In an article regarding Palm’s decision to use Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 5.0 for their next Treo (see related article Palm goes to the dark side, next Treo to use Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0), Tech pundit Rob Enderle writes:
“It is interesting to note, that few seem to remember that Microsoft wrote the first MacOS under contract to Apple nearly two decades ago but, like most Apple partnerships, this one also ended badly.” – Rob Enderle, September 26th, 2005
Let’s pause to let that one sink in… savor, bask, indulge… Okay, one more time:
“It is interesting to note, that few seem to remember that Microsoft wrote the first MacOS under contract to Apple nearly two decades ago but, like most Apple partnerships, this one also ended badly.” – Rob Enderle, September 26th, 2005
Huh? Count us among the few that don’t remember a bit of that historical tidbit. We thought Apple’s Macintosh team designed and built the original Macintosh hardware and software: Bill Atkinson, Chris Espinosa, Joanna Hoffman, George Crow, Burrell Smith, Jerry Manock, Jef Raskin and Andy Hertzfeld. We searched all over, but cannot find anything about Microsoft writing the first Mac OS. Can you? About the only thing we can think of that Endere might mean is that Apple licensed Microsoft’s Applesoft Basic for the Apple II. Is that what he means? Or perhaps he means that Steve Jobs recruited Microsoft to be the first third party applications software developer for the Mac?
Some of the places we looked (and failed) to find out about how Microsoft wrote the first Mac OS under contract to Apple:
• kernelthread.com – The Macintosh
• Wikipedia – Mac OS
• Jef Raskin – Recollections of the Macintosh project
• MacKiDo – Early Mac OS
• Encyclopædia Britannica – Macintosh and the first affordable GUI
• Folklore.org: Andy Hertzfeld – The first time we demoed the Macintosh to Microsoft
• Folklore.org: Andy Hertzfeld – Steve Jobs confronts Bill Gates about copying the Mac
Enderle’s full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So, are we among the few that don’t remember that “Microsoft wrote the first Mac OS under contract to Apple nearly two decades ago” or has Enderle just taken his “Enderleness” to hitherto unknown level?
Does MDN deliberately leave things out to rile up the readers? Do MDN readers lack the basic curiosity to read the original article?
Sadly, both seem to be true, unless Enderle just edited his story before I read it. The “offending” sentence is the second one in the third paragraph. It reads thusly:
“It is interesting to note, and few seem to remember, that Microsoft helped Apple write the first MacOS under a project code named “sand” http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm over two decades ago, but, like most Apple partnerships, this one ended badly.”
He says that they HELPED WRITE the first MacOS, which is true — it was a widley known fact at the time. It was that collaboration, and the clevely written contracts, that allowed MS to rip off the interface and win when Apple sued them for it.
Regardless the flavor of the slant I detest bias and am sadly disappointed by MDN. I am also dissappointed by the readers with their flame-throwers always at the ready, always ready to provide journalists with an easy example of Mac users as crackpot fanatics.
I’ve had enough. So long. Perhaps I will look in from time to time, to see if anyone has graduated from Junior High.
Tired of Fanatics,
Actually, Enderle did edit his original sentence. But even his edit is false, as is your statement. Microsoft and Apple did NOT collaborate on the Macintosh operating system. Apple created the hardware, OS, and various applications. Microsoft wrote other applications. That’s it.
Holy crap.
If you repeat a lie enough times, eventually people will begin to believe its true. Its a FUD technique.
I wasn’t there when all of this happened, but I am much more inclined to believe Andy Hertzfeld’s account since he was there and he was the one who did a great deal of the work. Read his account at folklore.org. Remember that Fudmeister was not there, but Andy Hertzfeld was. Not Rob Enderle.
Tired of fanatics writes: “they HELPED WRITE the first MacOS, which is true — it was a widley known fact at the time.”
Widely known? You shouldn’t believe everything you hear while institutionalized for schizophrenic delusional psychotic episodes. Not only are the other patients unreliable, but your own recollection as well.
That M$ had anything to do with writing Mac OS is 100% pure bullshit, and all the revisionist history in the world will not make it so. I know, i was watching Apple very closely at the time… hell, i even went to work for them in 1987. There is not one shred of truth to this. It is all fantasy; Bill Gates’ wet dream.
Any software engineer familiar with the original Macintosh Toolbox and M$’s Windoze 1.0 knows that M$ could not possibly have had a hand in developing, much less writing, the Mac OS. Mac code is far better written than anything M$ was capable of. The Mac Toolbox was written by real software engineers, not buffoons.
Real software engineering is something which has never been practiced by M$ (except perhaps in the last 14 months). I know. While at Apple, i interviewed many M$ engineers looking for work at Apple. I’d ask them what it was like writing code for M$. They would tell me horror stories of such atrocious coding practices that any decent programmer wanted out of the environment. Horrible programming practices were not only the norm, but institutionalized and enshrined, and any attempt to apply real engineering practices was belittled, ridiculed, and empathetically beat down. The utter crap which is Windoze is not, as many claim, a necessary evil “because they support so many different hardware configurations” (Unix does it with grace), but because of their total and complete lack of appreciation and utter disregard for the value of disciplined code writing practices. NO OTHER REASON. That is why Windoze is the virus infested, buggy, stinky, smelly pile of dogshit it is.
The notion that M$ had more OS experience than Apple at the time is equally absurd. In the early 80’s, when the Macintosh was being developed, M$ had relatively little OS experience (of course one might argue they still don’t!); most of their experience at the time was limited to porting other’s OS’s, IIRC, and not actually writing OS’s. By then Apple had Apple ][ DOS, Pascal, Apple /// SOS, Lisa OS, and was finishing ProDOS. [Note: I’m not sure how much of Apple ][ Pascal OS might have came from the folks at UCSD.] I suspect that Apple had far more OS experience than M$ at the time! I think they still do.
As for the notion that the Mac OS was licensed to M$, i’ve never heard that before, and think it is merely urban legend. Again, M$ code of that era was so poorly written, i don’t see how this can possible be true. More than likely the person who mentioned that was thinking of the non-disclosure agreement that M$ signed which gave them an advance peek at the Mac. M$ took that as a license to steal, but that’s hardly “licensing the code.” Incidentally, this has been SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for M$ over the years. Sign NDA’s, cuddle up to a company, then rip them off. They especially like to do this to small companies without the financial resources to sue them.
These two recollections by Andy Hertzfeld pretty much sums it all up, and should put to rest any notion that M$ was in any way involved in the development of the Macintosh (other than to rip-off Apple, and to write some third party app’s):
http://tinyurl.com/ak7oh
http://tinyurl.com/dftf6
Another reply from Enderle:
Wait a minute you’re telling me that without any collaboration an OS and the primary applications stack can be built and then magically be ready on the day of launch? Wow, do believe in the tooth fairy too? Seriously, if Microsoft had the option of providing the applications stack 6 to 12 months later this could have worked but Microsoft was the launch partner. And if Microsoft appropriated code, how did they actually get “source”? You can’t have it both ways, either they were sharing source or they weren’t. There was a lawsuit over the IP surrounding a windowed OS, show me the transcript where anyone said code was copied. The code base for Windows and the Mac was dramatically different; the look and feel was similar and formed the basis of the litigation which Apple and later Xerox (who had a better case but waited too long) lost.
Rob Enderle
Principal Analyst
Enderle Group
I don’t think that he actually believes this. He is just pulling your chain at this point. He cannot seriously believe this.
M$ didn’t “collaborate” in the sense they were helping Apple develop the OS. Apple neither needed nor wanted them involved in that way. Indeed, M$ couldn’t have helped; they had nothing to offer in that regard. If they had, Windoze 1.0 wouldn’t have been drawing flies when it came out. Nor Windoze 2.0, for that matter.
Their “collaboration,” if you really want to call it that, was to develop their own third party app’s. Nothing more.
Give it up, Mr. Enderle, Principal Analyst of the one-man “Enderle Group.” While i don’t think Oswald acted alone, in this case, there’s nothing shrouded in mystery, no magic bullets, no grainy 8mm film, no missing frames, no shadowy figures in a grassy knoll. All very straightforward and easy to comprehend.
http://tinyurl.com/ak7oh
http://tinyurl.com/dftf6
I think Rob Enderle is contracting alzheimer’s.
Even renoved Apple-basher Paul Thurrott can’t get it right:
He wrote: “Microsoft did, in fact, help Apple create the first Mac OS. And they did, in fact, have a big say in how the UI turned out. For example, Microsoft was responsible for making the default button in dialogs (“OK” in a dialog with OK/Cancel choices) bold and, thus, more obvious to the user.”
I have read dozen books about history of Apple Computer and so far I haven’t seen a single piece of fact to support Thurrott’s claim. It’s not true.
It so sad when people make claims when they don’t have the facts to support them.
“ Paul Thurrott [writes]: Microsoft was responsible for making the default button in dialogs (“OK” in a dialog with OK/Cancel choices) bold and, thus, more obvious to the user.”
Okay, here’s what really happened: After Steve Jobs (SJ) invented the Time Machine (TM) – you know, the one he uses to go into the past and steal ideas from M$ to put into MacOS before M$ can put them into Windoze – a horrible malfunction occurred in the TM sending SJ not only very far back in time, but also into the fictional reality of Middle Earth. There SJ was, stuck amid this massive battle between Mordor and just about everybody else in Middle Earth, but he didn’t realize it because Mordor seemed so very much like Redmond, and the Dark Lord had an uncanny resemblance to Bill Gates. Anyway, it was actually a collaboration of Elfs, Hobbits and a wizard named Gandalf who created the Macintosh. (It is Gandalf’s contribution to the Mac, by the way, which many believe give it its special magical quality.) SJ was eventually able to return to 1984, with the help of Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox, who had actually had some experience with time travel before (using a Delorian made into a time machine†).
So that, my friends, is the real story of how the Mac was created! Remember, you heard it here first.
________________________
† According to Rob Enderle, Principal Analyst of the Enderle Group, what most folks don’t realize is that no special effects were used in the production of the movie Back to the Future as the Delorian really was a time machine. That’s how they were able to make the 1955 scenes look so very realistic: They were actually filmed in 1955!
An interesting aside is that Paul Thurrott claims Microsoft actually wrote the software for the Delorian. This theory, however, has been discredited by the facts that: 1) The time-machine Delorian, if it really exists and this theory is true, obviously works, and therefore could not have any M$ products in it, and 2) The Delorian actually has no software.
Thanks Rainy Day
Your version of the facts makes much more sense than Rob Enderle’s version.
Oops, i’m always getting my tenses mixed up: Meant to say the TM SJ uses to go into the future to change the past.
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MW: “Around,” as someday i’ll get around to proof reading more carefully!
hahahaha, wow! I was hoping for an improvement in the remarks to sophomoric, but alas those expectations were far too high!
While you were in diapers, I was selling, supporting and repairing Macs and had regular contact with Apple. They were very tight with MS at the time and collaborated on many things.
Not having been in Apple, I may not have the inside scoop, but it was pretty common knowledge that they worked closely.
Rainy Day’s comments are really quite sad. You can wipe the foam from your mouth but it’s still quite clear you are rabid!
Enderle is not an idiot. He is not dumb. He is very wily and very clever.
He is also under contract to both Microsoft and SCO to smear the opposition or in any way possible rattle them. These are not hidden facts. Not more than back page news.
Rob Enderle is just trying to piss you off – and he seems to have succeeded.
Wake up before night falls.
Rob Enderle, er, Still tired of fanatics writes: “While you were in diapers, I was selling, supporting and repairing Macs and had regular contact with Apple. They were very tight with MS at the time and collaborated on many things.”
I see you have a time machine too.
If you’re not going to believe a first-hand witness like Andy Hertzfeld, nothing will convince you, ye ol’ FUDmeister.
I wonder what colour the sky is in his world!
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Rob rocks! Welcome to the social.
He’s confused. Microsoft didn’t write MacOS. They wrote Basic for the Mac. And they wrote OS/2 for IBM. I’d guess he is confusing one of those for MacOS.