News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community.
	Mail Starting 10/25/97

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From: charlesf@MICROSOFT.com (Charles Fitzgerald);
Sent at 10/25/97; 1:37:52 PM;
Re:1985

Some more history:

The first wave of MS Mac products in 1985 were Word, File, Chart, Multiplan (which were also packaged in a precursor to Office known as the Macintosh Business Pack), BASIC Interpreter and Compiler, FORTRAN, Logo and a business simulation game called Entrepreneur. Flight Simulator showed up in 1986.

Excel didn't ship until the fall of 1985, after Jazz had debuted with a ton of support from Apple. As you point out, Lotus was the clear leader. I can remember a quote from Jim Manzi in the WSJ that was on every bulletin board that said something like "Microsoft is not very good at applications" that was a huge motivator. Excel was the first time we went out and beat an entrenched leader in an applications category and won overwhelmingly.

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From: dave@sherm.com (Dave Sherman);
Sent at 10/25/97; 10:19:43 AM;
Couple thoughts....

o From the excerpt in Wired, JL Gassee seemed to be more of an obstacle to licensing than Sculley. In fact, Sculley apparently tried to push toward licensing on several occasions, but was shut down on the engineering side. Perhaps Sculley should have been bolder, but I sense that doing so would have released in a quick, involuntary release. JLG is on DaveNet; perhaps you can nudge a response from him?

o One of my favorite maxims -- No problem is so simple that it cannot be rendered insoluble if enough people meet to discuss it. The secret of Microsoft is focus, largely due to Gates' ability to change direction -- an enormous advantage over other companies, like Apple, that must negotiate with warring fiefdoms. When Gates determined that the Internet was important, Microsoft mobilized. Gates may make mistakes, but he's clearly in charge. Hard to tell who's been in charge at Apple. Gates has the liberty, opportunity, and capacity to take bold steps. The 1985 memo and its aftermath demonstrate the advantage.

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From: steven@echonyc.com (Steven Levy);
Sent at 10/25/97; 11:00:38 AM;
Re:Gates to Sculley

You might want to mention that in our Gates/Jobs story last August, Newsweek carried quotes from that memo. Though the Carlton book was circulating in galleys then, that was not my source.

I had asked Waggoner/Edstrom for an Apple/Microsoft timeline and right there under 1985 was a mention of that memo. I asked them to send me the memo and they did, along with a followup letter that Gates wrote Sculley a few weeks afterwards.

Carlton's publishers asked some reviewers to sign NDAs before they got the galleys, so maybe that is one reason why Newsweek was actually the first as far as I know to quote from the memo. (Carlton himself, as far as I could see, did not mention it in his WSJ stories, but I could have missed it.)

When I talked about it to some Waggoner Edstrom people, they seemed to be under the impression that the memo had been discussed in print some years earlier.

Anyway, thanks for further circulating this, Dave!