remember that the main purposes of the $300m advert campaign:

1) the comedy bits with seinfield helped lift the public approprobrium for gates (as a convicted cyber gangster / robber baron) by humanizing him – his philanthropy is the other component of that strategy

2) the riposte by msft customers – “I’m a PC” – helped hapless msft customers feel better about themselves (after the drivjng by apple and – let’s face it – the unavoidable buyer’s remorse with windows).

3) try to re-position the windows brand so that vista 2.0 has a fighting chance when it is reaunched (windows7) after a decade of debacle.

the campaign has achived some limited success with first two objectives – to save the reputation creator and the consumer – and it had had some middling success trying to rescue the prodpects of the product.

however, a full-on embrace of the mac by gates at macworld would demonstrate by deed not by word that msft is truly trying to atone for the sins if the past.

and the cool thing is that walking into the lions’ den doesn’t require an abject apology or a contrite confession …

just a demonstrated committment to doing business.

if msft can get past its myopia and false pride, it will be suprised just how much slack people are willing to cut it … even it’s ert-while blood enemies

but half-measures will convince no-one …

eg the shift in msie8 to defaulting to W3C standards needs to be buttressed by a shift to authentic (nit paid for) ISO standards for office (ie ODF as the default format) …,

… and macworld would be a great forum to announce such a conversion on the road to Damascus!

that kind of industry-shaking announcement (along with 100% parity for apps & services between mac & windows) would a significant step along the path of msft’s rehabilitation.

I would pay cash money for that show!

but msft just does not have the imagination or the guts to attempt something with that scope.

msft can’t figure out that they stand to make heaps of dough when macs break through into the enterprise in the same way that they have burst into consumer space (20%).