Microsoft had been writing the components of the Office Apps since 1985. Word and Excel were first developed on the Mac and PowerPoint was an original Mac App acquired by Microsoft.

At one point, Microsoft was making more money on each Mac sold than Apple. Microsoft wasn’t doing it for charity. If it were, why did it do it before the agreement and continue to support Mac today?

Apple got credit from banks before either the announcement or Steve Jobs return.

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pjmlp 3 hours ago | parent [-]

As someone living in a country, Portugal, where Apple had a single reseller, Interlog.

I could count with my hand fingers how many Macs I have seen being used between being born in the 70's and 2000's, up to 10.

My university graduation project was porting a visualisation framework from NeXTSTEP into Windows, because already there the university could not see a future with NeXT.

The fact that people believe Apple's cash injection, not only from Microsoft, that allowed for a survival plan, including an acquisition, has nothing to with Apple escaping bankruptcy is kind of interesting.

And yes Excel was initially developed for Mac, and once upon a time there was Visual Studio for Mac with MFC.

Still, it was Microsoft paying developers to build such products for a dying platform.

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raw_anon_1111 3 hours ago | parent [-]

At no point was Microsoft spending more on Office for Mac than they were making on selling the Mac version.

It cost some. But famously Microsoft used byte code for Office that was portable and was dog slow around Office 5.

And it’s not my “believing”, it’s math. Apple lost far more than the net $150 million before it became popular.

This isn’t my reading the history books. My first computer was an Apple //e in 1986 and by 1993, I was following what was going on with Apple real time via Usenet and TidBits (been around since 1990) and I lied to get a free subscription to MacWeek.

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pjmlp 35 minutes ago | parent [-]

The fact is Microsoft did spent R&D money to support Apple customers, with a product without which, Apple would even be less relevant in the late 90's.

	▲	raw_anon_1111 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		They didn’t do it out of charity. They did it for profit. Microsoft was on the stage when the Mac was introduced in 1984. I don’t think they were ever seriously considering stopping Mac development. They ported office to PPC Macs in 1995 before the joint announcement 2 years later.