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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.
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
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?
AnamanFan - Trying to find the Truth, one post at a time.
Then Greg Maffei gets an email from Gates saying smth like: 'You spent $150 million on what? 'Don't you listen? I said, 'Snapple!'
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.
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
As a Mac user, I really hope they don't. OpenOffice is awful compared to the Mac version of Office and OO is being developed to be cross platform and then ported. Office for Mac is written specifically for the Mac. I don't want crappy ported software that looks like it belongs on Windows, I want good Mac software (same argument applies in reverse when I'm using my Windows box btw).
Then they should use the Mozilla technology to integrate a web browser into the Finder.
Again, please don't. Mozilla is awful - it makes no attempt to fit in with Mac OS and advertises that fact as one of it's features (customizable interface - does that sound like a Mac experience to you?). Mozilla fits in really well with Linux with it's customizability and it's general look and feel of the interface, but it does not fit into Mac OS. It's saving grace however may be Chimera (or some similar name) which is taking the Mozilla engine and putting a proper OS X interface on it using native widgets (not just trying to simulate them).
If done well enough (and we know how good Apple is at desktop stuff), they could make Microsoft irrelevant on the Macintosh platform
Microsoft has no power on the Macintosh platform - we use their products because they happen to be good, not because we need to. AppleWorks is an excellent office alternative which reads and writes Office files. Mac users have already shown that if MS puts out a bad version of Office they are happy to either not upgrade or switch to AppleWorks - it happened when Word 6.0 came out as a Windows port instead of a real Mac version.
Basically, Mac users are picky about their user interfaces, that's what makes the Mac platform so much easier to use - anything that doesn't conform to the human interface guidlines is hammered in reviews and given really bad publicity all over the place, resulting in really poor sales. Mac users don't want Windows software and they don't want Linux software, they want Mac software that looks *and feels* like Mac software, just looking the same does not cut it.
How can you say something like this? If Apple puts resources in to making OO run great on OSX, why would you complain about that? Or, perhaps you don't like choice, especially when Microsoft holds so much power over the office suites on Mac. Yes, Appleworks is great (I've been a big fan since ClarisWorks) but it's not really a competitor to MS Office, in large part because it doesn't focus on cross-platform support the way OO is. The fact that MS Office is dominant on Windows goes the majority of the way towards making it the dominant office suite on Macs. I personally agree with the parent and think Apple should pour at least some resources in to OO and eventually release their own version of the thing, with the UI set up to work perfectly with OSX. Would you complain about this?
And as for Mozilla... it might suck now on OSX, but it's a damn fine piece of technology, and the fact that it can be heavily customized means that it can be configured for full OSX style UI with some Javascript and CSS. You're not forced to use it, but this could be the default behavior for the OSX binary distribution of the program. Apple could even do it themselves, or... hell, even you could do it! Anyone can! Meanwhile, you're still stuck with a dated version of IE (which is hideously slow whenever I've used it on Mac) and Omniweb, which still needs DOM work. With these as your alternate choices, how can you say that this would be a bad thing?
But then... I left the Mac because I wanted the freedom to choose for myself what to use rather than what was handed to me. I guess things haven't changed that much then. sigh
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
> 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