Time for a Microsloth bash..their version of "Switch" was a fraud.

[beagledave]

*Originally posted by bernse *
**

When was that? I remember MS investing $150 Million in 97-98 and Apple was most certainly in rough shape. They definetly didn’t have “several billion” in the “bank” then. When was this 1/2 billion investment? I couldn’t find anything when I googled other than the original $150 mil infusion. By what I remember, when they did the $150mil, it was indeed a blessing. **

The amount that M$ invested was $150 million, not $500 million.

Apple DID have over a billion in the bank…

If every story printed about Apple were true, the company would represent the most successful business failure ever (at the time of this writing, the company has more than $1 billion in cash).

and

The official end of the Apple-Microsoft feud will have direct and indirect effects. One is that the licensing payments from Microsoft will improve Apple’s financials. This has received far less attention than the $150 million investment by Microsoft in its former arch-rival. Many press reports have referred to Microsoft’s investment as a “bail out,” which indicates a lack of understanding of Apple’s circumstances, its balance sheet, and its product strategy.
Apple doesn’t need the $150 million as much as it need positive press. Microsoft’s investment has helped to significantly raise the value of Apple’s stock. In my view, this is because the public perception of Apple Computer’s financial standing increased dramatically when the deal was announced. Ironically, because of the increase in Apple’s share price, Microsoft’s investment in Apple has also increased significantly in value.

The investment was not a direct cash bailout of a cash poor company…but was a significant vote of confidence, and set up future business opportunities.

[bernse]

A billion or so is still a far cry from “several billion”. I don’t know what their balance sheet was like so I can only guess as to what the true condition of the company was at the time.

I do recall the press calling it a “bail out”… hence my memory of the event. However, I am aware the press like to exaggerate from time to time.

[beagledave]

More specifics about Apples financials at the time are at the Motley Fools site.

[Kirkland1244]

I would have sworn they had like $3.0 billion after Dr. Amelio’s big push to raise their cash stockpiles (the one really good thing he did). The point is that Apple was in no risk of going under, despite the bullshit that was being thrown around in the press.

Apple could have kept losing money like it was for years and years and still been around. Of course, they would have become more and more irrelevant, which would have been a bad thing. Fortunately that never happened.

The point is that Apple didn’t desperately need Microsoft’s money. What it needed was the other component of Microsoft’s big announcement in Summer '97… Office 98 for Mac.

Kirk

[Morbo]

Good gravy. First of all, I would like to offer an apology to Beagledave for jumping his shit. I’ve been here for ten years, which is probably too long. I shouldn’t take these things personally, but I still overreact from time to time. I’m going to ordain a self-imposed moratorium on involving myself in MS threads from now on.

I think we have changed dramatically from the company I joined in 1992, as a lowly dev working on Mac PowerPoint 3.0. A great deal of the practices we have engaged in over the years have disgusted me, and this latest gem from Marketing is no exception. We used to have no Marketing dept at all. Now I walk down Market Street and dudes dressed up as purple butterflies roller skate by me towing an MSN banner blaring a crappy Madonna song that we paid several million dollars for, and I just scratch my head.

Giraffe, you couldn’t be more right about Equation Editor. Unfortunately we (the Mac folks) don’t have the resources to rev it. The WinOffice folks don’t see the the financial reward in doing it, I suppose. I think it sucks.

AHunter3, I know you’re a FileMaker guy, so I understand that you don’t understand PPT. I submit it has more of a purpose than you seem to realize, (did you know you could save your animated SlideShow as an interactive QuickTime mov file?), but different strokes. Outlook and Access don’t exist on the Mac, so I’m not sure why you’re ragging on them - have you messed around with Entourage at all? Erage X is ten times better than anything Outlook has done. And FileMaker is so superior that we don’t even bother creating our own Access client for the Mac, not that we have the resources to do it anyway.

As for the MS investment in Apple - it was for 5 years, $150 million. It was much, much more than a good faith gesture. I cannot speak at length about it, but suffice it to say we were making MacOffice98 anyway, but we were not getting the help we needed from Apple’s devs until this happened. (Apple’s devs were not the problem - they were happy to help, but prevented from doing so. We have a good relationship…on the dev level). That was its main goal - the good will that the public saw was certainly an added benefit, but not the main one. And to imply we made “quite a bit of money” off of it is rather ludicrous, since we could have easily made quite a bit more investing it elsewhere, and since it ended earlier this year, well after the tech boom was over.

Thank you to all who voiced their appreciation to our Mac team. We don’t get much recognition internally, so it’s nice to know our efforts are appreciated. See you all in other threads.

[beagledave]

Thanks Dooku. My “asshole” comments didn’t help either, and wasn’t one of my highpoints.

Thanks for the “inside” scoop on the Mac division efforts also.

[AHunter3]

We used to have no Marketing dept at all. Now I walk down Market Street and dudes dressed up as purple butterflies roller skate by me towing an MSN banner blaring a crappy Madonna song that we paid several million dollars for, and I just scratch my head.

On behalf of the advertising industry, my apologies. At least you don’t have the Pepsi girl singing Britney Spears songs.

Some day I will check out PowerPoint for real. I just like to rag on it 'cuz most of the people who use it use it to make those silly bullet-point placemats. You know:

[ul]
[li]Service[/li][li]Commitment to Excellence[/li][li]Listening Skills[/li][li]Four Legs Good[/li][li]Two Legs Bad[/li][li]Teamwork[/li][/ul]

Sorry, vBulletin won’t let me add the pinstripe border rectangles with the escutcheons in the corners.