7 ms·

Oh yeah I remember when Microsoft lost its antitrust trial and we all only use Internet Explorer and Windows now RIP in peace Apple and Linux

meragrin_ 3y ago
What does the antitrust trial have to do with Apple and Linux? It did nothing to help either of them in any sort of way. Apple wasn't trying to sell anything on the PC or Windows platform. Apple was developing their own hardware and software. Linux never really competed in the same markets as Microsoft either.
- oblio 3y ago
  Microsoft literally invested in Apple at their darkest hour, when they were close to bankruptcy. Microsoft also kept the main pro software suite running on Apple's garbage OS and then ported it to Mac OS X, just to try to stave off the antitrust proceedings, further helping Apple claw its way back. Microsoft and Adobe basically saved Mac OS and Apple, allowing Apple to bounce back a few years later.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    This also shows a severe lack of understanding of history. Microsoft invested a whopping $250 million in Apple. Apple already had secured a $4 billion line of credit and didn’t become profitable until losing billions more. The $250 wouldn’t have saved Apple. Also, Apple turned around the next quarter and bought PowerComputings Mac assets for $100 million. And Office was not charity project for MS, it made a hefty profit. Also it was much easier to convince corporate buyers to buy Office if they could use on Office Suite across their entire organization - even for those hippie Mac users in the corner
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      250 out 4000 is non trivial. Office for mac may have been profitable, but it may have been more profitable to not allow Mac to have it.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        It was $150 after Apple bought PowerComputing’s Mac assets. And how is it not trivial? Can you show me a timeline that Apple would have been bankrupt without the extra $250 million? Also do you realize how much more MS made on an Office license than a Windows license?
        jncfhnb 3y ago
        I’m not saying Apple would have gone bankrupt without Microsoft. I am saying 6% of your funding coming from a competitor is very unusual. Doesn’t need to be a proximate cause for bankruptcy avoidance to be non trivial. If windows had not allowed office on Apple computers then Apple computers would have been less successful. Market share on hardware matters more than profits on software.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        Guess where Firefox gets most of its revenue? But more relevant, while not 6% of its revenue over 2% of Apple’s revenue today comes from the search deal it has with Google. And yes market share on hardware is important, look how badly Apple is doing now with only 13% of the global market share in smart phones…
        jncfhnb 3y ago
        Revenue is not funding. Google’s influence over Firefox is an issue of immense contention. Apple’s relationship with Google is considered by many to be anticompetitive collusion. Apple’s hardware market share is huge when considering the wealth of customers. Apple makes most of its money by forbidding sharing access to its customers for software these days.
    - oblio 3y ago
      > Microsoft invested a whopping $250 million in Apple. Apple already had secured a $4 billion line of credit and didn’t become profitable until losing billions more. The $250 wouldn’t have saved Apple. It was still a signal. Signals matter, especially when a company is in distress. > And Office was not charity project for MS, it made a hefty profit. Also it was much easier to convince corporate buyers to buy Office if they could use on Office Suite across their entire organization - even for those hippie Mac users in the corner. I didn't say it was a charity project and your interpretation is far too lenient for Apple. First of all, Microsoft definitely did NOT have any problems selling Microsoft Office after at least 1995. Secondly, that "hefty profit" was peanuts for Microsoft. It wasn't a "move the needle" type of investment for them. They did both those things purely because the DoJ made Gates sweat.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        So now it’s a “signal” since you see how utterly insane the idea that a net $150 million saved Apple? You also don’t seem to remember that it was also to settle the Quicktime lawsuit where Microsoft actually used Apple’s copyrighted code. This was separate from the dumb look and feel lawsuit.
      - Anechoic 3y ago
        They did both those things purely because the DoJ made Gates sweat. They did both those things to settle a lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - froh 3y ago
    and Microsoft heavily invested into Novell, who then stopped any SUSE Linux Desktop efforts, the Gnome team was US based and ummm left the company (and started Xamarin), the KDE folks were reassigned other tasks, and the SAMBA team essentially also left Novell. purely coincidental, for sure. most interestingly after Satya Nadella took over from Lord Balmer. they started investing into FOSS and Linux, they absorbed github, Xamarin (FOSS .Net), created WSL/WSL2 which now pretty much works, because for heaven's sake, the munny is in managing the cloud and in providing the workplace desktop productivity suite, not the base OS or infrastructure software... anyhow. Novell, Balmer and Microsoft was quite a ride.
scarface_74 3y ago
That had nothing to do with the antitrust trial.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  It did to some degree. MS wanted to be able to heavily restrict things like shipping third party browsers with Windows. If they had been able to monopolize the web to just IE compatibility, what impact might that have had? Could Chrome and Webkit have taken off? Well, maybe, but I can at least see a good case that things could have been much different.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    There was never a time in the US where IE wasn’t bundled with Windows after the anti-trust trial. Chrome took over because it was heavily advertised on what was already the most heavily trafficked site and it was bundled with other downloads. WebKit “took off” because Apple by then had the resources to port over another open source project and it came with iPhones. It’s still a relatively non contender on the desktop.
    - r00fus 3y ago
      If they had carte-blanche they could have simply modified Defender anti-virus to see key components of Firefox (and later Chrome) as malware. They have done this kind of thing before: https://www.justice.gov/atr/memorandum-opinion-us-v-microsoft-corp#:~:text=The%20consent%20decree%20limits%20certain,any%20of%20Microsoft%27s%20applications%20software https://www.justice.gov/atr/memorandum-opinion-us-v-microsof....
- r00fus 3y ago
  A fully unrestrained Microsoft would have kneecapped Apple in so many ways late 90s/early 2000s. Apple would have struggled to be able to focus on the iPod and other products. Firefox/Chrome are yet another clear example where Microsoft could have completely unraveled anything they did by making it unworkable on the dominant OS Windows.

meragrin_ 3y ago

What does the antitrust trial have to do with Apple and Linux? It did nothing to help either of them in any sort of way. Apple wasn't trying to sell anything on the PC or Windows platform. Apple was developing their own hardware and software. Linux never really competed in the same markets as Microsoft either.

oblio 3y ago
Microsoft literally invested in Apple at their darkest hour, when they were close to bankruptcy. Microsoft also kept the main pro software suite running on Apple's garbage OS and then ported it to Mac OS X, just to try to stave off the antitrust proceedings, further helping Apple claw its way back. Microsoft and Adobe basically saved Mac OS and Apple, allowing Apple to bounce back a few years later.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  This also shows a severe lack of understanding of history. Microsoft invested a whopping $250 million in Apple. Apple already had secured a $4 billion line of credit and didn’t become profitable until losing billions more. The $250 wouldn’t have saved Apple. Also, Apple turned around the next quarter and bought PowerComputings Mac assets for $100 million. And Office was not charity project for MS, it made a hefty profit. Also it was much easier to convince corporate buyers to buy Office if they could use on Office Suite across their entire organization - even for those hippie Mac users in the corner
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    250 out 4000 is non trivial. Office for mac may have been profitable, but it may have been more profitable to not allow Mac to have it.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      It was $150 after Apple bought PowerComputing’s Mac assets. And how is it not trivial? Can you show me a timeline that Apple would have been bankrupt without the extra $250 million? Also do you realize how much more MS made on an Office license than a Windows license?
      - jncfhnb 3y ago
        I’m not saying Apple would have gone bankrupt without Microsoft. I am saying 6% of your funding coming from a competitor is very unusual. Doesn’t need to be a proximate cause for bankruptcy avoidance to be non trivial. If windows had not allowed office on Apple computers then Apple computers would have been less successful. Market share on hardware matters more than profits on software.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        Guess where Firefox gets most of its revenue? But more relevant, while not 6% of its revenue over 2% of Apple’s revenue today comes from the search deal it has with Google. And yes market share on hardware is important, look how badly Apple is doing now with only 13% of the global market share in smart phones…
        jncfhnb 3y ago
        Revenue is not funding. Google’s influence over Firefox is an issue of immense contention. Apple’s relationship with Google is considered by many to be anticompetitive collusion. Apple’s hardware market share is huge when considering the wealth of customers. Apple makes most of its money by forbidding sharing access to its customers for software these days.
  - oblio 3y ago
    > Microsoft invested a whopping $250 million in Apple. Apple already had secured a $4 billion line of credit and didn’t become profitable until losing billions more. The $250 wouldn’t have saved Apple. It was still a signal. Signals matter, especially when a company is in distress. > And Office was not charity project for MS, it made a hefty profit. Also it was much easier to convince corporate buyers to buy Office if they could use on Office Suite across their entire organization - even for those hippie Mac users in the corner. I didn't say it was a charity project and your interpretation is far too lenient for Apple. First of all, Microsoft definitely did NOT have any problems selling Microsoft Office after at least 1995. Secondly, that "hefty profit" was peanuts for Microsoft. It wasn't a "move the needle" type of investment for them. They did both those things purely because the DoJ made Gates sweat.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      So now it’s a “signal” since you see how utterly insane the idea that a net $150 million saved Apple? You also don’t seem to remember that it was also to settle the Quicktime lawsuit where Microsoft actually used Apple’s copyrighted code. This was separate from the dumb look and feel lawsuit.
    - Anechoic 3y ago
      They did both those things purely because the DoJ made Gates sweat. They did both those things to settle a lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- froh 3y ago
  and Microsoft heavily invested into Novell, who then stopped any SUSE Linux Desktop efforts, the Gnome team was US based and ummm left the company (and started Xamarin), the KDE folks were reassigned other tasks, and the SAMBA team essentially also left Novell. purely coincidental, for sure. most interestingly after Satya Nadella took over from Lord Balmer. they started investing into FOSS and Linux, they absorbed github, Xamarin (FOSS .Net), created WSL/WSL2 which now pretty much works, because for heaven's sake, the munny is in managing the cloud and in providing the workplace desktop productivity suite, not the base OS or infrastructure software... anyhow. Novell, Balmer and Microsoft was quite a ride.

scarface_74 3y ago

That had nothing to do with the antitrust trial.

_ea1k 3y ago
It did to some degree. MS wanted to be able to heavily restrict things like shipping third party browsers with Windows. If they had been able to monopolize the web to just IE compatibility, what impact might that have had? Could Chrome and Webkit have taken off? Well, maybe, but I can at least see a good case that things could have been much different.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  There was never a time in the US where IE wasn’t bundled with Windows after the anti-trust trial. Chrome took over because it was heavily advertised on what was already the most heavily trafficked site and it was bundled with other downloads. WebKit “took off” because Apple by then had the resources to port over another open source project and it came with iPhones. It’s still a relatively non contender on the desktop.
  - r00fus 3y ago
    If they had carte-blanche they could have simply modified Defender anti-virus to see key components of Firefox (and later Chrome) as malware. They have done this kind of thing before: https://www.justice.gov/atr/memorandum-opinion-us-v-microsoft-corp#:~:text=The%20consent%20decree%20limits%20certain,any%20of%20Microsoft%27s%20applications%20software https://www.justice.gov/atr/memorandum-opinion-us-v-microsof....
r00fus 3y ago
A fully unrestrained Microsoft would have kneecapped Apple in so many ways late 90s/early 2000s. Apple would have struggled to be able to focus on the iPod and other products. Firefox/Chrome are yet another clear example where Microsoft could have completely unraveled anything they did by making it unworkable on the dominant OS Windows.