Could’ve sworn this happened later on but then again, MacWorld Boston has disappeared into obscurity. I blame being super-busy in Las Vegas as my excuse for not remembering all the ugly details. Nastier ones would be coming later anyway.
Many people who didn’t know squat took this investment from Microsoft the wrong way, especially the crowd that loved to screech about the death of Apple. Microsoft’s $150 million in Apple stock wasn’t much to sweat for a couple reasons: the stock was trading around $15 a share then and even this much would keep Bill Gates in a minority position (I think they were also special non-voting shares), and Apple was more viable than other wounded computer manufacturers because of its patents, technology and cash on hand. Cash? I had a manager in 1996 tell me how Apple still had $2 billion so it couldn’t go broke for a long time.
I think the purchase gave people more confidence in there being future versions of Office which contains the most common and popular word-processing software. Personally, the only application in the suite worth using is Excel due to a lack of decent competition. Word is just bloatware and Outlook can’t keep out spam to save its life. There was the cynical explanation of Microsoft keeping Apple alive (they weren’t) to make the case against the Department of Justice’s antitrust suit. I never believed it, the BeOS claims were rejected for the same reason. The DoJ didn’t get “stupid” and cooperative until Bush.
It all worked out. Apple is in solid shape and Microsoft continues to sell, market and develop Office. More importantly, Jobs led by example with this deal and I agree with what he said (paraphrased), “We need to let go of this notion that in order for Apple to succeed, Microsoft has to fail.” He was right, current phenomenon such as the iPod were due to hard work, marketing and making a solid product regardless of what Microsoft did.
Sadly, the residents and reality of 1997 didn’t see it this way.