Today’s announcement that Microsoft is releasing OneNote for Mac has caught me by surprise.
The surprise is about the timing and the fact that OneNote is available in the Mac App Store. The fact that Microsoft has released this software free of charge and only a few weeks after Satya Nadella was named its CEO says a lot about Apple-Microsoft good relationship.
With the release of OneNote for Mac, Microsoft acknowledges the importance of the Apple ecosystem for its own survival. Ignoring it would mean losing billions of dollars in potential revenue.
If Microsoft’s interest is clear, Apple’s is more subtle. Apple is not publicly declaring its love for Microsoft, but the signs are all there. Apple’s problem is Google, which incidentally is the same problem that Microsoft has. By joining forces with Microsoft, and its foothold in the enterprise market, Apple can slow down Google’s rise.
Speaking about apps, it’s curious that both OneNote and more notably OneDrive are distributed via the Mac App Store. This is a sign that the two companies are willing to put aside anachronistic rivalries and work together for their customers’ benefit.
For OneDrive in particular, it’s significant that it is the only file sync application distributed (allowed by Apple?) through this channel. Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, SugarSync and Amazon Drive are only available from the respective company websites.
This is not a small thing. It’s common knowledge that in order to add the little green checkmarks on the synced files, all these companies basically have to reverse-engineer the Finder. The fact that Apple turned a blind eye when Microsoft submitted OneDrive to the App Store says a lot about the good relationship between the two companies.
At this point, I would not be surprised to see Bing being replaced as the default search engine in iOS 8 and Microsoft Office for iPad being released very soon. For all its past deeds, Microsoft is still a reliable, powerful and knowledgeable software company. Having it on Apple’s side is a good thing.