[bane]

Before anybody thinks this is weird, or unusual. Microsoft has quite often been more pragmatic about the platform offerings for their office suite than elsewhere. After all, Office exists and has existed on Apple products for a very long time. It's more unusual that it hasn't been on the iProducts than anything.

[thematt]

I may be remembering wrong, but isn't the fact that Office existed on the Mac for so long also a result of the deal that Microsoft and Apple struck back in the 90's? Microsoft would keep making Office for the Mac and in exchange Apple would drop it's patent suit against them.

[cstross]

The 90s deal, per Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/03/01/steve-job...

"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." -- Steve Jobs.

Reading between the lines, a less polite version is that Jobs went to Bill Gates and said, "I need a lifeline. Apple is circling the drain. You are going to throw me that lifeline. We are going to do a deal whereby I drop our patent suits against you, and in return you invest in Apple and support us with Office, and say we're best buddies in public. Or else I wind up Apple as a computer company and spend the remaining billion dollars in our accounts on turning Apple into the biggest, baddest patent troll ever. And I will go kamikaze on your ass, and there will be blood and screaming and absolutely no mercy, because I offered you this deal and you turned it down and I remember my enemies forever. Oh and by the way, the DOJ anti-trust folks will be watching. Deal or no deal?"

(This is quite distinct from the 1983/84 Jobs/Gates deal whereby Steve gave Bill an exclusive to be the first office app vendor on the Mac -- as described in "Fire in the Valley" and elsewhere -- which is how Word for Mac got started.)

[mwfunk]

No, Word and Excel started out on the Mac and came to Windows later. I think what you're referring to is, there was a deal in the '90s where Microsoft helped out Apple, which included investment and maintaining an Internet Explorer Mac port (this was a much bigger deal back then). This gave the company some breathing room. At the time Apple was circling the drain and everyone assumed that they would be out of business in a matter of years if not months. This was the same era as Microsoft's antitrust suits, so what Microsoft got out of it was a (very weak at the time) competitor that they could continue pointing to as evidence that they weren't a monopoly.

[bane]

According to WP, it started as a Xenix application, made its way over to DOS (to compete with WordPerfect or WordStar IIR), then Mac, then a few other platforms before finally ending up on Windows in 89.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_word

[bane]

No, it's even older. Word 1.0 for Mac was released in '84 or '85 I think.

[coldcode]

Word and Excel started on the Mac as Steve asked Bill to provide them for MacOS in 1984 or so. Windows was not a viable platform until at least 1989 but by 1992 Office was complete and on its way to domination.

[RyJones]

I think you're confusing the $150 million dollar 'loan', the settlement of the lawsuits, and Office, which is reasonable confusion based on how unclear the whole thing was.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-202143.html

[indrax]

The relationship between MS and apple is complicated, but old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applesoft_BASIC