When i saw a few months ago that Apple was planning to ditch the OSX in favour of Windows I had to laugh. I had to laugh for several reasons most notable that the situation was very much the reverse of this in the real world.
Now I cannot really give any details on this other than to say "trust me"....which i know in cyber space is well an impossible thing to ask...
I had arranged via our IS supplier to give us a Vista demo and i talk about this in a pervious thread....It was cringe worthy...
About two weeks ago my close friend who works for MS over in the US ( we met at uni in the UK ) gave me some very interesting information. He had handed his notice in and was sending me one of his usual sounding-off on-a-friday-emails. I cant be too specific as i would hate for anything to be traced back for him.
Apparently when the deal was struck with MS to continue to supply the office package for an additional 5 years to Apple there was a contra part to the deal. MS has known now for the past 18 months that Vista is in serious trouble. Ignore the fact it is being pushed back because this is more about finally dev checks and the fact MS now use 3rd parties to check for errors in coding etc...... It will if my source's is right be pushed back again to May.
When the Mac unit, which is well known in MS as being one of the better focused units, was preparing for the office dev kits to replace the current 04 release they ended up with a series of emails from top brass, these were backed up with some observers from the a god like payscales.
It appears that communication was passed from MS to Apple talking about the licence of platform related OSX specifics. In short as a contingency plan MS wanted to licence from Apple a version of OSX which they would support with the writing of drivers, and develop with a modified gui for which they would give further support to the office This was to be run as a shadow operation in a similar way that OSX development for the Intel platform was maintained after the purchase of the current base systems from Next. The OSX licence would offer Apple significant shares as part of a special reissue, MS as well would grant access to some of MS other propriety technological units and sign a mutual understanding statement between Apple and MS. Now the deal was set MS could get their hands on OSX, translate it for for general PC architecture ( at the time no one knew about how far ahead Apple were with the Intel based Apple machines )
This was setup purely as a viable business option but apparently Apple was very open to this. MS had watched the whole Copland saga and big Bill had grown increasingly concerned about the need to cut losses. Vista is reported to have now cost 16 Billion in total development and setup costs since its inception.
People over at MS have been leaving the firm hand over fist as the MS ship dates seems to continue to falter...Vista is going to be a car with square wheels to sell- who wants it?. Lenova (IBM's old hardware wing) and Acer for example has signed a supply deal to continue licencing XP well into 2008. Vista is bloated and without the key setup to allow for further effective development.
Incidentially my friend has given his notice after working at MS for 4 years and has a job working for Sun lined up. Really this could be a real fantastic time for Apple....this coming Xmas period could see a massive ramp up in users switching, add into this mix a new version of OSX leopard possibly and i think the first wave of change will begin.
Now I cannot really give any details on this other than to say "trust me"....which i know in cyber space is well an impossible thing to ask...
I had arranged via our IS supplier to give us a Vista demo and i talk about this in a pervious thread....It was cringe worthy...
About two weeks ago my close friend who works for MS over in the US ( we met at uni in the UK ) gave me some very interesting information. He had handed his notice in and was sending me one of his usual sounding-off on-a-friday-emails. I cant be too specific as i would hate for anything to be traced back for him.
Apparently when the deal was struck with MS to continue to supply the office package for an additional 5 years to Apple there was a contra part to the deal. MS has known now for the past 18 months that Vista is in serious trouble. Ignore the fact it is being pushed back because this is more about finally dev checks and the fact MS now use 3rd parties to check for errors in coding etc...... It will if my source's is right be pushed back again to May.
When the Mac unit, which is well known in MS as being one of the better focused units, was preparing for the office dev kits to replace the current 04 release they ended up with a series of emails from top brass, these were backed up with some observers from the a god like payscales.
It appears that communication was passed from MS to Apple talking about the licence of platform related OSX specifics. In short as a contingency plan MS wanted to licence from Apple a version of OSX which they would support with the writing of drivers, and develop with a modified gui for which they would give further support to the office This was to be run as a shadow operation in a similar way that OSX development for the Intel platform was maintained after the purchase of the current base systems from Next. The OSX licence would offer Apple significant shares as part of a special reissue, MS as well would grant access to some of MS other propriety technological units and sign a mutual understanding statement between Apple and MS. Now the deal was set MS could get their hands on OSX, translate it for for general PC architecture ( at the time no one knew about how far ahead Apple were with the Intel based Apple machines )
This was setup purely as a viable business option but apparently Apple was very open to this. MS had watched the whole Copland saga and big Bill had grown increasingly concerned about the need to cut losses. Vista is reported to have now cost 16 Billion in total development and setup costs since its inception.
People over at MS have been leaving the firm hand over fist as the MS ship dates seems to continue to falter...Vista is going to be a car with square wheels to sell- who wants it?. Lenova (IBM's old hardware wing) and Acer for example has signed a supply deal to continue licencing XP well into 2008. Vista is bloated and without the key setup to allow for further effective development.
Incidentially my friend has given his notice after working at MS for 4 years and has a job working for Sun lined up. Really this could be a real fantastic time for Apple....this coming Xmas period could see a massive ramp up in users switching, add into this mix a new version of OSX leopard possibly and i think the first wave of change will begin.