The Partnership That Could Have Changed Everything 167
DesertBlade writes "Bloomberg is reporting that, at one point, Microsoft had considered an Apple/iPod partnership before it released its own MP3 player. Microsoft was apparently displeased with MP3 players partnerships they had already made, notably the Creative and Dell models. This information came from court documents introduced in an antitrust lawsuit from Iowa. From the article: 'Microsoft had been working with partners on music devices for at least a year before Apple introduced the iPod in 2001 and catapulted to a dominant position in the market. Microsoft and its partners failed to come up with compelling hardware and had difficulty getting software to properly connect music collections on computers with their devices.' If this Apple/Microsoft partnership was formed how would this have changed the Microsoft and Apple dynamics?"
Re:Thank God it didn't happen (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Musings... (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, no. The biggest reason is iTunes, and that the iPod/iTunes combo was very easy to use. Look at the other solutions that were around at the time - the software/syncing procedures absolutely sucked. The software was total crapware - and it was often difficult to navigate a large collection of music on the devices.
Marketing? The original Mac-only generation of the iPod was barely marketed at all. Yet it was still successful - mainly because of iTunes, which was already widely used by Mac users. Remember "Rip, Mix, Burn"? iTunes came first, as part of the "digital hub" - while with other companies, the software was simply an afterthought.
You have a faulty memory. The only people who didn't take it seriously were Apple bashers and slashdot types. Real reviews gave the iPod high marks - with a complaint or two about the price. Aside from the price, serious reviews gave it high marks. Remember that the iPod was the first to offer Firewire syncing. This changed the whole game. Other players used USB 1.1 syncing - which was incredibly sloooow.
The iPod was also the first with the micro-sized HD - other players were either flash-based with pitiful storage capacity, or used larger HDs, which made the units incredibly bulky. So, if you had bought another HD-based player back then, not only did you get a huge unit - but it would take all day to fill with songs over USB 1.1. This made them pretty pointless, as you couldn't easily change the songs stored on the device without significant syncing time.
What do you mean, "regardless of the technical reviews"? the iPod got very good technical reviews, and was in fact far more technically advanced than every other player at the time. Your comments amount to nothing more than revisionist history. Just because CmdrTaco called the iPod "lame" does not mean it was poorly reviewed or received by the market.
If Microsoft had been involved, they would have insisted on Windows Media Player or some "PlaysForSure" crap and totally screwed up the iPod. Why else would Microsoft partner with Apple, if not to try and dominate the market with their software?
Re:Correction (Score:3, Informative)
Woz wrote a BASIC interpreter for the Apple II because it needed something, but he was much more of a hardware guy than a software guy, and writing the BASIC was harder for him than actually designing the computers had been. He ended up writing a BASIC interpreter that didn't have floating point routines, just to get something out the door ahead of everyone else. This was Integer BASIC, which was the first BASIC in the Apple II ROMs. One of his next projects was to work on adding the floating point routines in, but he ended up working on the floppy disk project first.
A big part of Microsoft's business back then was writing compilers and interpreters for various platforms, which they could license out. They wrote a BASIC interpreter for the Apple II, and eventually Apple decided that they needed something better than Integer BASIC. Since it was already done and available by the time Woz finished the floppy drive project, he never needed to improve Integer BASIC.
So Apple decided to get a 10 year license from Microsoft for their interpreter, which Apple put into ROM (and also made available on tape if you didn't want to upgrade your ROMs) and marketed as Applesoft BASIC. That was in 1977. As it happened, Microsoft was hurting for money back then, so they licensed it to Apple for a flat fee, rather than on a per-unit basis. Apple upgraded Applesoft BASIC from time to time, but it was still basically the same thing.
By 1985, the Mac had been introduced, and was becoming more popular, but Apple II computers were still where Apple made most of its money. And it was coming up on time to renegotiate the license. This time, Microsoft was in a much stronger position. It was able to force Apple to both abandon their own project to write a BASIC for the Mac, and to get a license for Mac UI elements. Apparently, Apple didn't have much of an option. I suppose they could have tried to get a cleanroom clone of Applesoft BASIC written in time for the license expiration, but for whatever reason, they decided it wasn't their best option. In any case, I don't think that the blame can be put entirely at Scully's feet. A lot of people screwed up over a very long period of time to end up with the situation Sculley inherited.
This was hardly the only time Microsoft got the better of Apple. Another instance is how Apple got Microsoft to agree to not ship their own mouse-based shells until a year after the Mac came out. But Apple thought that the Mac would come out in 1982, so they actually put the date in the contract. Apple blew their deadline (something Steve Jobs has a habit of) by a couple of years, allowing Microsoft the chance to announce Windows 1.0 before the Mac was announced. And again, Apple needed Microsoft to write third party software for the Mac (Word, Multiplan, Chart, etc.), so they couldn't really do much.
Re:Oh please... (Score:1, Informative)
Apple lost all claims except the trash can icon and file folder icons from HP's NewWave [toastytech.com] Windows application were infringing on their IP. The judges basically ruled that since Apple did not copyright the GUI and that because Apple and Microsoft had entered into an license agreement that included Microsoft Windows 1.0 it was a contractual matter, and dismissed those parts of the suit.
Hence Apple did not win. Although they did win the suit Xerox files against them for doing the same thing, granted that was because the statute of limitations ran out on Xerox. And who knows how that would have worked out as Apple did hire a couple of the PARC's designers to work on the MAC and IIRC paid Xerox some money (granted that may have been after the fact).
In 1997 Microsoft paid Apple $150 million that settled, among other things, once and for all the claims of infringement between the two companies. But that was more of a side note of the deal.