You seem to see this from an straight economic point of view when it's not. At the time Microsoft was in the middle of its worst monopolistic practices, doing everything it could to eliminate competition by any means necessary.
Losing Office, by far the best office suite for the Mac, would have been a serious blow to Apple. So Apple used its winning position in the suit to force Microsoft to continue to support Office for the Mac. Otherwise, Microsoft could have easily absorbed those millions in lost potential sales (while saving on the dev staff) in order to hurt Apple. Apple risked Microsoft doing that just to hurt the competition in the first place, and IMHO Microsoft would have dropped Office for the Mac out of revenge if Apple had pushed the case to trial and won
While Apple had a strong legal case and thus won the settlement, it was still vulnerable to the machinations of Microsoft. Thus Apple settled for a relative pittance and allowed a lot of face-saving for Microsoft in order to secure Office and essentially unspoken protection. This face-saving is what makes it not look like an Apple win.
I wouldn’t go that far. As has been pointed out by others on the thread MS didn’t threaten to pull Office until after Apple dragged them into the suit, and given the time between the agreement and the shipping of Mac Office 98 it’s clear it was already in development before the settlement happened. I agree pulling Office would have seriously injured Apple, heck I’ve even said it in this thread. But you can’t really say that Apple used it’s winning position in the suit to keep Office since the threat to pull Office didn’t happen until after Apple brought MS into the suit
The real gain Apple got on that front wasn’t the continued development of Mac Office, it was the public statement (with legal enforcement) that Mac Office would continue to exist for a few years, enough for probably two versions (as it is I think 3 came out during the agreement window).
I don’t think there was an face saving, I don’t think anyone needed any face saving. This deal basically ended the feud that had existed since the GUI suit and did so in a way that made everybody money, nobody was losing face so nobody needed to save it. It looks like an Apple win to me, their market share stopped eroding (not just because of this deal but it helped) and put them in a position for the building of this decade. And MS made a bunch of money so clearly they won too. I’m not much of a follower of The Church of The Donald (Trump) but in his first book he does have one brilliant observation: deals only happen when both sides think it’s a win for them. The past decade demonstrates that indeed this deal was a win for both sides.