– Intel Corp VP Steve McGeady is submitting oral testimony only at the trial, because written testimony would have involved Intel working closely with government lawyers and Intel did not want to be seen cooperating too closely with Microsoft’s tormentors. All of which made McGeady’s fiercely anti-Microsoft stance yesterday more powerful.
– Apple VP Avadis Tevanian described the version of Microsoft Office for the Macintosh that was available in 1996 as really bad, and that if Microsoft withdrew plans to update with Office 97, which was to become Office 98 for the Mac by the time it was released, it would effectively kill the then-current version as well, because it was so second-rate. In so doing so it would have eliminated another reason users had for buying a Mac over a PC.
– As the trial entered its fourth week, talk was that with each side having about a dozen witnesses and with each one taking the best part of a week so far, the trial could drag on for the best part of six months.
– Microsoft attorney Theodore Edelman, winding down his questioning of government witness Avadis Tevanian, showed a video of Steve Job’s performance at Mac World last year, when he revealed the extensive agreement between Microsoft and Apple. It was the one point in the day at which the whole court, including Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson reacted, laughing as Jobs worked the crowd, which booed him when he announced Internet Explorer as the default browser on the Mac and when he announced the $150m of Apple stock that Microsoft purchased – until he said it was non- voting stock, at which point the crowd cheered. Edelman pleaded, tongue-in-cheek to Judge Jackson, don’t hold me to account for the sound effects. Edelman asked for the video to be submitted as evidence and government lawyer Phil Malone said he had no objection whatsoever, perhaps realizing that the video didn’t do much to support Microsoft’s claim that the agreement between the two companies was primarily down to the resolution of a patent dispute, and not Apple’s promised to make IE the default after Microsoft allegedly threatened to discontinue development of Office for the Mac.
– Microsoft spokesperson Mark Murray said the Department of Justice had laid out a shingle and said they’re the complaint bureau for the high-tech industry. He added that in Steve McGeady, the government had obviously picked an executive at Intel with an axe to grind against Microsoft.
– Setting the foundations for more questions about Microsoft’s policy towards Java today, government attorney David Boies asked Intel’s McGeady yesterday how important he thought Java was as a threat to Microsoft’s dominance. By way of an answer, McGeady cited a November 1995 email from his boss at Intel, Frank Gill, in which Gill said that Microsoft sees Intel’s support of Java as supporting their mortal enemy…and argue that Sun is our enemy as well. Later in the email Gill says Java is a BIG BIG to them. An August 1995 Intel memo about a meeting with Gates and other senior Microsoft executives, described Intel’s Java support as a show-stopper. Intel kept the extent of its support for Java from Microsoft and everybody else until a formal announcement in 1996.
– And in case you were in any doubt about what gets microprocessor manufacturers interested in a new technology such as Java, McGeady summed it up thus: as an interpreted language it was somewhat slower and therefore needs more expensive and powerful microprocessors. That’s good for us, he said, ramming the point home.
