Documents in the recent Iowa antitrust trial reveal more of Microsoft's business practices.
Yet more criticism of Microsoft's business practices has emerged in the wake of the recent Iowa anti-trust trial.
Documentary evidence that Microsoft considered abandoning Office for Mac in order to cause "a great deal of harm" to Apple has emerged.
An emailed memo from Microsoft-founder Bill Gates to then Mac Business Unit chief Ben Waldman dated June 1997 talks about morale in the Mac Office development camp.
At that time Microsoft's senior management were considering dumping Mac support.
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."
View: PC World Story
Yet more criticism of Microsoft's business practices has emerged in the wake of the recent Iowa anti-trust trial.
Documentary evidence that Microsoft considered abandoning Office for Mac in order to cause "a great deal of harm" to Apple has emerged.
An emailed memo from Microsoft-founder Bill Gates to then Mac Business Unit chief Ben Waldman dated June 1997 talks about morale in the Mac Office development camp.
At that time Microsoft's senior management were considering dumping Mac support.
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."
View: PC World Story
I think you all know how the presiding judge used that document.
And if I remember correctly, back in 1997 Microsoft had the distinction of publishing more software titles in that year for the Mac OS than any other software company...including Apple Corporation.
Maybe a bold move is to make an open source fork of OpenOffice (maybe sponsor NeoOffice) and give it for FREE with leopard!
Personally if i was Steve Jobs I'd call it Apple iOffice, it would still be under the GNU license but it would use the OSX libraries so they would still have a measure of control (it would still be OSX only)
or something like that could happen
I don't know, i'm just talking mumbo jumbo here
That's like.. not even plausible. I think this myth is busted.
But Microsoft is seeing that its actaully making them money now. I will not be surprised if we start seeing more microsoft applications for the mac.
I think we may even see them for Linux in a couple of years.
That's MS's best strategy at this point. From strictly a functionality and performance perspective, Windows no longer has nearly the same clout in business as it used to. It's primarily just an application-delivery platform now, you don't actually need it anymore, you need the apps.
The money being placed into the R&D of Office for Mac, is not from Apples coffers for sure, therefore there should be complete control from Microsoft to withdraw its product services from that market, as long as things such as support don't get cut completely as well, then Microsoft should be in a legal position to do so.
In one way or another Microsoft will always help Apple because they need that little bit of competition.
And besides all that, Microsoft is a software company. They don't care what hardware you have as long as you have Windows and Office on it. Why else would they have worked with Apple to make BootCamp (the program that lets Mac "computers" run Windows)? Whether you have a Mac or a PC, if you buy Microsoft software they'll be happy.
Oh, topic? Sorry, just going on with the "I hate Apple" peeps.
This is just retarded.
If they dump Mac Office it's just because it's not making money for them anymore, MS could care less what Apple does (nor anyone else for that matter).
All Apple is going to be making in a few years are iPods, and OS/X is going to be running on third-party x64 and x86 clones. Then we can all rejoice about what a genius Steve Jobs was for waiting 20 years to finally sell the one thing Apple ever had going for them, their OS.
If I were Microsoft I'd ditch the Office Mac contract as soon as it expires... But then I'm a Mac user, so meh.
wctaiwan
MS's business becomes more questionnable every day.
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