Microsoft's penance: after five years, I've got a few demands.

AUGUST 7 MARKS THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE Historic Boston Accords. In 1997--after a spectacular lunch (which put four waiters in the hospital with repetitive strain injuries) at the Four Seasons

Hotel--Apple's and Microsoft's representatives, logy and eager to end the meeting so they could go back to their rooms and sleep off the meal, grudgingly agreed that maybe it was counterproductive to be putting as much money and manpower into their mutual lawsuits as NASA put into the entire Apollo program. They also agreed that Internet Explorer would become the Mac's default browser and that Microsoft would start making some decent Mac software.

(Oh, and there was some sort of blurb about Microsoft buying $150 million in Apple stock. But hell, Microsoft knew that the largest software company in the world would be making a splashy announcement by committing to the Mac platform. This way, the investment looked more like a brave symbol of industry solidarity and less like insider trading. I'm perfectly aware that Bill Gates would last al)out 12 minutes in prison, and so is Bill.)

It worked out well for both parties. In 1997, Apple's biggest problem was its (wholly false) public image as a company that was circling the drain. Microsoft's was the absurd notion that it was a corporate mega-bully that sought to crush other companies, and ultimately all of humanity, underneath its hobnailed boot heel, with the long-term goal of building a fleet of interstellar-class warships to explore the galaxy in search of intelligent alien civilizations managing to lead productive lives without paying Microsoft any licensing fees. But within weeks of the momentous agreement, analysts and the public were giving Apple the credibility it deserved. And Microsoft--then as now battling antitrust suits--could point to a high-profile independent alternative to Windows.

The past five years have been good for Mac users, too. It's hard to look at Microsoft's Mac offerings today and believe they come from the same company that released Microsoft Word 6 way back when. Microsoft used to make Mac products just good enough so that the company logo would stick to the box.

Thank goodness that these days, the Macintosh Business Unit floats inside its own bubble at Microsoft, attracting some of the best people from some of the Mac's best software and hardware developers. This group has pulled off the neat trick of making the OS X edition of Office equal to the Windows edition but distinct in and of itself. Explorer for Macintosh is the best browser available on any platform, and updates to MSN Messenger and Windows Media software have made it clear that Microsoft builds Mac products as though the company dominated the marketplace by a factor of only 10, not 17.

Hooray?