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• Microsoft and Macintosh (Score:3, Insightful)

  by jdavidb (1361) on 2003.02.20 12:52 (#17300) Homepage Journal

  Since Office 98, Microsoft has actually gotten itself a reputation as a good Macintosh software producer. I've read some interesting articles and interviews with people from their Mac development division that show them to be sharp and independent. Optimistically, I hope VirtualPC for Macintosh can become one of those good Microsoft Mac products.

  Of course, I've all but quit using proprietary software, anyway.

  --
  J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers

  Reply to This

  • Re:Microsoft and Macintosh (Score:2)

    by Theory (10)

    I've heard that, too. But I don't like IE compared to Mozilla, Chimera, or even Safari. And Office X apps crash about once an hour whenever I use them. They're usable and good apps, but the instability is annoying.

    --David
    • Re:Microsoft and Macintosh (Score:2)

      by jdavidb (1361)

      Ditto on IE; and I've never used Mac OS X or any of its apps. Office 98 seemed to be pretty stable when I used it, though.

      --
      J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
      • Re:Microsoft and Macintosh (Score:1)

        by rcameron (3977)

        I've been a Mac fan since before 1995 (mostly because my choice of operating systems came down to Win 3.1 or Macintosh...blech). I love OS X, and I was one of those that went kicking and screaming. It's unbelievably stable, and I love the fact that Apache is built in, as well as Perl and PHP. To start Apache, you click one button in the System Preferences (control panel) and that's it. Anyway, ever since Microsoft created a separate entity just for Macintosh software, the quality of the software has gone t
  • Re:Microsoft and Macintosh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ziggy (25)

    Optimistically, I hope VirtualPC for Macintosh can become one of those good Microsoft Mac products.

    Realistically, I don't think that's what drove this purchase. Microsoft has three primary outcomes in mind when it buys a company: kill a competing product, assimilate a bunch of "smart people" (and ignore their products in the process), or buy out a competitor's air supply.

    Buying VirtualPC oozes of Microsoft wanting to make OS X less viable than it is today. That would also hit Microsoft's three prim
    • Re:Microsoft and Macintosh (Score:2, Interesting)

      by perigrin (3495)

      Two points, first:

      why not make VMWare an offer they can't refuse (and kill the Linux-based VM business all at once)?

      I hate to say it (or perhaps I don't ... I'm not particularly partial here*) but Linux doesn't have Mac's market share. Microsoft still doesn't consider them competition when it comes to Desktops, and they're probably right. According to Google's statistics last year 1% of google clients were Linux based, while 4% were Mac. When (if?) Microsoft decides it needs/want a Linux presence VMWa