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'I've had an opportunity to play with Office for Mac OS X, and I really like it,' said Technology Business Research analyst Tim Deal. X even exceeds its Windows counterpart, Office XP. The new Mac Office is completely designed around OS X, capitalizing on many of the operating system's advanced graphics features and Unix underpinnings. X, for example, is not based on its Windows counterpart, although both share files seamlessly. MacBU works fairly independently from Microsoft's Windows applications divisions. New versions of the latter two products ship with Office v. Besides Office, Microsoft offers Mac versions of Internet Explorer, Outlook, MSN Messenger and Windows Media Player. MacBU employs about 160 people in the United States and 30 in Japan and Ireland. Microsoft remains the largest developer of applications for the Mac. Much of the early tension between the two companies has given way to partnership. But Mac enthusiasts took the news badly, jeering the onstage Jobs and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who attended via satellite uplink. Much has changed since the August 1997 Macworld Expo in Boston when then interim Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced a $150 million investment from Microsoft, a new strategic relationship between the companies, and a five-year commitment for Mac Office. We literally would not be shipping Office X now if we had not had that kind of access to the engineering staff from Apple.' 'It's been impressive to see the two sides really focus on that product. 'There are 70-plus major feature additions and major fixes in functionality that happened between 10.0 and 10.1 that made it possible for us to ship the kind of product we wanted to ship,' he said.

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Following the release of Mac OS X 10.1, developers unleashed a plethora of new applications, including Corel CorelDraw and PhotoPaint, Netscape 6.2, BBEdit 6.5 and Adobe Illustrator 10.Д«rowne praised Apple for putting aside old rivalries to work with Microsoft on making the changes necessary for Office v. 29 fixed many problems that troubled developers, also adding DVD playback and other missing features. While older applications work in 'Classic' compatibility mode-essentially a Mac OS 9.2.1 environment running within the new operating system-they must be updated to take advantage of OS X's Aqua interface, improved performance and stability, and other features.

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Microsoft, like other software developers, recognized Mac OS X's promise, but also concluded that some changes would need to be made in order to allow the Redmond giant to move its applications quickly to the new operating system.ДЇor Apple, wooing developer interest would be crucial to Mac OS X's success, because the new operating system was so radically different from its predecessors. With its Unix underpinnings, Mac OS X promised greater stability, better memory management and a more robust ability to run multiple programs simultaneously.

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In March, Apple released Mac OS X, the most significant upgrade to the operating system since its 1984 release. 'Things have changed so dramatically.'ДЄpple and Microsoft tested the limits of their newfound cooperation earlier this year.

'The relationship (with Apple), when we first started this business unit, was we could barely talk to each other without there being lawyers present,' said MacBU General Manager Kevin Browne. The relationship between the companies in fact has changed substantially since January 1997, when Microsoft formed a Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) to reignite its development of applications for Apple's Mac operating system. X has not been easy, requiring once bitter rivals Microsoft and Apple Computer to cooperate on major changes to Mac OS X, a product that arguably competes with Windows XP. X for the Mac slipped into stores Monday, culminating a nearly five-year development effort by Microsoft.