Editorial - Macrimination 

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

By Steve Sobek - Contributing Editor

Breaking up is hard to do.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have known for quite awhile that they would eventually have to part ways.

Microsoft's days on the Mac platform are numbered, and they have been numbered since Stevie J. set out on a new course to try and get Windows users to switch to Mac. Just about everything we've seen since the decision was made has been calculated, and with each new software or hardware release, the overall picture becomes clearer.

First, there was the digital hub strategy, meant to grab a piece of the market that Microsoft wasn't doing a good job providing for. Then came Keynote (presentation software akin to MS's PowerPoint), Safari (a direct competitor to Internet Explorer for Mac) and even media techonologies such as QuickTime and iTunes, which are attempting to thwart Microsoft's plans to make money off the standards you use to watch videos and listen to music (QuickTime and iTunes instead use open standards as their media engines).

Now, it would seem that Microsoft has thrown in the towel in the browser wars, conceding that Safari does the job better (which it does).

The big picture became even clearer to me, however, after reading a tidbit on Jeffrey Zeldman's Daily Report: "Some (18) months ago a few Microsoft marketers told a designer friend that the company intended to kill its own browsers once all the legal hubbub died down."

Of course! Apple has known all along that the move away from Microsoft was coming -- probably from Microsoft itself!

This explains a lot of the things that Apple has done recently -- including the development of Safari and Keynote. Stevie J. is not a stupid man. He knew that parting ways with MS was inevitable, and that the Switch campaign would probably hasten the breakup. Of course, Apple had no choice in the matter. Sitting in its tiny corner of the market share forever would not allow the company to continue to grow for its shareholders.

So -- and this is just hypothesis -- somehow Stevie found out from MS that IE development for Mac would cease. He did the only thing that made any sense: "Let's make our own browser."

Will the development of Office for Mac cease? You betcha.

I smile when I read gloom and doom predictions about how losing Office is going to be the end of Apple and its Switch campaign.

"Apple hasn't yet shown it can replace Office for most of its users. And without Office, Apple's whole 'switchers' program to convert Windows users will probably run aground," wrote Business Week's Alex Salkever in his column (referenced above), Byte of the Apple.

The key word you used there, Alex, was "yet." Like I said, Stevie J. is many things, but stupid is not one of them.

Wasn't it a big surprise when he released Safari and Keynote? No one saw those programs coming.

But now the sign posts have been revealed by our headlights -- and an Office replacement for the Mac is on its way. Somewhere in the secret halls at 1 Infinite Loop, software developers are slaving away in the best Apple burning-the-midnight-oil tradition on replacements for MS's programs that will probably add new features.

I can't prove it. But it's quite obvious that Apple's campaign to win folks over from the Dark Side (Windows) will not work without a high-quality replacement for Office.

And Steve Jobs is not someone who leaves his T's uncrossed.

Steve Sobek is a journalist and Webmaster of United Mac. Reach him at ssobek@stevesobek.net.