A Tour of Microsoft's Mac Lab

I'm Don Giovanni writes "David Weiss of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) gives a virtual tour of Microsoft's Mac Lab at Redmond, reportedly one of the largest Mac labs outside of Apple (includes 150 Mac minis!)." Great pictures. From the article: "The first area in the Mac Lab is what we call the Sandbox. This is where we keep all significant hardware configurations Apple has released that run our products. We'll use the Plasma display to, watch DVDs and play games, uh er, I mean, do important training presentations. ;-) It's actually very useful because everyone can be in front of a computer and still see the main screen and follow along. Often other groups at Microsoft (the games group, hardware drivers group and even the Windows media group) will come and schedule time in the Mac Lab to test their software on the different hardware configurations."

Re:Undercover marketing?

[prichardson]

Microsoft doesn't need to advertise for people to want to work there. They have people lining up at the door to work there.

The last guy who did this got fired.

[justinarthur]

This is very interesting to see since the last guy in the news to blog about Microsoft's Macs got fired for it [slashdot.org]. Perhaps this is the rebound from the bad press they recieved over that incident?

Re:Undercover marketing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except good Mac software isn't written by those kinds of "people." For that you need well-rounded renaissance men and women, architects and dilettantes who synthesize the arts, literature, science, and engineering to produce a beauty unparalleled in the computer industry.

Re:Does Apple have a Windows lab?

[linguae]

Because there's more to a PC than its processor?

If Apple were developing systems software and operating systems for vanilla x86 PCs, then I will agree with your statement. Apple would need a vanilla PC lab in order to test all of the hardware combinations.

However, Apple doesn't develop systems software for Windows that require in-depth knowledge about hardware drivers. When developing regular Windows systems software, it doesn't matter if you are using a vanilla Intel or AMD machine or a Mac (there is no difference between a Mac and a PC other than the fact that the Mac doesn't use legacy components such as BIOS, serial/parallel ports, floppy drives, etc.). With the Intel switch, Apple doesn't need to run out and buy a lab of vanilla PCs; they can just manufacture a few more Mac Minis, install Windows, and start hacking.

Re:The last guy who did this got fired.

[Babbster]

Even more than what he took pictures of, it sounds like the primary concern is the overall security of the area. Loading docks are where you find perhaps the biggest danger of theft in any business ("it fell off the truck"). Publishing pictures of a company's loading dock/area could expose security flaws...insert joke about Windows security here...and give evildoers a way to plan a theft.

Re:Internet Explorer

[phillymjs]

I wonder why they couldn't keep developing Internet Explorer??

Because (to paraphrase their official statement [com.com]) they could not hope to compete, because they couldn't get the kind of access to OS X that the Safari team could.

It's actually kind of funny when you remember that Microsoft always disputed other Windows developers' claims that they couldn't compete against Microsoft's own Windows applications for much the same reason. The term "Chinese wall" [google.com] comes to mind.

~Philly

Re:Internet Explorer

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you could share with the rest of us what, exactly, Safari needs to know about OS X that Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and any other browsers don't or can't?

The claim against Microsoft is valid. Try this on Windows. Open Internet Explorer, and go to the Windows Update site. Note how you're able to download and upgrade your operating system through the browser. Now try it on Firefox. It won't work. Surprise.

Now try the same thing on your Mac. Open Safari and... oh wait - Safari is just a web browser, and System Updates are handled through an entirely different mechanism built into the Operating System! How surprising.

Censored!

[sakusha]

I posted a relatively innocuous comment to that story earlier today, it was censored and did not appear. It read, in its entirety, "There is one thing conspicuously absent from the pictures: people."
I must have hit a nerve. Sure the story was about the lab. But don't people use the lab? There are a couple of people who appear way in the background of one pic, so small you can hardly see them, but otherwise the pictures are totally devoid of human life. I am sure the set of photos required clearance from Microsoft management, did they object to publishing photos of their personnel as some sort of security risk? Microsoft has been conspicuously touchy about bloggers describing their Mac facilities, remember the blogger who got fired from his temp job for posting a pic of G5s on the MSFT loading dock? So it wouldn't surprise me if the absence of people in the photos was a deliberate choice by MS management. And that is a lot more intriguing than the pics of a bunch of server racks.