Microsoft' Tod Nielsen responds to Richard Frank re: Quicktime

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

Speedy response from Microsoft on Richard Frank's note.

---------------
Subject: RE: Richard Frank Re: Steve Cohen on MS' saying its the bugs
   Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 12:29:49 -0800
  From: Tod Nielsen <todn@MICROSOFT.com>
    To: "'rcf@world.std.com'" <rcf@world.std.com>
    CC: "'love@cptech.org'" <love@cptech.org>

Hey Richard,

My name is Tod Nielsen and I'm the general manager of developer relations at
Microsoft.  I was forwarded your analysis by a number of reporters that
received the information from Mr. Love.  

I'd be more than happy to talk to you about this issue in detail.  The
bottom line is that there is no "club" or secret information that Apple
needed to know in order to make this work.  I wouldn't expect Mr. Love to
know this, since he is the same guy that sent mail to the government's
antitrust alias claiming that Maxtor was being forced to create "Windows
only" hard drives.  Which, anyone with a technical background would realize
is ridiculous.  See this attachment for more info on that, but I digress.   
<<Maxtor Hard Drives that won't work without Windows >> 


   [<--------Note from jamie : What Mr. Nielson is referring to is a post 
    where I described the message on the package
   for a Maxtor Hard Drive.  Maxtor told consumers (on the package) 
   that its large drives would not work unless consumers had 
   recent versions of Window.  Several persons wrote to indicate 
   that Maxtor packaging was misleading, and that the drive would 
   work with Linux or friends, for example, but that they would not
   work with older versions of Windows, due to limitations on the 
   Windows large drive support.  As Mr. Nielson knows, this 
   information was also posted.-----end note from jamie-------->]


Apple knew everything necessary to create and install a Windows plug-in.
The reason I know this, is because they did the right things for most of the
file types they support.  However, they didn't do the right things for QT,
VFW, or AIFC files. 

You mention in your mail below that you have never heard of QT files.  Apple
sure is promoting these.  In fact, the demo video they would have shown in
court (but apparently didn't show it because the doj realized their claims
were false) showed 2 sites with QT files.  Here is one of the sites Apple
showed in this demo video:

                        http://www.brandeis.edu/rose/quicktimevr/lee.qt
                        http://www.brandeis.edu/rose/quicktimevr/pindell.qt
                        http://www.brandeis.edu/rose/quicktimevr/pineda.qt


The first problem Apple had is that they didn't associate a file extension
with the QT, VFW, and AIFC mime types in their nscp plug-in.  To verify this
yourself, you can run navigator, and type "about:plugins" in the navigation
bar.  This will show you a set of tables for all of the plug-ins on your
system.  Assuming you have the QuickTime plug-in installed, you will see
that they don't associate a file extension for the QT, VFW, and AIFC file
types.  Clearly this is something they know how to do because they do it for
the other file types.  It is also documented here:
http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/communicator/plugin/index.htm
You'll note this is documented and specified on the nscp web site, because
the plug-in apis and architecture was invented by nscp and MS just supports
plug-ins.  In other words, Microsoft simply supports what NSCP specifies as
requirements in their architecture.  As you will note, nscp specifies that
developers need to identify a mime type and a file extension for all formats
a plug-in supports.  

The other thing Apple needed to do, was to make the entry in the Windows
registry, letting the registry know that their plug-in should take
precedence over an activex control that may support the same file format.
Once again, this is something Apple knows how to do, because they do it for
most of the file types they support.  However, they don't do this for the
AIFC and the VFW file types.

The whole point of this is that Apple simply made a programming mistake.  It
wasn't a crime, it happens all the time in our industry.  My job at
Microsoft is to make sure that all software developers have the information
they need in order to create the best Windows applications and to
interoperate with Windows.  If it weren't for all the lawyers causing chaos
in our industry right now, this would have been resolved amicably, because
the engineers from both companies would have been able to freely exchange
the appropriate level of technical information to fix the problem.
Unfortunately, in this case, MS never received enough technical information
as to what Apple's problems were until Dr. Tevanian testified and gave us
the demo files shown in his famous but not shown demo video.  

It is discouraging to me, that companies like Apple and Real Networks are
now coaxed by lawyers and political activist groups to cry wolf and make
outrageous allegations, when the fact is their problems can be easily
resolved by fixing their own programming mistakes.  I'm not here to place
blame, I'm here to help all software developer produce great quality
products for Windows.  In fact, today I'm opening a development lab in Palo
Alto, CA where any developer can come to talk to MS engineers and get
specific technical information and support to help them build better Windows
applicaitons.  

Everything I have talked about here was verified and continues to be
verified by independent third parties.  Mindcraft out of Los Gatos
California has probably done the most comprehensive write up so far, but I
expect more will come.

If you'd like to talk about any of this further, I'm always available to
talk to you, or any other software developer with a technical issue.

- Tod Nielsen



> >Sender: jamie@essential.essential.org
> >Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 13:03:46 -0500
> >From: James Love <love@cptech.org>
> >Organization: http://www.cptech.org
> >Mime-Version: 1.0
> >To: Multiple recipients of list <am-info@essential.org>
> >Subject: Richard Frank Re: Steve Cohen on MS' saying its the bugs
> >
> >Richard Frank's comment on the Quicktime issue. 
> >jamie
> >
> >-------------
> >Subject:  Re: Steve Cohen on MS' saying its the bugs
> >     Date:  Wed, 11 Nov 1998 11:41:52 -0500 (EST)
> >    From:  Richard C Frank <rcf@world.std.com>
> > Reply-To: antitrust@essential.org
> >      To: Multiple recipients of list ANTITRUST <antitrust@essential.org>
> >
> >
> >First, as a software engineer, I can say that after reading the
> >assessment of the QuickTime "bugs" , that the whole situation does seem
> >like deliberate obfuscation on the part of Microsoft.
> >
> >First, there is the funny issue of the file extension ".qt". What the
> >heck is a ".qt" file? As far as I know, Quicktime files are ".mov" files.
> >I've never seen a ".qt" file.
> >
> >Second, the installer requires undocumented registry settings. It is
> >alleged that Apple knew of these settings. So, making plugins work with
> IE
> >requires knowledge of undocumented registry keys? What if MS decided that
> >little ol' me doesn't have enough bargaining chips for them to tell me
> >about these keys? It means that I won't be able to get my plugin to work,
> >and it will be "my fault".
> >
> >The writing of plugins that compete with MS plugins becomes a "little
> >club" where only "dues paying" members can play.
> >
> >
> >MS and the "third party" explanations may be "correct", but they
> >actually bring this "little private club" to light, and I hope
> >Apple and other independent SW folks point this out so that the non
> >technical types aren't baffled by the BS.
> >
> >In essence, as I understand it, this is an example of Microsoft
> >"withholding APIs" (the undocument registry keys) from third parties
> >(regardless of whether they allowed Apple the privilege of knowledge of
> >the key settings) in order to stifle competition.
> >
> > Rick
> >
> >
> >--
> >James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
> >P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
> >202.387.8030; f 202.234.5176
> >http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org

-----
Message-ID: <3611B26F.FDFDA2A4@cptech.org>
From: James Love <love@cptech.org>
To: ABA Antrtrust List <AT-MEMBERS@ABANET.ORG>
Subject: Maxtor Hard Drives that won't work without Windows 
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 20:24:15 -0800
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2232.9)

Maxtor Diamond Max Hard Drive requires 
           that consumer buys Windows


Today I was in Best Buy, a consumer electronics store in Arlington,
Virginia, and I saw three large but inexpensive Maxtor Diamond Max Hard
drives for sale.  They were 10, 11.5 and 13.6 gigabytes.  What was odd
was a notice on the packaging that the drives required Windows 95.  The
shrink wrapped boxes said the following:

         "System Requirements."

      Installing as Boot drive (Primary Master) 
      requires full installation set of Windows 95 
      or higher (not upgrade).

      Installing as non-Boot drive (Primary Slave, 
      Secondary Master or Slave) requires that 
      Windows 95 or higher be installed on the 
      Boot drive.

I had never seen this for hard drives, but it seems to be a trend with
other types of hardware.  Now we have "Win Modems," "Win Printers," and
apparently, "Win Hard Drives," that only work with Microsoft Windows.  I
have no idea why or how Maxtor would create a hard drive that won't work
without Windows... and even more interesting, why would Maxtor design
the drive so it would not work with an upgrade version of Windows?  Does
MS pay Maxtor to do this?

   Jamie Love
   September 29, 1998


-- 
James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
202.387.8030; f 202.234.5176
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org