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."
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.
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.
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!
"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!
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.
> 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