“Microsoft’s desperate efforts to stamp out QuickTime helped to line up a series of events that positioned a deadly weapon and pulled its trigger. The problem for Microsoft was that it had mistakenly aimed the gun at its own weak spot; the bullet has been tearing through layers of Microsoft ever since,” Daniel Eran writes for RoughlyDrafted.
Eran covers the history of efforts from Apple, Adobe, Macromedia, Microsoft, and many others in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son” and “RadDoc” for the heads up.]
Related article:
How Microsoft tried (and failed) to kill Apple’s QuickTime – March 13, 2007
This is actually a very important story and deserves wider recognition. Eran should write a book.
Of course I wish MDN had posted Sunday’s Roughly Drafted story: Mac Office, $150 Million, and the Story Nobody Covered. Again no one is covering the true payment Microsogt made to Apple in 1997.
And yes I sent the link in.
Great article! M$ does drive inovation… just not in their own company.
Eran won’t write a book, because it wouldn’t sell as evidenced by his not attempting what you suggest. Blogs are free. Besides, pompous, monotonous, and obsessive texts only appeal to insecure and neurotic types anyhow.
Hey, “@Freddie” . . . insecure much?
Screw!
@@Freddie…..monitoring the web for new links to RDM eh?
Please excuse me if I tell you you are a little shit. Now go back into your Microsoft worm infested swamp. Please.
I bet Daniel Eran WILL one day turn this material into a book. And my business for one will circulate a few copies at Christmas time!
Microsoft got cocky and have been for the last 5 years and now they’re paying the price.
From a consumer’s point of view, that was the best investment ever. I bet that Bill Gate’s fumes knowing that this infusion of cash helped revive Apple and his spending billions on Microsoft has yielded nothing but failure and frustration.
How does it feel knowing that every Apple product you buy has little bit of Microsoft inside?
In the real world of corporate information technology — help desks
and IT departments in business offices across our beloved America,
Windows, Office, and Microsoft are the only tools we need.
American workers, information workers, knowledge workors of the
new global economy only need Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, and
Powerpoint to be productive, competitive, and employed.
Killing Apple, Knifing the Baby, and Killing Quicktime would have
been the best favors Microsoft could have done to America to
enhance the productivity of the American economy and of American
emerging information workforce.
Apple, Macs, Quicktime, and all those non-Microsoft technologies
are not enterprise tools and do not enhance the productivity of
American Office workers. Only Microsoft can help America stay on
the cutting age of corporate information technology. All we need is:
Windows Vista and Microsoft Office on every desktop;
Windows Servers and Outlook and Exchange mail servers:
and now, Microsoft High Performance Computing, Clusters,
and Grid technologies to unleash the power of the millions
of computers sitting under desks in cublicles across this
great land — that gives meaning to the words freedom and
democracy.
Microsoft will again win over Apple’s XGrid and attempts at
clusters and high performing computing.
America’s economic supremacy depends on Microsoft and
only Microsoft can keep America productive and competitive.
Enough of Roughly Drafted and other Mac users criticizing
and complaining about Microsoft. We should be thankful
that we have Microsoft to lead business IT in the U.S.A.
Microsoft’s history of tough tactics used to gain its top spot
in the world of IT were necessary and an important lesson on
how business is done. Like making sausage it’s not pretty,
but the results are fantastic. That’s how the oil industry gre
in this country, that’s how all great industries developed in
our free enterprise economic system, and that is why Bill Gates
had the vision and the courage to produce a true world-class
software company we can all buy their products and be proud
that it was made in the U.S.A. and represents America’s true
values. What is good for Microsoft is good for America.
Actually, Freddy is correct. Eran is pompous, neurotic, and often-time truth-challenged. He’s been called to the mat many times for his distortions, and to top it off, he becomes absolutely unhinged on political issues — often in the middle of whatever point he’s trying to make. That doesn’t bode well for his sanity. I think the guy’s heading for a breakdown.
@ Real Business
Oh geez…what kind of nonsensical drivel was that? For your sake I hope it was satirical.
@ Real Business World Information Technology,
Enough jingoistic flag waving already. Some of us don’t want to work in a battleship grey, rank and file cube culture. Some of us ‘think different’.
Choice is the name of the game. Same as it ever was. And if given a real choice, we choose quality solutions (Mac) every time.
If you choose another ‘solution’, fine, “go ahead on”. Hell ain’t half full, brother.
Oh yeah, and God bless America too!
And what is good for America is good for Microsoft.
Every time I boot up my Mac, plug in my iPod, or run aQuickTime video I thank Microsoft for saving Apple from total annihilation.
You know, I hear that deep in the bowels of Cupertino there is a shrine where a gilded replica of the “Glorious Microsoft Check” is worshipped and the methane from a thousand Apple toilets provide the fuel for the eternal flame that burns in constant memory of “Bill Gates, Savior of Apple”. Of course, only the High Priests of Apple are permitted access to the “Holy of Holies”. So says Eran, acolyte to the shrine.
Nothing surprising in the article, except the sheer depth of Microsoft incompetency.
um, From: Real Business World Information Technology,
I hate to burst your bubble but a lot of us in the real world, you know, them other bits outside the U.S., actualy want America to fall. Fsck your economy, let’s have some fun.
Apple, bring the noise.
“and the methane from a thousand Apple toilets provide the fuel for the eternal flame that burns in constant memory of “Bill Gates, Savior of Apple”.”
Now that was some funny stuff!
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It’s a damn poor atom blaster that can’t point both directions.
MicroSh_t wasn’t saving Apple with the (unreported) payoff, they were paying for theft of code. And if the way MS does business is a shining example of how business is and should be conducted, we are all heading down the drain. And, I’m still rolling on the floor from that MS =Productivity for America. If I were the head of a large corporation I’d fire the entire IT staff for being so “in bed” with MS and their gangster mentality.
Oh, BTW, RBWIT is a jerk.
“I hate to burst your bubble but a lot of us in the real world, you know, them other bits outside the U.S., actualy want America to fall. Fsck your economy, let’s have some fun.”
You are an idiot. You don’t think your country’s economy would suffer if America went down? You better hope you don’t get what you wish for or you might be digging in trash cans in your lovely native country.
I’m no American jingoist, but your statement was just freaking stoopid.
The problem with trouble shooting is, real trouble shoots back!
According the Eran the Errant, the Paranoid Purveyor of the Evils of the Microsoft Boogieman:
“In July of 1997, the ongoing rivalry between Apple and Microsoft appeared to vanish with the announcement a new cooperative partnership that included:
a cross licensing agreement
a five year deal for continued development of Office for the Mac platform
the designation of Internet Explorer as the default Mac web browser
a small but symbolic $150 million investment by Microsoft in Apple”
Note that according to Eran Microsoft’s plan to demolish Apple included a cooperative partnership and a $150 millions dollar infusion into Apple’s coffers.
and there’s more…
“Microsoft was certainly well aware of how much money it was making in each product category. It would be foolish for the company to cancel Mac Office, simply because it made too much money from it.”
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/592FE887-5CA1-4F30-BD62-407362B533B9.html
Really, Eran, do you really belief everything that you write? Actual email from Bill Gates tells a much different story. Let me refresh your selective memory by referencing another article posted by MDN.
“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.”
http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/bill_gates_confidential_email_mac_office_users_were_microsoft_guinea_pigs/
Microsoft’s own documents highlight the fact that Microsoft was not making gobs of money from Office, contrary to Eran’s psychotic imaginations.
If Eran, who claims knowledge and insight that only he knows and understands, is a bald-faced liar and manipulator, why believe anything that he writes? Well, Eran sycophants, what do you say now about your fabulous fabricator of fallacious feces foisted as facts?
Of course Eran’s Roughly Drafted is wrong, untrue and misleading.
He is a Mac user ! ! !
Honest people use Windows.
People with the intellectual honesty to accept that Windows is better,
has a lower cost of ownership, runs on less expensive hardware, and
delivers an overall better user experience — especially for office workers —
also have the intellectual honesty to speak the truth about the history of
Microsoft and its lesser rival Apple Inc.
Roughly Drafted advocates the use of Apple’s MAcintosh computers.
Who could expect to read truthful things from a site like Roughly Drafted?
Ean is a lier, or at least — like most Mac users — ignorant and wrong.
… and like most PC users doesn’t know how to use a spell checker, I suppose. Anyhow, I won’t take the bait, moron. It just proves that idiots exist in both Apple and Microsoft neighborhoods.
Assclowns,
It’s Daniel Eran. Ya know — like Billy Bob, or Pamela Sue, or Jo Beth.
–
Busting-TSOI,
Frequently you write some quite interesting comments.
But, I find it uncomfortable [read: like a wet fart] that you’ll dismiss ALL of Daniel’s revelations regarding MS based on your own political FEELINGS. He’s revealing the facts about MS, and you bitch about politics because you can’t control your HATRED for the ‘Left Wing Loonies’.
I’m asking you to stop that.
I won’t call anyone an assclown, too!
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Whose crazy now,
You state the following: “Microsoft’s own documents highlight the fact that Microsoft was not making gobs of money from Office, contrary to Eran’s psychotic imaginations.”
Had you bothered to read other articles on RDM, you’d have seen the real answer to your question. This is from an article taking Paul Thurrot to task:
“What he [Thurrott] fails to mention is that the real reason Microsoft’s Mac Office profits were down was because the last new version for the Mac had been delivered back in 1994!
For some context, Microsoft released five major versions of Office for the Mac between 1990 and 1994, then nothing for the next three years. Did the company forget? What happened in 1995?
Hmm, a difficult puzzle to be sure.
Revenues for 1994’s Office 4.2.1 for Mac were down in 1997 because Microsoft was selling an ancient, obsolete product.”
The full article is at http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/592E3270-32C8-4852-975C-162E788749CA.html
You could learn a lot be reading more RDM, but I’m sure you wouldn’t like what you learned.
THE MICROSOFT MANIACS ARE OUT IN FORCE ON THIS PAGE (and every single one where Daniel Eran is mentioned).
You guys are complete and utter nutters, you know that?
For heavens sakes get a life and stop attacking Daniel Eran as if he was the devil incarnate…
Is the troll above a child? Anyone who spells like this must be, or retarded.
“really, Eran, do you really >>belief<< everything that you write?”
“Ean is a >>lier<<, or at least — like most Mac users — ignorant and wrong.”
And to this poster below with the arrogant monicker, don’t be so ridiculously melodramatic. Read the posts on his blog and you can see he attracts intelligent readers who back up what he says. He has never been called out without being able to defen himself….
BustingTheSkullsOfIdiots
Mar 15, 07 – 12:13 pm
Actually, Freddy is correct. Eran is pompous, neurotic, and often-time truth-challenged. He’s been called to the mat many times for his distortions, and to top it off, he becomes absolutely unhinged on political issues — often in the middle of whatever point he’s trying to make. That doesn’t bode well for his sanity. I think the guy’s heading for a breakdown.
What kind of idiot writes . . .
being able to >> defen << himself….
must be a child AND a Mac user!
the PaidToPost™ trolls are out in force. Maybe they have to post with the word “Eran” in it to get paid.
Interesting conspiracy, the other RD article about the real reason behing the 1997 MS Office and cash infusion by Microsoft. Apple by that time had tremendous patent ownership, such as Quicktime multimedia, and was about unleash a billion dollar lawsuit against Microsoft over the issue. Microsoft was very concerned about the patent issues with their pirated code in WMV, so it bought some stock and possibly paid Apple more than $1B in cash, in addition to offering office for the next 5 years, in order to settle the issue.
Wow, incredible reporting.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/592FE887-5CA1-4F30-BD62-407362B533B9.html
…are likely on the Micro$oft payroll.
Yes. Microsoft is good and that poor guy William Henry Gates III is not evil.
His parents are poor people too like his papa William H. Gates, Sr… He practiced law until 1998, primarily with the law firm which he co-founded as Shidler & King in 1964, now known as Preston Gates & Ellis (PGE).
His mama is also a poor girl. Mary Maxwell Gates in the for-profit world, Gates served for many years on the boards of several major corporations, including: First Interstate Bank of Washington; Unigard Security Insurance Group; Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company, which became US WEST Communications; and KIRO Incorporated.
She was the first woman to chair the national United Way’s executive committee where she served most notably with IBM’s CEO, John Akers, and the first woman on the First Interstate Bank of Washington’s board of directors.
It is good when your father owns a lawyer firm and your mother owns a bank.
Our friend from Findland here proved my point.
Who could have better better educated in the art of the deal;
in the ways and strategies of the free-enterprise business world.
Bill Gates didn’t build Microsoft by accident; he was groomed from the day
he was born; he was raised to be the corporate captain of the world and
the biggest billionaire of America and the world.
What Bill Gates did to Apple, and all the other foolish companies managed
by the smart children of blue collar Americans from the greatest generation,
was no accident — or personality flaw — it was nothing but the well learned
lessons of successful business as developed, perfected and refined over
the past 100 years.
From the Mansion of Newport and the Guilded Age of the Robber Barons;
to Bill Gates and the American nobility in the White House and in Redmond.
Bill Gates is the embodiment of American business supremacy.
Hey child without a proper working Apple compatible grammar checker
and spell checker, this site is full of people who can’t stand a typo. OK?
So I will issue you a warning language offense ticket and ask you to
correct you above text. You know it’s not “Who could have better better
educated in the art of the deal;” you know you it should have been:
“Who could have been better educated in the art of the deal;” correct?
Otherwise, you are going staright to the language purgatory ! ! !
and heat up and warm your words for eternity, so I say.
@Language Cop who said …and ask you to correct you above text.
Seems you’re without a spell or grammar checker yourself, huh? Better write yourself a ticket there LC.
It’s okay, we get it. No one’s perfect, especially the cops.
Why do more Windows people than Mac people come here. Is it all happening?
Because Mac fans are insecure and spend 99% of their time bashing Microsoft to make themselves feel better. Us Windows users could give a shit less about Apple, Mac fans or iPods. But we do enjoy stirring the pot every now and then because it’s really funny to watch Mac idiots foam at the mouth and slobber all over themselves.
Why do all the links from the guy above not prove his points? (Who’s crazy)
Daniel Eran was making a point that isn’t covered explicitly in the evidence you are showing. If your point is that he doesn’t know what he is talking about, give evidence. What you gave doesn’t mean anything in light of his full article, just by close observation of what he is saying.
Another point: why are you here? You are welcome to comment, but I can’t figure out why you need to be here. MacDailyNews is for people who care about Mac related news, and like to comment on them. In short, Mac fans come here. You are not a Mac fan. Your comments aren’t convincing anyone. Try making your own website.