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."

Comments

Re:Palm?

[kossico]

Well, I'm not sure what you mean but you might be confused. MS has not done this is as of yet, but they are working on it. And they don't mean just palm synchronization in general (which you'd use Palm Desktop 4.0 for) but a conduit for MS Entourage for OS X - to synchronize all your contacts and what not held in that application.

Hope that helps!

"If PacMan had affected us as kids we'd be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to electronic music"

Products.

[saintlupus]

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

Re:Products.

[zephc]

Exactly. I don't think most /. readers understand how almost totally autonomous the MBU is from the rest of MS. They're weak push for .NET on the Mac I think is a bit of a busines decision, because that would mean Office .NET could be ported with little difficulty (assuming Office .NET is written using the CLI/.NET Runtime)

Re:Products.

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm I think he was being sarcastic?
All MS office apps except the execrable Access started on Mac...
He has one...
The use of gratuituous capitalization in Serious Business Use to indicate something people repeat because they've heard that not because it's their own conclusion from experience.,,

A big sloppy You're Welcome from the folks at Sacasm Detection Incorporated.

Re:Products.

[TotallyUseless]

My point exactly. For generic office work a mac is just as good as a pc, and generally has the same apps available. When it comes to word processing, excel, powerpoint, and the rest of the office apps, the main difference at this point is the mac versions are slightly more polished. Part of the problem probably comes from in-house visual basic apps. While there is no way to natively run these apps, virtual pc can always be employed, even tho it is a kludge. Or you could use Real Basic which is great for producing the same types of apps as visualbasic, but has the bonus of being able to compile for mac and windows.

Re:Products.

[Elwood P Dowd]

They said in the article that they're not going to port Access. It'd be too much work, and they feel like FileMaker already ownz the Mac desktop DB market. The speaker suggested that it would take the entire MacBU about 2 and a half years to port.

Re:Products.

[connorbd]

Even Big Bill was, at the beginning.

Thing is, Microsoft needs those people there. To those of you who only jumped on the bandwagon with OS X, you've probably been only passingly familiar with the monstrosity that was Word 6. It was pretty much a straight port of Word 95 (or so I've heard) and was one of the worst recieved Mac apps ever; MS created the MacBU not long after that and junked the compatibility layer.

The end result is that Mac users who do use Microsoft Office get a product created by die-hard Mac addicts for die-hard Mac addicts, and the result is polished, functional software that has been getting grudging raves (as in "it's so bad, but it feels so good") ever since Office 98 came out. I don't use it myself -- I rarely even use IE unless I need to view a java page (Mozilla is my regular browser). But those who use it are using good software.

Just another excuse for us Macheads to laugh at PC users :-)

/Brian

Re:Products.

[alangmead]

Then its a shame they didn't buy Filemaker when they had the chance. Filemaker and Powerpoint were both published by Forethought, Inc. Microsoft bought Forethought in 1987, but Filemaker was sold back to its original developers, Nashoba Systems.

Of course, the mac desktop database market was a bit crouded then. Besides Filemaker, there was MS File, Acius' 4D, Ashton-Tate's dBase Mac, Omni III, Borland's Reflex. And that was also right about the time that Apple was about the time Apple was distributing Hypercard with every mac, pretty much destroying the Mac database market (Can you believe they tried calling Hypercard "System Software" in order to distribute it with the OS?)

palm?

[rnd()]

and Palm synchronization

I didn't know Microsoft had any control over that? I though it was these guys.

Re:palm?

[AnamanFan]

Well, your partly correct. Palm did have to create the software for HotSync to work natively on OS X before any OS X compatability would be possiable. But now Palm put out the software for OS X so they are all cleared.

Now it is MS's responsibility to make the conduit that connects Entoruge with the new version of HotSync. Now, weither or not MS creates the programing in-house, or contracts it out like the PC version, I don't know.

Course, I could be wrong. Any one care to correct if I am?

Re:Obvious (?) reasons

[smagoun]

This is OT, but you mentioned MS VPN support. While MS doesn't produce a Mac VPN client, there are a pair of PPTP clients that just popped up for OS X. They support CHAP/CHAPv2 authentication, and one of them even works with classic:

DigiTunnel

PiePants

Re:Office on Apple is good because

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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

Re:palm?

[clontzman]

You are; MS has never made a HotSync coduit for either Outlook or Entourage on the PC or the Mac. There are a few third parties that make conduits to do this, but the pigs will be flying before MS even considers supporting Palm, which not only competes with them, but is _winning_ in the handheld market. Not true. Office 2001 for the Mac (which includes Entourage) installs MS-produced conduits for the HotSync manager that allows the Palm to sync with Entourage.

Re:Translation

[TheAJofOZ]

Sorry to burst you bubble, but Office for Mac is not written specifically for the Mac. I don't know about the entire suite, but I am certain that Excel is written as platform idependent code. There is an underlying interface that allows the code to be run on the mac, but it is based off the same code as the windows version.

Wrong, the entire sweet is specifically written for Mac. Of course there will be code reuse, but none of it is a port of the windows version nor is it specifically designed to be used for both. To prove this to yourself look at a) incompatible file formats between the mac and windows versions (not including Office vX) b) the difference in features between platforms. The mac business unit is a separate division of MS that creates it's own products.