Bumps in the Road
Before the bundling of Office, however, Microsoft hit a major pothole with Word 3.0, which, upon its release in 1987, was notoriously buggy. After a few months, however, Microsoft mailed bug-squashing version 3.0.1 to all users who had registered Word 3.0.
Word, 5.0 was released in 1991, and its next iteration, 5.1, is still remembered fondly by many long-term Mac fans as the nimblest, most stable Mac version - especially when compared with the wretched Word 6.0 of 1993, for which Microsoft apologized to reviewers and journalists the following year.
Word 6.0 was not only a turgidly performing bug-fest, but also - even worse for Mac partisans during those Microsoft-bashing days - it was built from the Word for Windows code base, and carried with it telltale traces of that lineage.
Mac boosters viscerally rebelled from Word 6.0's Windows smell - and the stench they raised was thick, indeed. Long-time Mac watchers will remember that although Mac and PC fanbois continue to snipe at one another seemingly every chance they get, the Apple vs. Microsoft wars of today are tame compared with what they were like in the days of Word 6.0.
Much of the animosity that led to the entrenched position of the Apple side was the belief - bolstered by a lawsuit filed in March 1988 by Apple - that Microsoft had stolen the windows-based graphical user interface (GUI) concept from Apple. The intricacies of the arguments for and against Apple's position, and the legal wranglings of the case are topics for a different article, but suffice it to say that bad blood has boiled between Mac and PC devotees for many a year.
And during all those years Microsoft has continued to release productivity software for the Mac. And Mac users have continued to buy it.
In 1991, Microsoft released Office 1.5 for Mac, notable for Excel 3.0, which played nicely with Apple's new - and highly improved - System 7 operating system. Office 2.0 came along in 1992, with 4.0 appearing in 1993. (And, no, we're not forgetting Office 3.0 for Mac - there never was one.)
In 1997, Microsoft formed the still-extant Macintosh Business Unit, or MacBU, a small (today containing 200 "full-time Mac product experts," according to Microsoft) but Mac-loyal group that took over Microsoft's Mac-oriented software development and marketing.
Next page: The Giant Head-o-Gates
COMMENTS
robgart
And maybe, just maybe - should Google's dreams come true - some day a 20-foot head of Steve Jobs will appear at a Steve Ballmer keynote, promising that Apple will continue to support Microsoft.
two words. dream on
And then, of course, there was MS Works...
The office suite that (at the time we used it, at least) couldn't open anything created by any other MS program nor create docs in any format that THEY could open!
The Product Designed With Ghettoization In Mind! ®
first ever spreadsheet ..
The story is that Dan Bricklin was preparing a spread sheet analysis .. By the fall of 1978, Bricklin had programmed the first working prototype .. Before he cofounded Lotus, Kapor disclosed and offered Personal Software (VisiCorp) his initial Lotus program ..
http://dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html
Nice article...
Though calling Word a _productivity_ app is quite strange. Why not Twitter and Facebook, while you're at it?
off-topic - "Cupertino-based"?
Just something I've wondered for a while. Why does every single story involving Apple, mention the location of their head-offices?
Is there something magical about Cupertino, that I'm not getting? (what with living in the UK, and all)
They might own the place for all I know - I've never seen "Cupertino-based" in a story that didn't involve Apple.
You certainly don't see "London-based" on every story about the BBC though, or "Manchester-based-bint" on every story about Gemma Atkinson.
