...from:
Microsoft Considered Dumping Mac Office to Hurt Apple
Jonny Evans, Monday, March 05, 2007 07:00 PM PST
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."
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."
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...from:
Friday, March 2, 2007
Apple Wins Patent for Technology in Zune
Mar 2 2007 4:37PM
The US Patent office yesterday granted Apple Computer a patent for a process called double back injection molding used to make electronic housings. The process allows the distinctive glowing border effect in Microsoft's Zune player [which began shipping November, 2006]. The process allows creation of two different color effects as well as improved structural characteristics of the border wall. it avoids expensive and complicated action in tools. Apple uses double shot injection molding for both iPods and iMac desktop computers, which have a clear shell over a black or white layer. “The two shot injection process allows for a thinner walled enclosure that uses less materials and allows for added structural features that would not be possible using traditional molding techniques,” according to the patent summary [filed on August 16, 2005]. It was not clear, but seemed apparent, that Microsoft may have to pay a licensing fee to continue use of the process. One blogger [
http://www.zuney.net/zune-news/736-good-bad-news.html] stated, without documentation, that Apple was stealing Microsoft’s idea.
[Patent item at:
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Apple on Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, and Microsoft Office:
- "Hi. I'm a Mac" Guy: "PC, you are a wizard with numbers and you dress like a gentleman."
- Bill Gates: "...if you're really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it?"
and
- Bill Gates: "If you just want to say, "Steve Jobs invented the world, and then the rest of us came along," that's fine. If you’re interested, [Vista development chief] Jim Allchin will be glad to educate you feature by feature what the truth is."
- Jim Allchin (head of the Microsoft division in charge of Windows and Vista development chief): "I have to tell you my experience with our software and [the Zune] is really terrible," he wrote in e-mail. "I expect you already knew this but I had not personally experienced it. Now I spent last night really playing with it. My goodness it is terrible. What I don't understand is that I was told that the new Creative Labs device would be comparable to Apple. That is so not the case.....I think I should talk with Jobs. Right now, I think I should open up a dialogue for support of the iPod. Unless something changes, the iPod will drive people away from WMP [Windows Media Player]," he said in a Nov. 13, 2003 internal e-mail that was marked 'highly confidential' and carried the subject line "sucking on media players."
""In my view, [Microsoft has] lost our way.I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that does not translate into great products."
[.............to be fair, it should be noted that Mr. Allchin has since elaborated on these comments by explaining that he was just trying to rally the troops to do a better job and that his comments were not intended to be taken literally. ]
...from:
"On Monday night, after reporters began making inquiries about the e-mail, Allchin published an item on a Microsoft blog in which he claimed the e-mail statement was being taken out of context. He said that he'd made the comment about buying a Mac "for effect," that the e-mail was nearly 3 years old and that he was trying to shake things up at Microsoft."
......from:
- the entire email message Mr. Allchin , who is co-president of Microsoft's Platforms & Services Division, sent to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer on January 7, 2004:
"This is a rant. I'm sorry.
"I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems are customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn't translate into great products.
"I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. If you run the equivalent of VPC [Virtual PC] on a Mac you get access to basically all Windows application software (although not the hardware). Apple did not lose their way. You must watch this new video below. I know this doesn't show anything for businesses, but my point is about the philosophy that Apple uses. They think scenario. They think simple. They think fast. I know there is nothing hugely deep in this.
"http: //www.apple.com/ilife/video/ilifeO432C.html [Note: Link is now dead]
"I must tell you everything in my soul tells me that we should do what I called plan (b) yesterday. We need a simple fast storage system. LH [Longhorn] is a pig and I don't see any solution to this problem. If we are to rise to the challenge of Linux and Apple, we need to start taking the lessons of 'scenario, simple, fast' to heart. Jim"