[MaintenanceMode]

This was a funny era. A few years later (early 2000s), I somehow got sent to the Microsoft developer conference because I was the closest, geographically. There were so many sessions focused on open source and inter working with Linux. It was shocking that Microsoft had so quickly embraced this world.

Then in the closing keynote, Gates spoke passionately about how Microsoft would eradicate Linux and crush open source. It was hilarious how out of touch the left hand was from the right hand.

I also made a bit of a splash because I came to the conference with a MacBook. A journalist even wanted to interview me because it was so unusual. I declined.

The best part of the conference was the passes to company store, buying a lot of shwag for dirt cheap and a bunch of OS licenses, which they practically gave away in the store (to run in Parallels of course) lol.

[teddyh]

> It was shocking that Microsoft had so quickly embraced this world.

Well, “Embrace” is the first step.

[deafpolygon]

They're working on Extend.

[pavlov]

> "I came to the conference with a MacBook"

Nitpicking, but it would have been either a PowerBook or an iBook if this was early 2000s. MacBooks were introduced in 2006.

[cbozeman]

I don't remember the exact model of PalmPilot I owned, but I owned one way back when...

[bratsche]

> I also made a bit of a splash because I came to the conference with a MacBook

That reminds me of going to a .NET meetup kind of thing at the Microsoft office in Dallas once many years ago, and I came in my Mono t-shirt and my Thinkpad with GNOME and Mono stickers on it. Joseph Hill spots me and comes over to introduce himself. His first words were, "You look like a man on a mission!" :)

Joseph was so cool. There was some guy at Microsoft who was hosting the event, and he was kind of a dick. He kept trying to make jokes about Mono, but most of the people at the event didn't have any idea what Mono was so the only people who knew what he was talking about were me and Joseph.

[dagw]

I came to the conference with a MacBook

I remember being a at MS/.Net event a couple of years after Apple released Bootcamp, and Macs was the single most popular brand of laptop I saw at that event.