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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

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.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        Revenue is not “funding”??? Where do you think business gets money from on an ongoing basis to survive? One reason that for example that Pepsi was spun off from Yum brands was that Pepsi executives had a hard time selling into large franchises because companies didn’t want to send money to competitors. > Apple’s hardware market share is huge when considering the wealth of customers. “Words mean things” - “market share” has a definition. > Apple makes most of its money by forbidding sharing access to its customers for software these days Are you just making stuff up now? It’s really not hard to look at Apple’s financials to see that “most” of Apple’s revenue comes from hardware sells and not services - where App Store revenue is included.
    - oblio 3y ago
      Plus "profitable" is a scale. At huge companies even a huge amount such as $100m [1] might not "move the needle", as they put it, therefore making them decide to not do something. [1] Or for modern day companies and inflation, even $1bn.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        That’s not how enterprise sales work. If you have a company that has 95 PCs and 5 Macs, it helps a lot to say “we are the one neck to choke across your entire enterprise”. It’s helping you sale 100 licenses. Could any company today that cared about big enterprise go in today without having a Mac solution? The Mac is still a small share of the enterprise market.
        jncfhnb 3y ago
        That’s backwards. If you need software that is only available on windows, that’s how you end up with 100 PCs and 0 Macs.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        Back then more than now, there was always that one department of “creatives” that insisted on Macs.
  - 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.

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.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        Revenue is not “funding”??? Where do you think business gets money from on an ongoing basis to survive? One reason that for example that Pepsi was spun off from Yum brands was that Pepsi executives had a hard time selling into large franchises because companies didn’t want to send money to competitors. > Apple’s hardware market share is huge when considering the wealth of customers. “Words mean things” - “market share” has a definition. > Apple makes most of its money by forbidding sharing access to its customers for software these days Are you just making stuff up now? It’s really not hard to look at Apple’s financials to see that “most” of Apple’s revenue comes from hardware sells and not services - where App Store revenue is included.
  - oblio 3y ago
    Plus "profitable" is a scale. At huge companies even a huge amount such as $100m [1] might not "move the needle", as they put it, therefore making them decide to not do something. [1] Or for modern day companies and inflation, even $1bn.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      That’s not how enterprise sales work. If you have a company that has 95 PCs and 5 Macs, it helps a lot to say “we are the one neck to choke across your entire enterprise”. It’s helping you sale 100 licenses. Could any company today that cared about big enterprise go in today without having a Mac solution? The Mac is still a small share of the enterprise market.
      - jncfhnb 3y ago
        That’s backwards. If you need software that is only available on windows, that’s how you end up with 100 PCs and 0 Macs.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        Back then more than now, there was always that one department of “creatives” that insisted on Macs.
- 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.