Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs said Thursday that Microsoft should give $1 billion in cash to help schools, instead of software and some money, to settle more than 100 consumer lawsuits. Jobs’ statement came one day before Apple plans to file a supplemental legal brief further contesting the legitimacy of the proposed settlement of the suits.Microsoft and attorneys working the cases, which are consolidated in a Baltimore federal court, cut the controversial deal in late November. Attorneys for Microsoft and the plaintiffs are set to return to court Monday to complete a hearing before U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz. “We think a far better settlement is for Microsoft to give their proposed $1 billion–in cash–to an independent foundation, which will provide our most needy schools with the computer technology of their choice,” Jobs said in the statement.
Apple: Microsoft Should Pay $1 billion–Cash
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Eugenia Loli
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News Flash: M$ “donates” what they estimate to be “$500M” is M$ software to public schools — private schools flourish.
Seriously tho,.. reminds me of soon after Sept11 when they said they were going to “help” by donating $10M — ahem, $5M + $5M of their own software. Gee, thanks. Their PR and marketing people are really burning the midnight oil over there. Way to make the most of it fellas.
Red Hat suggested that MS should give hardware-only and then Red Hat would supply their software and support at no charge. I like Apple’s idea better because it is “platform independent.”
The settlement shouldn’t be about MS, Red Hat, Apple or anyone taking the opportunity to gain market share. The settlement should be strictly about punishing MS and creating a direct marketing opportunity.
btw, any wagers on if/when Be, Inc. is going to sue MS? That could be a tasty settlement
> btw, any wagers on if/when Be, Inc. is going to sue MS? That could be a tasty settlement
I am sure that the Be executives prefer to use their $11 million USD they got from Palm, elsewhere. In vacations in Bahamas or Hawai or something…
These days, things one might consider BASIC qualities of a “good citizen” are meted out as punishment. There must be some distant dream land where a parallel Microsoft, awash in cash, *happily* donates $1 billion without having to be convicted of a crime first. For the rest of us poor slobs, we might envision a place where “community service” is the normal weekend activity, rather than something we are forced to do when we have too many parking tickets or DUI’s.
What a stupid world.
Stupid world? I don’t think so. Everything makes sense when you know the motives.
Reminds me of the time when IBM was touting
those really BIG numbers of OS/2 “copies sold”
shortly before/after the “divorce” from Microsoft.
They were in actuallity giving away those early
copies of OS/2 in attempt to get some marketshare
and demonstrate OS/2’s ability to run win16 apps
(better than Windows 3.x!! was able to do…)
IBM ended up sending Microsoft a huge check to
prevent Gates and Co from suing them for nonpayment
of royalties! (Also to keep Gates from telling
everyone…not that it mattered, Bill Gates let
everyone know via the old “nudge nudge, wink wink.”
I wonder how much of the software they’re giving
away will be Windows XP and if they’ll attempt to
use those numbers to inflate their advertising?
Mabye donate 1 billion dollars of apple computers? lol.
“I am sure that the Be executives prefer to use their $11 million USD they got from Palm, elsewhere. In vacations in Bahamas or Hawai or something…
”
probley… personally, I would sue microsoft, but whatever.
Why not sue Apple for killing the clone market and then refusing to give Be the specs so they could contine developing BeOS for the PPC? I mean really, if ANYONE has been closed source (software, hardware, you name it) it’s been Steve Jobs. I got burned with NeXT and I’m NEVER having anything else to do with Apple/Jobs.
I don’t know what you’re saying, but this settlement proposal is so obviously ridculous. And you read Steve Jobs’s statemt? He said MS should give the billion to a foundation in cash, and all platform should compete against each other in fair terms.
I think this is a proposal without anything you should pin on, it just funny that you can pull some outdate controversy to this matter. Lame.
“…it just funny that you can pull some outdate
controversy to this matter. Lame.”
If eboy’s talking to me, I wasn’t trying to stir up
some out of date controversy. I was just wondering
how Micro$oft intended to write up all those copies
of software…as items sold? Will these “donations”
be tax write offs? People’d like to know.