Microsoft Barring Certain Staff From Buying Macs, iPads? 416
mr100percent writes "Microsoft has reportedly moved to prohibit employees in its Sales, Marketing, Services, IT, and Operations Group (SMSG) from using company funds to purchase any products produced by Apple. The company had already barred staffers from using expense allocations for competing smartphone platforms, however the new guidelines explicitly note that Macs and iPads have been added to the list. 'Within SMSG we are putting in place a new policy that says that Apple products (Mac & iPad) should not be purchased with company funds,' an alleged letter distributed to staff reads."
Barring? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Barring? (Score:5, Insightful)
This only says not to buy those things with company money. IOW, Microsoft doesn't want its own company money to be supporting Apple and other competitors. It is not applicable for staff buying them for personal use.
Any company is perfectly within their rights to specify how the company money is spent.
Re:Barring? (Score:5, Interesting)
More to the point, Microsoft has always tried (AFAIK) to eat its own dogfood, so this seems to be simply an extension of that as opposed to any particular malice.
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And also worth considering is that a typical mac product costs an awful lot more.
No its doesnt, stop this myth. Our Dell laptops are almost 200 dollars more expensive than a like equipped Macbook Pro. The cost significance is so great that we are thinking of dropping Dells all together and moving to Macbook Airs for both PC AND Mac users because even with Win7 licensing costs added, its STILL cheaper to buy a 1 grand MacBook Air over a like model Dell.
Ever seen data entry staff sitting in rows on iPads? No of course not.
You bet your ass I have seen 60 Sales and Marketing staffers using iPads in the field, and we are starting to move 500 positions who DONT
Re:Barring? (Score:4, Informative)
"you need to pay for a extended warranty"
Funny, nobody at Best Buy held a gun to my head demanding I buy an extended warranty. But that was in 2007 with my 17" macbook pro that has worked perfectly still to this day AND still holds a 2 hour charge on it's battery.
Let me guess you are one of those people that never has owned a mac product but tries to sound like you know what you are talking about.
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yes but owing one makes the owner "feel" creative..
Re:well duh (Score:5, Funny)
This is a common misconception spread by anti-apple people, or people who have not used an iPad. Visit any recording studio (home or professional) and you are likely to see iPads being used as instruments, console/transport extensions, composition scratchpads, etc etc. WRT data entry, I wouldn't want to type on one all day, but as a note taking device, the screen based keyboard is perfect for touch typing.
Re:well duh (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Barring? (Score:5, Funny)
I've had a dog and I've owned Microsoft products. I'm not sure if "eating its own dog food" is the correct analogy.
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Um. No that's not the idea at all. It simply mean that you use your product. The phrase "eat your own dog food" has been around for years, since the 1980's at least, and in use in other industries entirely.
Re:Barring? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Barring? (Score:4, Informative)
Most major breweries in the U.S. (even Guinness - *SOB*) are owned and operated from overseas. Brew your own!
This may be one of the most (unintentionally?) funny things I've ever read on /. No kidding? A famous UK brand isn't US-owned? Wow?
Re:Barring? (Score:5, Informative)
Of all things, you went to choose the Republic of Ireland's most known symbol to say that is UK?
Ok, I know, uk, england, northern ireland, great britain, commonwealth, queen's territories, all this crap IS confusing. But let me get you a couple of things straight:
- Ireland is an Island. On it, there are two countries. One is Northern Ireland, another is Republic of Ireland;
- Northern Ireland is part of UK, commonwealth or whatever. Its currency is the british pound. Its capital is Belfast
- Republic of Ireland is an independent country which today has nothing to do with uk. It is part of the Euro zone. Its capital is Dublin. DUBLIN THE CITY WHERE GUINNESS IS MADE (mostly)
- There is some animosity between the Irish and the British, to say the least. What you just said might be considered offensive in there.
Republic of Ireland is not the most resourceful country on the planet, granted. But two things you can bet they are very proud of: Their Guinness and their Jameson's.
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Noooo! They shipped Jameson's overseas too? Does anybody know where I can get a good domestic Irish whiskey in the US?
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Im form Aus, the locals do not love fosters. we export that shit for others to drink. VB and carlton draught are probably our two major local beers. (other states are a bit differently, i hear they like XXXX further up north)
Re:Barring? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually Guinness is a UK owned company. Diageo owns Guinness [wikipedia.org]
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Yeah, what you said. Just not for the same reasons.
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Re:Barring? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Barring? (Score:4, Insightful)
Name a bug in Office that has been there more than a decade which affects your usage of the product.
None?
That's why people who type "M$" are criticized. Because it shows they're speaking purely out of spiteful bias and simply like to parrot things "they've heard" on the interwebs. This commonly occurred for example, with Windows Vista, where the product was hugely, widely bashed by people who had never used it. In fact, it's still bashed by people who've never used it. And the faults they describe largely either didn't exist, or only affected a small number of users.
"M$" simply demonstrates a mind-set of pre-determination by the writer, and suggests they're not going to be rational in any of the arguments they make.
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Re:Barring? (Score:5, Funny)
How about Micros~1?
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The point is, Microsoft's Win8 strategy will be, at least in part, a direct competitor to Apple's iOS strategy.
The MS sales staff need to use, understand, and sell Microsoft first and foremost.
Re:Barring? (Score:5, Informative)
Um, this isn't anywhere close to the truth. MS used an in-house developed Xenix-based mail system internally prior to the release of Exchange 4.0 (the first version of exchange, and a followup to MSMail 3.0). Starting in the last phase before release and continuing for a few months or so ITG did a phased migration off of Xenix mail and onto Exchange. There wasn't any particular pain outside the usual complexity of doing any large migration. This was all well before Hotmail was a part of Microsoft.
Source: I was on the exchange team at the time.
Re:Barring? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is more than just money..... it's selling to the customer. Wouldn't it look bad if a Microsoft employee came to your company to demo a new product, and they whipped-out their Apple Macbook to give the presentation? Or even less obvious... the MS presenter spends the lunchbreak listening to an iPod. It sends the wrong message that "Yeah I work for Microsoft but I really prefer Apple."
Telling sales staff to not buy Apple (and instead use Microsoft products as frequently as possible), is the same as a store giving employees 40% off if they buy and wear the store's goods. It shows that the employee not only sells but also uses the product day-to-day.
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A mod point, a mod point, a kingdom for a mod point!
Thank you for pointing out the important distinction that this request was for *sales* staff purchases with company funds. There's no indication in the summary that other divisions were affected by this request. Here's to you get to +5 Insightful quick!
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There's no indication in the summary that other divisions were affected by this request.
employees in its Sales, Marketing, Services, IT, and Operations Group (SMSG)
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is the same as a store giving employees 40% off if they buy and wear the store's goods
In fact, it could be worse -- MS is paying for the equipment. Most clothing retailers require employees to wear the company's clothes while at work and to purchase said clothing with their own money (discounted, of course).
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Wouldn't it look bad if a Microsoft employee came to your company to demo a new product, and they whipped-out their Apple Macbook to give the presentation?
It wouldn't if the Macbook ran Windows 7. :)
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Wouldn't it look bad if a Microsoft employee came to your company to demo a new product, and they whipped-out their Apple Macbook to give the presentation?
Wouldn't it look bad if a VP dropped in on your internal product demo and asked "So how does this compare to that Apple shit that we're trying to compete with" and you have to say "I have no idea since I'm not allowed to buy a fucking Mac to make the comparison?"
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Actually, microsoft sells mostly software. Pretty much all their software for pcs runs on macs, right from windows on. They could use apple machines, with windows on them, or even mac os, provided they still use microsoft Office produts for mac on them.
What would be shameful would be to see MS sales people giving a presentation using apple's Keynote. On a hackintosh dell running Lion.
Re:Ah, stupid manager alert! (Score:5, Insightful)
Cpu6502 will no doubt rush through the ranks as a manager because he has the usual manager capability to confuse the disease with the symptom.
Car companies often have the parking lot filled with the companies cars and NOT because of any guidelines (cars are after all privately bought by the people in production) but because the employees feel connected to the company and are proud of what they produce.
While they may be proud of what they produce , most also get a sizable company discount. For many, wallet no doubt wins over price.
MS clearly is totally unable to inspire loyalty in its employees to feel proud of what they produce and want to show it. You can then put out a guideline forcing people to show fake pride but then you are just fighting the symptom, not the disease. If MS can't even build products good enough that people who want to work for you want to have the products... they got no chance in hell of selling to the rest of us. Eat your own dog food and if you got to beat the god to get it to eat, you failed.
No, they're saying that you can't use MS funds to pay for Apple products or phone bills for non-MS phones. Not unreasonable, and quite frankly having them use their products can also result in some real world feedback on what works and what doesn't. Do employees prefer Apple products? Probably,and I'd bet it was a big enough percentage that MS decided to stop paying for competitors products. I had a friend who filled up his company car with a competitors gasoline - and got a note back, after he expensed it, from his boss saying "we don't buy non- Union 76 gas with company funds."
I do agree that the company discount argument is irrelevant and MS should see why employees prefer Apple products to their competing ones; but that is separate form putting money in a competitor's pocket.
Re:Ah, stupid manager alert! (Score:4, Informative)
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I have a friend who worked for GM. He drove his Honda to the plant once.
Four cut tires, all the glass broken, punctured radiator, pry marks on the gas gap cover. He assumes they were interrupted.
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I wonder if Apple has a similar policy, although you can bet they have Microsoft Office installed everywhere they need people to be productive.
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IOW, Microsoft doesn't want its own company money to be supporting Apple and other competitors.
But the memo doesn't mention anything about other competitors, just Apple.
So apparently it's fine to show up to work with a Sansa MP3 player, Blackberry Playbook, and an Android smartphone.
Re:Barring? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I used to work at Motorola. About twelve years ago, the president of the company (Chris Galvin) was upset at the number of employees who worked there who had cell phones from other vendors - Nokia being the chief sore spot at the time. Word came down from management that it was not a good idea for one's career to be using a non-Motorola phone for either personal or corporate use. To be fair, they did give us excellent discounts ongoing on Motorola phones, so it was pretty much a good thing.
That's quite idiotic. If they worried that too many Motorola employees bought non-Motorola phones with their own money, then they should have tried to make better phones.
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Plus most employees with an expense account, probably have enough of a salary to buy one on their own anyways.
First level rep in TS who answers your phone call, does not have an expense account.
VP of Operations who fly's to a different city on a regular basis, does have one.
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It makes perfect sense, I don't see why it is news.
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'cause they sell stuff designed to run on an apple OS? including powerpoint?
including tons of apps on the itunes store?
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Barring and "should not be purchased with company funds" are two entirely different things.
Yeah oddly enough I've no problem with this. It's Microsoft's money, they get to make the rules.
Right (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is news... how exactly?
Don't most companies ban using company funds to buy competitors' products for operational staff?
Re:Right (Score:5, Funny)
They're just letting us know that MS wants its own employees to use the best possible tech available.
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PearPads?
Penguin Wees?
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Well I guess some employees have tried to buy Apple stuff on their expense allocation. But this is completely nuts! Who are those Microsoft Employees who tried to do that? If I was their manager, I'd have fired them right away!
Buying those Apple things for personal use with personal money is already a little tricky as a MS employee, let alone trying to have it free using the employer's money! How would these be useful to fulfill work tasks anyway?
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Probably... although- I suspect Microsoft's competitors can't do the same thing.
Apple or Google would have a difficult time telling their company that money can't be spent on wintel machines. Apple probably could- but it would hurt their bottom line significantly.
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It's basically saying "If you don't work on software for Apple hardware, don't expect us to buy you a toy."
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| Don't most companies ban using company funds to buy competitors' products for operational staff?
It is interesting that they had to make a rule. That implies that a notable quantity of staff were choosing Apple products first.
I worked at a now swallowed vendor of servers and workstations. Despite producing competing products, MicroSoft computers were commonplace until OS X came along. In a way, that was even stranger, since they were saying Apple's version of UNIX is better than ours.
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Don't most companies ban using company funds to buy competitors' products for operational staff?
Especially, when said company produce products that can be used instead of competitor product. That is common sense in my opinion.
Re:Right (Score:5, Insightful)
It's news because the largest software company in the world is ignoring the fastest growing platform for software in the world, rather than writing software for it.
Don't post about subjects you're unfamiliar with. Microsoft has always written a lot of software for the Mac, and even today has a bunch of stuff both released and in development for the iPad. It makes sense with their dogfooding policies to favor Windows stuff for their staff, but they are by no means "ignoring" iOS.
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Note that the restriction applies to certain divisions/classes of staff, and developers aren't among them. Salespeople don't need to purchase iPads. Developers might... Microsoft has released several smaller iOS apps (e.g. PhotoSynth); the question isn't whether they can develop for a competing platform, but whether it makes sense to shoot themselves in the foot by doing so at the expense of their own platforms. With WOA in Win8, there's an obvious tablet focus, and Office 15 is included with WOA versions o
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Actually, this is probably a smart move. One of the reasons their products don't compete very well is that the people within their company who should be their target audience don't actually use the products they make, and thus don't report bugs, don't complain about the clunky interface, etc. By forcing their marketing people to "live on" their own stuff (dogfooding), eventually the quality should start to improve.
Just like a lot of companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of companies, including the one I work for, won't let you arbitrarily buy Apple products with company money.
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Same for mine, except we are not allowed to buy Dell (everything). For Apple, it only applies to phone products.
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Same for mine, except we are not allowed to buy Dell (everything).
So with your company, the restriction is all about inferior crap.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
I am no longer surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
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You must be new here.
Re:I am no longer surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I am no longer surprised. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm giving up my moderation rights for this discussion to say that the next improvement Slashdot should implement is to allow moderation of the stories themselves. I'd love to be able to browse stories on the main page (or in a personal newsfeed) using a filter setting of my choosing based on the moderated quality of a story rather than topic, submitter etc.
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Re:allow moderation of the stories (Score:5, Informative)
That's the Firehose.
The users already do moderate those, but then the editors get a 1000% weighted vote to override the user moderations and post whatever they like.
Re:I am no longer surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
What did you expect? The story had "Microsoft" in the title and ended with a question mark. This pretty much always means it's bollocks. See these examples of headline that would not technically be wrong, due to the question mark, but that are clearly inflamatory and designed for nothing more than page hits:
"Apple CEO Steve Jobs spent $10 billion dollars on FUD campaigns?"
"Google stole your credit card details?"
On that note, I think just to prove the point I'll publish my own little mini story within this thread to prove the point:
Samzenpus is a child rapist?
=====================
It turns out that a guy was arrested for child abuse earlier this year who held the same first name as Samzenpus, could it therefore in fact be Samzenpus himself who raped these children?
A company dictating how company funds can be used? (Score:2)
True for Any Large Corporation? (Score:3)
Company expenses cannot be used by employees for purchasing competing products? I'm aghast with surprise! Oh yeah, this is Microsoft we are talking about. So it's news *rolls eyes*
So what? (Score:3)
Company tries to prevent sending money to its rivals. Film at 11.
"With company funds" (Score:5, Insightful)
"With company funds" being the keywords here.
Re:"With company funds" (Score:5, Funny)
It warms my heart to see that everyone saw that key phrase and pointed it out rather than descending to a frenzy of fanboism and irrational argument over platforms.
Sounds Reasonable (Score:5, Informative)
The Car Analogy (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting, though, that it's only certain departments, not the entire company. Going back to Ford, many of the senior levels I knew were allowed to buy (or at least drive company-owned cars) that were the competition. They claimed it helped them learn about the competition. I have no problem with that.
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It's kind of hard to develop Office for the iPad or Mac if you're not allowed to buy any. So yeah, it does make sense that it's limited to certain departments.
That also means that the ban doesn't make much sense even for Sales, since they'll have to demo the things that run on Apple.
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I have heard that only Fords were allowed to park in the parking lots at the Ford plants back in the olden days. You could go and buy a Dodge if you wanted one, but you'd have to walk to work.
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Somebody at Microsoft kind of needs to have a Mac if they're doing to keep writing the OS X version of Office; They also have iOS clients for Skydrive, their XBox Live gaming platform, and reports of an Office for iOS [thedaily.com] product have been floating around for a while now.
Microsoft *is* actively developing for these platforms, so if they put a blanket ban across the company, that would kind of hinder the efforts of those groups to p
So? (Score:2)
...from using company funds to purchase any products produced by Apple.
While it makes me want to ask "why?" when I first read this, I would say that it's entirely reasonable for Microsoft to decide what equipment Microsoft funds are used to purchase.
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I see that point.
On the other hand, assuming programmers are grouped in with IT, it could be a bad thing. You'd want them to know what they're competing with, and to understand why a rival's product is so popular.
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... assuming programmers are grouped in with IT, it could be a bad thing. You'd want them to know what they're competing with, and to understand why a rival's product is so popular.
Good point; I wouldn't be surprised if individual exceptions were made by management on an "as needed" basis.
Why is this a story? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure apple has similar rules about buying MS products with company funds.
Would apple be okay with their employees buying lots of MS mobile phones using company resources? I doubt it. Sure, there's not much chance of them choosing to do that but the reality is that no company is going to be happy about it's employees using company resources to buy a competitor's products.
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As far as Phones, I suspect that Apple has the same policy that 90% of the US has. That the phones are garbage.
Microsoft is just worried about loss . . . (Score:2)
. . . new exciting Apple products seem to get lost in bars, grabbed by Hollywood stars and tossed through Windows(tm) or face similar more dreadful fates . . .
. . . Microsoft is just concerned about their potential loss of property/capital . . .
You think it's odd? (Score:2, Insightful)
Wrong headline (Score:2)
The summary makes it clear that the employees just can't use company funds to buy Apple products... and the programmers who make Microsoft's software for Apple platforms are not in the group this affects. It's basically saying "Don't use your expense account for toys we don't need." The employees involved are free to spend their paycheck at the Apple Store however they want... not really a ban as much as it's adding these two items to things Microsoft won't pay for.
Just like at Coke or PepsiCo (Score:4, Interesting)
At Coca Cola, you can't even talk about P*psi [pepsico.com] based products, bring one in to work or eat at their sponsored establishments.
As a comparison... here's Coca Cola's list of brands. [thecoca-colacompany.com]
So "don't buy a iPhone with MSFT's company's funds" is a lot easier than "don't consume our competitors products while on business." Not so easy when you're flying and you want a drink and the only drinks that the airline carries are from your competitor...
Using company funds (Score:2)
Non story. Slow news day eh?
OK, I have honest questions: (Score:2)
Does Apple forbid their employees to purchase Windows PCs, Tablets, Phones, etc. with company money? ... would they even need to?
I mean MS has every right to forbid this, and anything short of research into the competition shouldn't warrant use of company funds to purchase these things anyway. The fact MS employees would have the gaull and disloyalty to bring those things into the office alone is disrespectful. Trying to get the company to pay for them is flat out insulting. If your employees don't believe
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Ugh! Wouldn't want to work for Coca Cola then! :)
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Hopefully you will never be in that position (Score:3)
Really, the first thing that comes to your mind when you are the owner of a product and your own people prefer to face your wrath by buying from the competitor to do their work rather then use their own product, is to ban them?
You wouldn't consider maybe asking them WHY the competitor product is the preferred choice?
And this is hardly news, MS pulled something similar when the Zune was flopping hard and MS employees brought their iPod's to work.
And MS yet again totally fails to ask WHY people prefer to buy
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Well, not really the same thing. Ford makes a bunch of different vehicles that will fit the needs of any driver. Microsoft has shit for smartphones and almost no vendor support. You can get just about any piece of productivity software and platform tie-in you'll ever need on iOS, Blackberry, and Android platforms but WinMo has been a desert for years. I know. I've seen me use it. And iOS is the first to get support in most cases. Then Blackberry. Then Android. Then, if the intern is still around, W
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IIRC, the problem was not that the existence of macs was acknowledge, but rather that employees are specifically forbidden from taking pictures and publishing them to the world without proper authorization. This is standard practice.
I sometimes take pics at work with my cellphone, for internal purposes. If I were to post them on my blog (because e.g. I thought they were interesting) without approval form a director, I would be kicked out as well.