Yeah, you're right: I'm lumping Windows into the wrong category. What I meant is that Microsoft only makes money from Windows OS and Windows programs. The rest of the operations are all loss leaders or experiements in new directions, like XBox.

"Microsoft doesn't make a lot of money selling their operating system to Intel-based PC companies to bundle." - Glenn Fleishman

Are you high? Windows is the second pillar of the profit center gate to hell! Windows includes Windows Server (as of WinXP, there isn't much of a difference between client and server except a bunch UI and add-ons for scaling and management). When MS hiked it's licenses, companies didn't just howl about Office.

But, back on topic...

Todd's comment is probably right on, but it doesn't exempt the possibility that crippling VPC in a clever way could be icing on the Connectix cake. Otherwise, why would MS acquire VPC Mac along with the other assets? Most likely, the cost of acquiring just the virtual server assets was too high without the ability to screw VPC and discourage switchers who want a glide path to Mac OS X.

Nice blog thingy, BTW.

- Maclectic

Re: evil motive -- Microsoft doesn't make a lot of money selling their operating system to Intel-based PC companies to bundle. They make money selling their Office and other software to PC users once they have a PC. By buying Virtual PC, it allows them the chance to not only sell more copies of Windows XP, recovering more of the cost in the transaction, but it also lets them sell PC PROGRAMS TO MAC USERS more efficiently. Because the money is there, I doubt they bought the products to kill them.

Could there also be an evil motive? I can't help but wonder if they aren't buying it to kill Mac's ability to run Windows by trashing the program once they own it. Thus requiring people to buy PCs to run Windows software?

I posted this at Mac Slash but I think it is also an appropriate reflection on your blog as I can't realistically see MS killing Office X citing that an end user can run Office XP just as well on an emulated machine. Even if they tweaked the hell out of it, Office XP would not produce decent speed if runned in emulation but....

Thanks for that insight -- I'll make use of it! I know that massive multiple instanciation of an OS under a management system is the Next Big Idea in 100-percent uptime. I know that the Linux world has various ways to do this. That VMWare is specializing in this. That other companies, including IBM, are trying to offer this as a service for hire -- need 10,000 servers for an hour, but only 500 most of the time, great, we'll bill it like a utility.

Thanks again for that look.

I think a lot of people are misreading the Connectix deal. To Microsoft, acquiring the assets of VPC is really secondary. This is more about getting their hands on Connectix's relatively new virtual private server software, which allows a windows server to run several instances of the Windows Server operating system. This means that on a server shared by several users, one person can't crash the whole machine and affect other accounts. In the hosting industry this is a big new trend. What they do with Virtual PC is important to the Mac community, but controlling this program isn't why Microsoft wants the deal.