Here's another theory about Carbon:
In Gil's book, Gil claims that he wanted to get Microsoft's support for Rhapsody, i.e. he wanted them to port Office. And he made this a condition of making IE the default browser. And, Gil says, Steve caved on this point, which is what made the deal possible.
But get this: Jobs new as early as last summer that Carbon was possible. So all he needed was to get Microsoft to agree to upgrade Office for MacOS. Since MacOS would ultimately converge with Rhapsody, Microsoft would unwittingly be legally committed to porting Office to Rhapsody.
To make sure nothing went wrong, Jobs kept Carbon under wraps, waiting for Office to ship. Now that it has, and Microsoft is committed, he has unveiled Carbon. There's nothing Bill can do now, short of breaking his contract, to prevent Office from running on Apple's new killer OS. If Office runs on it, everything else will fall into place.
rhet0ric |
