Note that when MS bought GFI, what did they do? Killed all the non-Windows versions. So it's not like they have a lot of good history here. Implying the MacBU should do the Mac client only works if the MacBU will get the resources to do it. Considering how small they are, the work they do now is astounding. They're one of the few teams at MS that can do that kind of work, ship regularly, and not require the population of a mid-sized city.
at some point, someone needs to either knife WiMP Mac, or give the MacBU the resources to do it right, because god knows the WM team can't write good Mac code with a gun at their head.
Foldershare for the Mac would work VERY nicely with Mac Office. This is something on the order of a no-brainer to add in- especially when you consider the work in Entourage 2004 for projects, and you figure they'll need to do more for v.Next (I guess it's Office 12).
You probably think it's reasonable to ask "what does Microsoft get from Apple"?
Well, let me give you a little clue: When MS does something stupid and unsupported and gets away with it for a while, but it breaks on a new version of OS X, Apple puts workarounds in their own code, to accommodate MS's brain damage.
John,
A quibble: there is no such thing as a web page that only IE can use. If it doesn't work with Lynx, it's not a *web* page, it's a MS Internet Exploder page.
it's a "microsoft internet explorer application". a new nightmare.
That would hurt Microsoft the most if it happened beginning 2006, 11 months ahead of Vista.
Having worked for several years at MS on software for the Mac platform, I call Pot/Kettle/Bitch on that post.
Apple's pulled all kinds of stupid shit we've worked around (I've helped test "bugfixes" we made because Apple funkiness with Open Transport revisions and MTUs, and Apple was notorious for not adequately testing their own app compatibility with proxy servers. For a while, we wondered if they could EVER do DHCP right.). We have a number of bugs in Radar that we've filed. Welcome to the wonderful world of software development. This stuff is hard, and it ain't easy.
Oh, and then there's the Wonderful World of Changing Developer APIs. Use AIAT as the system API for Search. No, SearchKit. Oh, my bad, we meant Spotlight. Oh, by the way, you have to change compilers in the middle of your development cycle because we're going to Intel. BOHICA, FOAD and HAND!
Sometimes, I'm convinced being a developer for Apple is like dating a girlfriend who's great in bed and looks like a movie star, but regularly demonstrates how high-maintenance she is by jerking your chain. You never know when the rules are going to change...
Those who followed that path basically did nothing but a recompile and they were ready for Intel. Firefox is such an example, every Cocoa app is such an example. Firefox is cross platform - no problem for them. The Mac version of Office shares 75% of its source code with the Windows version according to Kevin Browne (this statement is from the v.X days but I highly doubt that this has changed a lot since then.
In the end. Apple's Intel switch and the demise of Code Warrior were just the final enforcements of gcc and XCode, but it was possible long before that announcement - and that has been the right path for future developments for YEARS. This was predictable, sorry. No prize for that argument.
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Throw away. Right now, PCs are fine, but Macs have stopped working, and it's been that way for the last 24 hours.
Good idea to leave MS, dude.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messa...