Slashdot Mirror
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
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...
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
I didn't know Microsoft had any control over that? I though it was these guys.
Amazing magic tricks
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 :)
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.
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)
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."
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.
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
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.
Check out Fire and Proteus. Both are tremendous IM clients... the only thing lacking from either - unfortunately - is file transfer. Proteus has this coming RSN, apparently.
> 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
so where's my fix? :o)
Right in front of you. It's called the Enter key
Seriously, though, you can use the entire Windows UI without touching the mouse (which is useful when my hamster's batteries die). Learn to love the keyboard.
"I think he was truly surprised at how little I cared about how big a market the Mac had" - Linus on Jobs
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)
What about Solaris x86 as well? I only see IE availble for Solaris SPARC.
Why are you running Solaris x86 on a machine that's perfectly capable of running Windows?
I think that's some of the reasoning behind not porting IE to Linux. Obviously, most of the compatibility layer for Unix is already done, but why encourage people to use an different OS on the hardware you 0wn?
IE 5 and OE 5 for Solaris are quite good. But AFAICT they were written to convince large organizations who already have a pile of Solaris/HPUX client boxes that it's safe to switch all their servers to IIS and start using features that are only supported in IE. Of course, how long the customers actually keep the Unix boxes after that, who knows. Must suck to be on that team, knowing that the most important thing you provide to Microsoft is a feature checkbox in the brochure....
I'm experimentally running Debian/SPARC woody on my Ultra 10 at work. Now that I have Evolution and a choice of konq and galeon, I'm mostly happy. But when I have to boot back into Solaris you can bet I'm going to be using IE5 and OE5 again.
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
...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]
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.
Seriously, though, you can use the entire Windows UI without touching the mouse (which is useful when my hamster's batteries die). Learn to love the keyboard.
I'd like to know the answer too (as using the keyboard isn't an answer).
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
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.
From 1997 to about 2000, Microsoft owned like $1.5M worth of non-voting shares. So they did kinda own some of it, but never had any influence (stock wise), over the company. It doesn't matter anyhoo, since M$ sold it all. It was all PR bull$#!t also, since what really mattered was
1) M$ signed a contract to support Mac Office/IE/OE for the next 5 years.
2) M$ gave Apple an *undisclosed sum of money* as an out of court settlement
3) M$ buys the non-voting stock as a public sign of good will
4) Apple stops prosecuting M$ for copying System 7, and stealing source code from the OS and Quicktime to develop Windows stuff. The third time M$ and Apple came to legal blows over stealing source.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
- 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.