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From: Steve Jobs
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 98 07:56:06 -0800
To: Bill Gates
Subject: QuickTime

Bill,

The Microsoft / Apple relationship seems to be progressing well. Working on Office 98 with Ben Waldman and his team has been especially productive. We are investing a lot of our marketing dollars to push Office 98 and I think it will pay off for both of our companies.

There is one thing that threatens to be quite divisive, and that is the Microsoft NetShow team's recent behavior. They are really going out of their way to say that they intend to kill QuickTime, and are being quite threatening and rude about it. Apple will need to recirocate in kind if this behavior keeps up. For example, we have already decided that we will not allow NetShow to be bundled with IE 4.0 on Macintosh.

I think we both want our relationship to broaden to encompass many areas, such as productivity apps, browsers, java, object models, etc. Invariably there will be a few areas where we don't agree and compete. My very strong opinion is that our overall relationship will be much healthier if we each behave with restraint towards each other in these few competitive areas. For example, you don't hear Apple trashing Windows, do you? If you did, you might feel the same way we now feel hearing the NetShow group trashing QuickTime.

We intend to fight and win with QuickTime, and I hope this honest and proper effort doesn't meet with down and dirty tactics and tough rhetoric from the NetShow group – it could really tarnish our entire, budding relationship.

Best,
Steve