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Microsoft to Continue Mac Support
rakeswell writes "Though Microsoft's five-year agreement to support some Microsoft applications on the Mac has come to a close, Microsoft announces that it will continue its support of the platform. This means that new versions of Office, IE, ODBC, and Palm synchronization will be made available for Mac OS X. Also, they intend to build in .NET support for the Mac, though Microsoft says that they do not intend to push .NET for Mac developers."
MS did this for OSX? I did not know that..
Free Mac Mini
When is Microsoft gonna bring these browsers into the year 2002?
The iMac is still bought by many people. Even die-hard techno-geeks are buying TiBooks and running Win2K in Virtual PC for the best of all worlds (Unix with a slick GUI and driver support, Win32 for Exchange and MS VPN, etc.). The G4 is slick looking, and people shell out $$ for them. Microsoft has every interest in keeping its fingers into everything out there, so of course they're going to support the Mac. Besides, this is ammo for their argument that they're not a monopoly - they're nice and work with everyone.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
When the hell has Microsoft ever supported me? I administer 150 NT workstations, 10 Win2k workstation, 3 Win2k servers, and 2 linux boxes, and I still have to find out how to do things through Google because Microsoft's support website sucks, both for navigation and content.
If this is what they mean by support, then I'd suggest the Mac folks could do better by hiring a few net-researchers instead.
"though Microsoft says that they do not intend to push .NET for Mac developers"
Well, duh...
Am I the only one who laughs hysterically when they hear the words ODBC and Mac in the same sentence. ODBC on the Mac-in-Trash is so broken its amusing. Mac ODBC doens't work unless you aren't actually using it...
Rule of Life Number 2: Remember, it can all go to hell at any minute. --Jimmy Buffet
Well...legaly, if they don't continue supporting and providing software for the mac platform they will get into trouble. So, they have no choice of doing so.
:)
Interestingly is to see how they keep their hand clean on this.
At least, the Mac BU team is really committed to the mac. They are really proving mac people with good software, even though it's MS software.
It would be interesting though to see what kind of limit MS put on the BU team.
Apple should hired all the BU team
This means that new versions of Office, IE, ODBC, and Palm synchronization will be made available for Mac OS X.
...and I will continue using Appleworks, Mozilla, and Palm Desktop, because I don't want to support MS any more than strictly necessary.
It's a shame that the Mac developers who put out stuff like Office:Mac are working for such an ethically bankrupt company. They do really good work.
--saint
Why do you think they are working so hard to get .Net ported to FreeBSD. Because then Mac X would only be a step away
I didn't know Microsoft had any control over that? I though it was these guys.
Amazing magic tricks
For telling us this breaking news several days after it was already on every news site you could think of.
Meanwhile, Microsoft will just become the meta-vendor for all desktops - Mac, Linux, foo
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
I can't believe this is making headlines. On top of the fact that Office & other Microsoft products for the Mac make them money, if Gates & Co. (publicly) abandoned the Mac it would just give the anti-trust crew more ammo & possibly create more lawsuits.
Having said that, however, I would like to see Redmond pick up the pace a bit with respect to their OS X support. I can't even drag & drop text within Word without it crashing on me, and IE's nice enough but still feels like a port without any polish (especially compared to OmniWeb, which to be fair has it's own problems).
-- "" - Harpo Marx
Let's think this through, OK?
.Net and capture and control the industry.
Scenario #1: Microsoft dumps Apple, focuses solely upon Windows. Courts notice behavior. Courts say "Now you are going too far with the monopoly thing, Mr. Sedaka, would you please do the honors?" (cue Breaking Up Is Hard To Do).
Meanwhile, a cadre of users are pissed, and start buying products other than Microsoft. The market for such products becomes large enough to be noticed, and somebody else moves in and starts making money. This Will Not Do.
Scenario #2: MS continues support for the Mac. As a result, most Mac users use IE, Word, Office, Excel, etc. for Mac. Competition in those areas is stifled.
In addition, MS can better spread their
Which course of action would YOU take?
www.eFax.com are spammers
It is actually in Microsoft's best interest to make Office X even if it wan't that profitable. Microsoft knows that Apple doesn't pose a threat to it's market share. By supporting Apple's OS they say to the courts that they're really not that bad.
Willy
Sometimes, I just do not understand these ppl! They go out of their way to steal technology (http://be.com) and rule the market, yet they continue to support their greatest competitor in the desktop market? Let's face it, no M$ Office on the Mac, and it is dead!
Then Greg Maffei gets an email from Gates saying smth like: 'You spent $150 million on what? 'Don't you listen? I said, 'Snapple!'
Microsoft makes as much money on Office for Mac as they do selling it for Windows. Who in their right mind would stop development?
Who moved my sig?
but is Microstuff's ever going to bring about some sort of Mac compatability for pocket PC's?
Gee, MS can either keep people locked into their proprietary document formats, or they can let a moderately sizable portion of the market escape and start promoting other formats. No-brainer there. Of course they're going to keep making Office/IE for Mac.
The only reason that I can see why they haven't already made Office/IE for Linux is that MS has a bug up their butt about the GPL. Don't be surprised if they release their lock-in magic for FreeBSD before long.
Supporting (or should that be "supporting") Apple is a big win for them in another way too, though, because a certain percentage of Apple users are going to realize that they're mostly using MS products, and are going to find the idea of a switch to an MS platform that much more palatable. Especially given the price advantage of the (admitedly flakey) commodity hardware platform.
What the Linux community needs to do in response (IMO) is also support OS/X as well as we can, so that we make Linux (and, by extension, the BSDs) another viable out for Mac users. And gain the sympathy of the more loyal Mac users, who will surely appreciate having more software (esp. free software) available for their platform.
I know that I'm brushing up my ObjC and starting to browse the GNUstep sites.
If only we can get Apple software support on the PC.
Entirely my fault because the advice is "read the article" which I did, but I also "read into" the article.
.NET is the growing digital interconnectedness of business and personal pursuits
.NET is the growing digital intercourse of business and personal pursuits
what it said:
The premise of
What I saw the first read:
The premise of
IOW: here they fscking go again.
Oh, and this gem in the comments:
Mac ODBC doens't work unless you aren't actually using it...
MMmmph, snort, ahahahahhhhaaa.
Yeah, my car doesn't work when I don't use it, either.
/me reaches for a cluebyfour
Naaah, you'd just duck.
.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
I thought .net was supposed to be platform independant, so what does that have to do with developing for mac?
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
Translation:
"As long as we can use the Mac version of MS Office as a cudgel to beat you with, you will continue to do everything we tell you to. There's no need to extend the contract."
Seriously... would Apple even dare to put Netscape back into Mac OS? All they have to do is merely think about it and Microsoft would start threatening them. Ditto for web services, media services, and whatever market Microsoft wants to park its steamroller in on any particular day.
Apple really ought to make an effort to get OpenOffice working really, really well as a native Mac OS X application. Then they should use the Mozilla technology to integrate a web browser into the Finder. If done well enough (and we know how good Apple is at desktop stuff), they could make Microsoft irrelevant on the Macintosh platform -- and then they wouldn't have to let Bill push them around anymore.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Of course, even so, Macs are not suitable for Serious Business Use.
Hmm. Judging from some of the responses I got to this, I should have used explicit sarcasm tags.
I support Macs for a college -- I'm well aware that they are perfectly suited to anything that a typical office requires. I just think it's sort of odd that a reliable computer with quality hardware, a pretty much crashproof OS that's Unix-based to boot, and the best office suite on the market is usually dismissed out of hand as being for "graphics and stuff."
Serious Business Use [tm] is not a problem, but Macs have an unjust reputation as being too lightweight to handle it.
--saint
Also, they intend to build in .NET support for the Mac, though Microsoft says that they do not intend to push .NET for Mac developers." .NET.
People tend to forget that OSX has its own framework - the one based on OpenStep. This is also represented on Linux as GNUStep. Mewonders exactly what Mickey is trying to achieve wihh
No, not really. The only portions of .NET that MS was concerned about with the FreeBSD port was the server parts... none of the windowing classes were ported at all. From this article, it sounds like MS intends to support the OTHER half of .NET for Macs (for client applications.)
Maybe a cross-platform(ish) MS-created API framework, particularly one that will be Windows-native? Having one "framework" on a OS does not mean that there are not room for others. What's your point?
You might also call Java a "framework."
The primary competition for Access is a spreadsheet, QPro.
Access has to pull the entire database file over the network for each transaction. Access is a piece of shit.
If microsoft ever closes MBU, Apple will grab all their developers, and probably buy the source code too.
http://www.pocketmac.net
They have file sync now, Entourage sync coming soon. Works in OS 9 and X.
-- Chris Martin, System Administrator
The reason that people do not call Microsoft or even know about sometimes is because (from what I read) it is very expensive to get help from Microsoft. They do have a pretty good knowledge base, if you know how to search it, but other than that, it is not practical to call them for support.
Also, they intend to build in .NET support for the Mac, though Microsoft says that they do not intend to push .NET for Mac developers.
Almost makes me want to switch to a Mac.
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
It is well documented that Apple has had to give up a lot of it's technology to Microsoft in the past to get Microsoft to write for the Mac.
Examples:
Excel - bye bye the much superior MacBasic.
MS Word 1.0 - Microsoft gets original look and feel license that eventually provides grounds to torpedo the famous lawsuit.
The mentioned 5 year agreement - Apple licenses a crapload of patents to Microsoft.
Now we have this. What will we see as a result? Apple drpping Quicktime in favor of Windows Media Player?
I am SURE that Microsft would not miss the opportunity to extract it's pound of flesh.
Ugh. I'm reminded of some article I read on The Register, I think. (I don't have a URL for it, sorry. If someone jumps on me about it I guess I could find it.) It was about Windows Media Player for XP and the fact that whenever you stuck in a new DVD it would query Microsoft about it to get the name of it, etc., but also bring back a cookie with a unique identifier for that copy of WMP. Microsoft responded to an email someone concerned about this sent them. They said to turn this feature off, you should go into IE and tell it to block all cookies.
Now, without even mentioning the fact that that is the most idiotic way to turn off a feature I've ever heard of, it shows what integration can do. If I ever have to go into into Mozilla and turn off something useful so iTunes doesn't cause my modem to dial into the 'net whenever I stick a CD in I'm going to investigate RISC.
The Finder is the Finder. Please, just leave well enough alone.
--
Visit the Angband Comic! http://www.midcoast.com/~jcole/
moer liek CELtroid prime!!@1!
Why should Microsoft not continue selling software for MacOS? They seem to make good money from it. As long as they will make cash from writing MacOS software, they will do it. And I am sure Microsoft would not hesitate to write Linux software as soon it was profitable for them. After all, it's just capitalism.
With MS Office on every OSX Mac it's a trivial matter for the MS account rep to come in and say - move your hardware from this Apple stuff, move across to Windows XP on i386.. It's ok - your users don't have to learn anything new.
Evil ZEN Scientist
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
Why would Microsoft push for Mac users and developers in any way? They could just provide enough functionality in .NET to bring users back into the "chosen" OS. .NET appears for mac, so people start to go to .NET as a standard. Once this has happened MS can be sure to keep the mac version at least one step behind MS so in frustration people will have little chose but to realize the error of their ways.
support.microsoft.com is quite nice. Or check out the developer docs; there's usually resource kits on the MSDN discs.
I've never been at a loss for info when solving a Windows problem. Hell, I tend to have too much info (I'll have five solutions to my problem, and only one of them is my real problem) and waste time fixing stuff that's not broken.
Say what you will about the stability of their software, but the documentation is superb.
Will wonders never cease.
A company that holds a monpoly position in a highly profitable market segment decides to keep selling into that market, without in any way threatening their other monopoly markets.
Economists everywhere are in an uproar.
Also in the news, the version of the monopoly product in the market the company does not control will continue to lack desirable, nay, vital features found in the version that they sell into the market they do control.
Pundits agree that such a daring and novel business method should be protected by a patent.
> The development environment on OS/X is quite bad...
Bzzt. Wrong.
There are a few different development environments available for OS X. Not the least of which is a full GNU toolchain (actually the NATIVE toolchain) and it ships on a CD with each and every copy of OS X. Carbon and Coca are supported by a very nice IDE (also on the same CD). If you really must, there is also a Metroworks IDE and toolchain, which is one of the best around.
Having come from Linux (since Linux 0.95!), I'm right at home developing on OS X. Having used a pile of different IDEs, Project Builder is very fine piece of work, RAD tools and all.
J
What you've said is total BS and the comments betray a total lack of knowledge about Mac OS X! Mac OS X is the ULTIMATE platform for development. It not only has two APIs (Carbon and Cocoa) a Java VM is built-in. Moreover, the development tools come free when either buy the OS for a Mac or when you buy a Mac. Trolltech recently ported QT to Mac OS X so it's a possibility that Qt apps under KDE can be ported. Even more so, several languages have be ported over also, including several Object Oriented programming languages. Check out this URL to see the programming tools for Mac OS X (http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development _tools/)
This means that new versions of Office, IE, ODBC, and Palm synchronization will be made available for Mac OS X.
Since when was Palm a Microsoft application?
-- iCEBaLM
That's pretty funny, and I'm sure it's not because I'm stoned out of my gourd right now. ;-)
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
I bought my first iBook 2 days ago, in order to get a stable portable. And lo and behold, wouldn't you know it, yesterday I found myself installing Windows Media Player and using IE. As much as we can whinge about MS and WMP, I've never been able to get QT to play in anything but a QT player, so that's just as bad when it comes to propietary apps.
I would do without Office except Endnote (http://www.endnote.com) does not support automatic citations in AppleWorks.
The reason there is no Office for Linux is that there is no market for it. Linux is used mainly by whiny pimple-faced idiots who hate Microsoft and hate paying for things they get so pretend that it is somehow their right not to.
No company has been successful selling Linux products and that's why MS hasn't bothered to either.
It's rubbish. Even GNOME Nautilus (and Nautilus is no speed demon) is faster on a P3-500 than OSX's Finder is on a 550MHz G4 (384MB RAM).
Apple have relied on the initial, great design for OS9 for so long that when they attempt to build something 'better', they just end up with a slow, bloated pile of crap.
Seriously, OS9, Windows 2000/XP and Linux/Xfree86 beat the crap out of MacOS X for performance and functionality.
They don't look as nicely-put-together in some respects, but neither do they force you to wait watching a spinning beach-ball for anything like as long. It just feels clumsy, every action requiring a small delay due to abysmal redraw speed. Not direct and snappy like it should feel.
I've frozen my plans to purchase more Macs for the staff at my business because Apple can't even get it to run well on a G4 Powerbook. And this is just the OS! Attempt to actually run a couple of applications and performance drops still further.
Office on the Mac? Great, but don't think my users would appreciate the sluggishness of the Mac compared to a cheaper, faster x86 desktop.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Yeah, but isn't MS part owner of Apple?
Since MacOS X is so Unix/Linux/BSD-like I imagine/assume/presume there is at least some parallell effort on porting Office et al. to Unix/Linux/BSD as well (even if very, very secret).
Fox Pro had an early start on the Mac back in 1987. Previous versions were MSDOS dBASE clones. I'm not sure, but Fox Base may have been the first WIMP-based (Windows Icon Menu Pointer) DBMS.
I know that Fox Pro was gobbled up by MS and became MS FoxPro, which begat Access, yadda yadda... So you might be able to make the case that Access also had some Macintosh in its heritage.
Of course, I hate "Mac did it first" posts, so somebody mod me down okay? =)
-----
My father is a blogger.
If Apple dies, there will be even more anti-trust shit for them to deal with. And M$ know that Apple isn't real competition, so why not help them stay afloat, to make it look like there is some competition. And maybe while everyone's applauding their decency, they can get some more DRM garbage through a back door to shut Linux out of their big fat market...
...is similar in its demands to the GNU GPL, just waay stricter. Another argument that M$ doesn't dislike the GPL for the reasons they say they dislike it. Anyway...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Elsewhere someone stated that Excel and Word both started on the Mac and someone else (the parent I hope?) said that Access was the only major MS product not introduced initially on the mac.
Not being a MS expert, I yield to your superior knowledge regarding the lack of continuity between Fox Pro and Access 1.1. I had assumed that they were much more closely related.
Thankfully, I didn't have to use Access until 2000.
Who knows what kind of ancestors you have. My uncle claims I am decended from Dutch immigrants who settled in America in the early 1700s. Sadly, I have no idea what kind of DBMS system they used.
-----
My father is a blogger.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/
More support information than you'll ever need. Oh, you need still MORE information? Perhaps you're then not the right person who should admin these boxes.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Paradox, Excel maps to Quatro Pro.
Quatro Pro's a spread sheet, not a mini database.
under Linux as well? Mac OS X bases somthing on FreeBSD. So would'nt it be great to run IE/Mac or Office/Mac on Linux? I thought the Mac Api was simple. So that may be easier than Wine...
First up, Apple (and I better be right about this) will never integrate a browser into its OS.
1) Steve is against it (good)
2) It's crap. Good for browsing the web, bad for browsing my hard drive.
Now, the browser wars on OSX. Omniweb's winning. The latest version of OW is faster than just about everything except Opera (which can't do anything). Mozilla still has some CSS issues (hoping they'll be worked out by 1.0) and it's UI is crap. IE and Omniweb load the fastest, and OW even loads some pages correctly that IE doesn't. Now OW runs all the java apps I need correctly, and if they can just get some Javascript issues worked out it'll be flawless. That, and tabbed browsing.
OpenOffice.
I'd start using it if it can read word doc's, do everything entourage can, do everything excel can, do everything powerpoint can, and do 1/3rd of the things word can. Oh yeah, and run with a superb GUI that blends in with OSX (like MS Office). Really, All of the office X apps are the best in their categories (Except Microsoft Messenger). I don't see anything on the current market that would make me consider switching...
Just be thankful nobody uses MSN.
Of course Microsoft will continue to support the Apple OS. I remember reading that Micro$oft produces more Apple software than anyone except Apple.
Their big sellers are, of course, Office, and IE.
But will you ever see Office for Unix or linux?If Gates, Ballmer and crew wanted to kill Lindows, it could do it by releasing an Office version for Unix and Linux. Of course that would strengthen the main argument against linux, the weakness of the desktop. Yes, I believe in the tooth fairy too, and that Teddy Kennedy was familiar with the roads on that Island.
Rehabilitated journalist and web builder No electrons were harmed during the creation of this mess
Works quite well, I wish Real would take note - it's a pain having to wait for Classic to load up to access realmedia material, which does't work too well in the background under classic
- The argument that there is real competition in desktop OSes gets a LOT weaker, thereby undermining M$'s defense in the anti-trust suit;
- The mere fact that M$ stops supporting the Mac (or even neglecting to provide
.NET support for it) will undermine M$'s position in the antitrust suit because the remaining (sane) states will argue even harder that M$ should be broken up because these would be continuing actions attempting to cement a 100% monopoly on the desktop by using M$'s market power in office applications to undermine Apple; and
- M$ will have no one left to imitate.
I can't wait for my new TiBook to arrive -- it will be a M$-free environment that I can use at work now that everything I need in my office is webified. I see my productivity going up substantially now that my work will not be constantly interrupted by the Blue Screen of Death.Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
the Mac platform? It works well. It's very easy for beginners and it has a lot of commercial application support *as well as* the ability to run X11 and command line unix tools. It is a good marriage of the world of an easy to use GUI and ball breaking unix configurability.
If Apple was smart, they'd cut a deal with Microsoft to make .NET a peer of Java on MacOS X -- Support Cocoa bindings, but also provide native look-n-feel for cross-platform apps.
The only incident I have had issues with is with much older technology (SQL Server 6.5) recently when I was looking up a stored procedure issue I was programming and ended up on another vendor's site finding the resolution through google!
My greatest fear of M$'s knowledgebase is that they will continue to only put in there what they deem to be 'valid' for users, and keep some important information to themselves.
Note that I used to work at Apple's tech support years ago, and it was amazing how much stuff they kept internally that we weren't allowed to release to the public.
What a complete and utter piece of shit. Has anyone else tried using AppleWorks? It's unstable as hell, it has almost no advanced features, there are no foreign language dictionaries, its RTF support is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life, its table formatting is egregious, and the whole thing stinks of "cheap Microsoft ripoff". Now, I'm not saying that Word is much better, but at least it has good RTF support, excellent formatting, and some extra useless features like 3D text. And while it does crash occasionally, it's much better than AppleWorks (and, I imagine, it's more stable on the Mac platform than on the Windows platform).
To tell you the truth, the only reason I use Word instead of WordPerfect (the ultimate in word processing) is because of Outlook, and the fact that for some reason on my last box (albeit running W98SE and using an earlier version of WordPerfect) I had some really bad crashing problems. But, whatever. It's your choice.
[insert witty comment here]
"If MS were to cancel a very profitable line of software running on a competitor's OS for no apparent reason."
No, the honorable Judge Jackson declared that Mac OS is NOT a competitor of Windows. He claims that this ruling is based on the fact that the OSes run on different processors. In reality, he made this declaration so that he could more easily declare Windows to be a monopoly product.
Since a court has officially found that Mac OS does not compete with Windows, there would be no legal problem if MS dumped Mac support.
I assume that by "M$" you refer to Microsoft.
A. MS never stole anything from Be.
B. MS supports Mac because it is a profitable platform (unlike your precious Be).
Now, move along.
Your hero Judge Jackson delcared that Mac and Windows are not competitors, so your arguments hold no water.
This does not mean it is more profitable...
As most have pointed out already, Office:Mac is not a port of standard MS Office for PC. it is a complete rewrite from scratch that has the same file format, and menus. This increases cost of development to approximately same cost as the PC Version.
Considering that more retail boxes of MS Office for PC are sold each year than Office:Mac, and on top fo that, MS sells bundles to large OEM's (dell, gateway, etc), your point is utter bullshit..
go back to Amazon and clikc on "Business & Office" and then "Office suites" and look at the top FUCKING 10:
Top 10 Office Suites
Please sit down and STFU n00b.
All you mac zealots are exactly the fucking same. Learn to do research before you spout your mac zealotry. You fucking idoiot.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
MOD the parent UP!
Oh, and BTW, OS X 10.1 is NOT snappy. Do you not understand the concept of time? I mean COME ON!
Sure, its better than OS X 10.0. But that ain't saying much at all.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Nowhere on that Amazon page does it say it's ranking software.
! !! !
Star Office beats Office XP?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
And your list doesn't even jibe with the earlier poster's list, which WERE an actual ranking of top selling titles; Office v.X Upgrade first, then v.X Full, then AppleWorks, then Office 2001.
> All you mac zealots are exactly the fucking same. Learn to do research before you spout your mac zealotry. You fucking idoiot.
So much anger. So much ignorance. What a scary combination. Maybe if you had bothered to do your own research before posting, you wouldn't have looked like such a horse's ass.
If M$ somehow stopped Office and it somehow hurt Apple, then M$ would have another suit against them and even more chance of being split into two companies: Office and Windows.
In reality, M$ can't kill Apple so there is no point giving up revenue to try.
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
N/T
4D is a rad/rdms which is better than access.
that's just one, but it's a biggie.