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Microsoft At Macworld

Posted by timothy on from the join-'em dept.

Rolan writes "Microsoft announced several Mac software updates at Macworld. Updates include MSN Messenger 5.0 and Improved Outlook imports (PST File import). The article also says Microsoft has also been working with Apple to ensure that Apple's Spotlight search technology works well with Office documents."

4 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Needs no additonal comment. by AcornWeb · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Spotlight will index and search Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, but unfortunately it will not work with Microsoft's email and information manager, Entourage.

    Which makes total sense when you think about it. All Microsoft email apps use a large Database file to store email (think mbox but proprietary). All Microsoft email applications on the Mac have used that type of format (going back to Outlook Express 4 at least).

    Do you really think Microsoft would totally re-engineer their current database storage format to be compatible with Tiger and Spotlight? Yeah, me neither.

    On the other hand, having the PST Import tool will be a huge leap forward as then it is possible to migrate users more easily to the Mac (and the new Mac Mini) :-)

    --
    Your Windows PC is my other computer.
  2. Still no A/V support in Messenger? by mccalli · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I don't see any mention of audio or video calls having been added to Messenger. I really want this - I have a number of Messenger contacts, and at the moment no way to use video with them.

    Cheers,
    Ian

  3. RTFA :) by Trillan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It will.

    The next paragraph of the article:

    "It won't index Entourage and that's simply due to the way that Spotlight was made versus Entourage," said Erickson. "Entourage saves everything in a database format and we are working with Apple to see how Spotlight can index the database."

    This is technically simple -- Microsoft needs to write an Entourage importer for Spotlight. I'm sure it will get done, although who knows if it will be in time for the release of Tiger?

  4. Re:Sick of Microsoft's Lack of Dedication to Mac by sebi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But Windows Media Player is definitely more pleasant to use on Mac than on its native platform. It just launches and does its job.

    I wish I could agree with you on that one. If the sole job of WMP was to open and play Windows Media files you download, then yes, it would be fine. Unfortunately I would mainly use it for streaming video. And in that regard it is simply horrible. I really wish they'd make that aspect of it usable before the baseball season starts. No matter how fast the connection, I always run into problems with buffering and bad audio-video-synching. And it doesn't support nice features like full screen. All of which was no problem when I tried watching the same file on a Windows computer.

    And yes, I know that mlb.com offers all of their live-streams in Realplayer, but all of the archives are Windows Media only and thus as good as unavailable to me. Same goes for Comedy Central.

    --
    Hank! White!