Better living without MS Office
link: original article - section: microsoft
Ten years ago to this very week, Apple called a truce in its market share war with Microsoft. After all, the Mac then had a 5 percent market share or so and the company and its OS plans were in disarray.
But the cold war continues and the new iWork ‘08 is Cupertino’s latest shot at MS Office. The support for Tracking Changes in the updated Pages will make a big difference for pro users and switchers.
Back in the summer of 1997, the Mac market had two big annual shows, a Macworld Expo in January (which we still celebrate) and the other in Boston. Steve Jobs was shaking things up inside the company and outside with its developers and partners.
At the Expo keynote, Jobs told the audience that the “era of competition between Apple and Microsoft is over.” He then announced a patent sharing deal between the companies.
“Apple lives in an ecosystem. And it needs help from other partners; it needs to help other partners. Relationships that are destructive don’t help anybody in this industry as it is today. During the last several weeks, we’ve looked at relationships. One [relationship] stood out as one that hasn’t been going so well, but has the potential to be great for both companies: Microsoft,” Jobs said that day.
Of course, this news was greeted by boos from the crowd of Mac faithful. Really, it was almost a riot in some parts of the armory hall. You can view the moment on YouTube.
While I was (and continue to be) a Mac partisan, I didn’t join in the catcalls. Jobs was making sense. Finally, here was an Apple executive who was facing the market facts.
Then Bill Gates appeared on a huge overhead projection and made his own set of promises. First, was an investment of $150 million in Apple stock. For a reason I’ve never fully understood, this pitiful gesture reassured the Street and caused the stock price to rise from $19 to $26 following the keynote.
But the most important announcement of the hour — the one vital to the millions of users who used the Mac every day to get their work done — was Microsoft’s pledge to keep developing Microsoft Office for the Mac.
Worry over MS Office was a concern expressed then by the professional Mac community on the pages of MacWEEK where I worked as a senior editor. MS Word and Excel were used in all professional content workflows and Mac businesses. And in academia and government. And everywhere else. They were critical applications
In addition, Gates said the new version of Office would be real Mac program and not just a port of the Windows version.
Back then, this was all welcome news.
