Maples, Mike2011-06-152011-06-152004-05-07Mike Maples, OH 387. Oral history interview by Nathan Ensmenger, 7 May 2004, Needham, Massachusetts. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. http://purl.umn.edu/107465OH 387https://hdl.handle.net/11299/107465Transcript, 29 pp.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.en-USComputer historyComputer software -- Development.Computer software industryInternational Business Machines Corporation.Microsoft Corporation.Microsoft Office.Microsoft software.Oral History