Fair counter-point, but that's a pretty different situation. I should have said "MS has no reason to make Apple's laptop hardware more attractive." In 2014 wh

Fair counter-point, but that's a pretty different situation. I should have said "MS has no reason to make Apple's laptop hardware more attractive." In 2014 when Office was released for iPad, the Surface had negligible market share. Microsoft was losing badly in the tablet space, so they were trying to catch up any way they could. At the time it would have been reasonable to plan for a future where Microsoft completely lost to Apple in the tablet hardware space, so they needed to protect Office (critical line of business) from becoming irrelevant in what was clearly emerging as an important hardware category. Yes even then they weren't so arrogant as to try to protect the fledgling Surface business by withholding Office from iPad - a move they certainly had used in the past. But today's laptop market is very different. Apple and Microsoft are still very much competing for dominance in laptops, which is an important source of revenue for both companies. It's a familiar pattern where Apple sells fewer units than many others, but at much higher profit margins. MS gets their tax from all these PC sales at high margin, but it's a small amount compared to Apple's huge hardware margins - and that's the key point why it's a bad idea. A consumer who buys a mac to run windows gives WAY more money to Apple than Microsoft. The secondary point is that every Mac sold erodes the waning dominance of Windows, bleeding out Microsoft's cash cow. Nadella wants (NEEDS!) you to believe Microsoft is kinder & gentler because he knows the days of Windows' hegemony are behind us and there's no stopping its slow fade to irrelevance. That doesn't mean they want to it to happen. Directing consumer's money into Apple's coffers unquestionably accelerates Microsoft's problems.