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Reminds me of when the Xbox 360 came out, Microsoft had to buy a bunch of Macs because Macs had PowerPC processors, so it was kind of a no-brainer to get the darn thing going quickly enough. Ultimately Windows was the standard way to build Xbox games but it is kind of funny to think, one day someone at Apple saw an order for easily several dozens of Macs from Microsoft, and wondered if hell froze over.

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Back in the 2000s MS agreed to port Office and Internet Explorer to the Mac. This was a good move for both companies. Bill Gates appeared on screen during an Apple Conference to talk with Steve. Huge boos. Steve had to work the crowd back from the ledge.

Then Office and IE were ported. It was so weird running Word on a Mac. It was a good port too. They did a good job of embracing Mac UI ideas. I found the Mac Word better than Win Word.

I was kind of new to the Mac back then.

I imagine Apple donated a bunch of early OS 10 machines to MS for development. I wonder if the MS Mac Dev team was a pariah at MS.

Word was originally released for the Mac in 1985, so the deal was not that Office would be ported, just that MS would keep developing Office for the Mac.

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