Orah history interview with Mike Maples

Abstract

After describing his substantial career at IBM where he was involved in display products and then with PCs, Mike Maples talks about joining Microsoft and managing its applications products. He discusses in detail his management philosophy at Microsoft and contrasts it with the IBM approach. He covers Microsoft’s successful recruiting practices and how product decisions were made. Maples also describes how development processes evolved and how Microsoft Office was designed and built. The selection of platform focus and decisions on the release of application program interface information are explained. Finally, he details why he left Microsoft and how he did so in a planned and structured fashion.