> I called up Bill and said, “I’m going to turn this thing around.” Bill always had a soft spot for Apple. We got him into the application software business. The first Microsoft apps were Excel and Word for the Mac. So I called him and said, “I need help.” Microsoft was walking over Apple’s patents. I said, “If we kept up our lawsuits, a few years from now we could win a billion-dollar patent suit. You know it, and I know it. But Apple’s not going to survive that long if we’re at war. I know that. So let’s figure out how to settle this right away. All I need is a commitment that Microsoft will keep developing for the Mac and an investment by Microsoft in Apple so it has a stake in our success."
Microsoft got into applications before DOS existed. Microsoft applications like Multiplan were available for a variety of platforms, running CP/M and a variety of other operating systems. You could get Multiplan for systems as small as the TI-99/4 and as large as Xenix!
> Microsoft got into applications before DOS existed.
Not actually true. DOS was already done when Microsoft hired Charles Simonyi from Xerox Parc to start its application division in 1981.
Multiplan and Word were the first results, released in 1983, by which time it was obvious that Lotus 1-2-3 was going to win.
Simonyi had big ideas about "metaprogramming" and using what was basically a VM to make applications portable. (I ran Multiplan on a Tandy 100-style portable, where the program came on a chip!)
In an interview, Simonyi said:
QUOTE
"Multiplan was done on a byte-coded interpreting system, much like Java. It was probably the most ported system ever deployed. We thought that the market would be fractured for a long time and that we would be on all of those machines -- which we were.
"Interestingly enough, MS-DOS changed that and created a unified market. And, of course, Lotus 1-2-3 made their bet on creating a single, optimized, direct implementation for MS-DOS, and they cleaned up. We learned a lot from that failure. And then of course, when the next shift came to GUIs [graphical user interfaces], we cleaned their clock with Excel."
Supposedly, Microsoft Office used a bytecode language for a long time afterward, at least into the 1990s. Old time Mac users probably remember MS Office 4.2, which was an identical clone of the Windows version and ran like molasses.
"The first Microsoft apps for the Mac were Excel and Word" would, of course, be correct.
Microsoft was the Mac's biggest supporter, and Bill Gates appeared on stage at the Mac launch. For which he has been richly rewarded with decades of Apple fanboy bile ;-)
Microsoft provided emergency funding. It's quite possible that they could have raised the money some other way, though. However, wherever the money came from, Apple would have been doomed had they kept on their original path, so it doesn't seem that unreasonable to claim that the NeXT purchase saved them.
Microsoft gave a similar infusion of cash to Corel at around the same time. Through very adept dealing they managed to leverage that investment, essentially forcing the board to accept a buyout from Vector (a VC company partly owned by Paul Allen). MS took a huge loss on the deal ($125 million spent, sold their shares to Vector for $13 million), but Vector made an absolute killing.
I have no doubt in my mind that this was the plan for Apple as well. Whoever managed that deal on the Apple side must have been on their toes. Of course, the investment paid off handsomely for MS, but I'm quite sure that this wasn't their intent.
So while I think it is true that Apple required the cash infusion they got, they managed the situation masterfully. Whether or not they could have secured funding some other way, we'll never know because they took MS's money.
I enjoy watching the later videos on YouTube where Steve has a Bill Gates video and announces that Internet Explorer will be the default browser on MacOS.
The disbelief in the room is stunning, including the shouts of "NO!!!!!!". Very amusing today, perhaps not then.
Er... interesting revisionism, here. That acquisition didn't do much to save Apple from the financial hole it had dug for itself.
Bill Gates is really what saved Apple back then.