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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."
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.
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
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
Use Mozilla :)
You touched on a valid point. The mac versions of MS apps are usually nicer, and sometimes more feature laden than their windows counterparts. The MBU (Mac Business Unit) at MS are some of the best mac programmers around, truly. They are honest macheads trying and succeeding at making quality software. Too bad that their contracts probably prevent them from leaving en masse and forming their own company to compete in the Mac software market.
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
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.
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.
Don't be naive....they make plenty of money, and that's why they stay there.
"Of course, even so, Macs are not suitable for Serious Business Use."
well, I guess that would depend on your business now, wouldnt it? I currently work for a hardware company which deals mainly in hp and sun servers. our office is windows only, except me. I do all the web work and perl programming, but i also do support for all of the office PCs. As far as pure usage goes, I have no problems communicating with anyone in the office, with the sole exception of access, which has no mac client/solution at this point. Hopefully the MBU will get to work on that. Anyway, my point is, if you are running a wintel workplace, it really isnt that hard to integrate macs into the workplace. if you run an all *nix office, it might be even easier, although i havent had the pleasure of finding out yet.
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
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.
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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
I always thought it was funny that the only element of Office that _didn't_ start on the Mac is Access, which is widely derided for being such a complete and utter piece of shit
Name one desktop RDBMS with front end that comes even close to being as good as access (and don't say fileMaker, it's about as relational as DbaseII
The problem with access is that there are idiots out there at attempt to run their web sites off it.
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/)
If Microsoft hadn't won the look-n-feel lawsuit that Apple initiated against them, Microsoft wouldn't have been able to spend the money to set up the legal precedent that they established by winning the case.
Basically, if Microsoft hadn't spent the money on legal muscle that they did, Apple would have crushed anybody trying to come out with a modern graphical desktop for Linux. One of the ironies of Microsoft winning the lawsuit that they paid for the right of everybody else to copy them. Without plowing this legal ground, Windows design elements such as were/are used in Linux desktops (i.e. the 'X' in the right corner to close windows) would not be free. Free Software developers would be fighting the 375 pound pig (Apple) in the legal arena, instead of the 800 pound gorilla (Microsoft) in the marketing arena.
Apple is No Friend of free software.
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.