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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."

22 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. any reactions from the M$ booth to the... by jxyama · · Score: 2, Interesting
    steve's glitch during the keynote..? (i mean, gates got a lot of crap for his glitch at CES...)

    introduction of iWork? or the lack of a spreadsheet app in it?

    introduction of $500 headless Mac?

    1. Re:any reactions from the M$ booth to the... by Hawthorne01 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'd say the lack of a spreadsheet app is bone thrown to Microsoft to placate them that iWork is not an enterprise office suite. And the $500 iMac is a great enterprise-level machine, meaning more sales of Microsoft Office X to those customers who want as smooth of a transition from Wintel to Macs.

      --
      "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
    2. Re:any reactions from the M$ booth to the... by MBCook · · Score: 5, Interesting
      I agree. iWork looks nice, but it looks to be something between Wordpad (VERY basic word processor) and Publisher (not a wordprocessor, but does all sorts of flyers and brocures and such).

      I doesn't look like it will replace Office for most people. You either need the power of Word for wordprocessing (in which case you get Word/Office), or you don't need much more than Wordpad (in which case, you probably won't buy Office, it's expensive for that).

      I may be wrong, but that's my impressions. Besides, Office is aimed (to a large degree) at businesses. And businesses would also want Excel and Powerpoint and other such things that are in Office. I don't think it should worry MS too much.

      The $500 Mac I would worry about more. It is an easy way to get your feet wet in the wonderful world of Macs. Sure, MS can sell Office to Mac users, but if so many people start to see how nice the Mac is (overall, no viruses/spyware, etc) then MS should get worried. People will demand Windows gets that much better (good for people, bad for MS), or they will switch to Mac (good for Macs, bad for MS). THAT is the thing to be worried about (as I see it).

      --
      Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
    3. Re:any reactions from the M$ booth to the... by node+3 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      any reactions from the M$ booth to steve's glitch during the keynote..?

      Yeah, probably something like, "Wow! How did you recover so quickly? Bill would like to integrate that into his keynotes."

      Six years later...

      Bill: Well, Conan, here's our upcoming Longhorn...

      Conan: Looks like you're having a little trouble there.

      Bill: But wait! Thanks to our new innovation in keynote demo technology, I'm able to swap a few cables here, and insert my DRM keychain into this slot, and after it authenticates with the Palladium servers... Yes, here it goes. Viola, I'm able to continue the demo!

      Conan: Wow, that's amazing!

    4. Re:any reactions from the M$ booth to the... by justin+peterson · · Score: 2, Informative
      And businesses would also want Excel and Powerpoint and other such things that are in Office.

      A minor point, perhaps, but iWork ships with Keynote as well as Pages, and Keynote is a PowerPoint replacement.

    5. Re:any reactions from the M$ booth to the... by node+3 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'd say the lack of a spreadsheet app is bone thrown to Microsoft to placate them that iWork is not an enterprise office suite.

      I really doubt that. Bill has already proven that if you throw him a bone, he'll beat you over the head with it, break it in two and stab you with the pointy end while choking you with the smaller piece, metaphorically speaking.

      In other words, one should be careful what bones you toss to someone with Bill's business acumen (and utter ruthlessness). Steve probably knows this better than anyone else on the planet.

    6. Re:any reactions from the M$ booth to the... by Llywelyn · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually I suspect that the reason there isn't a spreadsheet app included is because Apple just hasn't developed one that is currently ready to ship out the door.

      We'll probably see one eventually (maybe next year at this time), if for no other reason than that they want to replace most of the functionality of AppleWorks.

      --
      Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
    7. Re:any reactions from the M$ booth to the... by billsoxs · · Score: 2, Informative
      A minor point, perhaps, but iWork ships with Keynote as well as Pages, and Keynote is a PowerPoint replacement.

      I suspect that the rest of the office suite will come over the next few years. Keynotes was weak at the beginning as well.

      --
      This message was brought to you by "Lack of Sleep."
    8. Re:any reactions from the M$ booth to the... by SunFan · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'm able to swap a few cables here, and insert my DRM keychain into this slot, and after it authenticates with the Palladium servers...

      Yes, but the Palladium server at Bill's office runs version 2.5.8.6.31 and the one at the demo runs 2.5.8.6.32. It detects the dicrepancy and automatically gives him a jalapeno enema for attempting to thwart the federally mandated protection schemes. The authorities are contacted and he is given 5 years in prison for his heinous crime on society.

      --
      -- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
    9. Re:any reactions from the M$ booth to the... by Tanlis · · Score: 2, Insightful

      While Pages may not affect businesses so much, it may affect regular consumer sales as most people don't need as powerful of a word processing program as Word is....let alone one as expensive as it.

      $79 for iWorks compared to $400 for 2004 standard edition...I dunno about others, but I know I'd sure give iWorks a good look depending on my needs.

  2. Needs no additonal comment. by rueger · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Erickson said that Microsoft has been working closely with Apple to ensure compatibility with technologies that will be released in the next version of the operating system, expected sometime in the first half of 2005. Of particular note is Spotlight, Apple's advanced search technology.

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

    --
    Three Squirrels
    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. Re:Needs no additonal comment. by Leo+McGarry · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually, you kind of have that backwards. You don't rewrite your file format to be Spotlight-savvy. Instead, you provide a Spotlight plug-in called an "importer." An "importer" is a little object file that implements exactly one function: GetMetadataForFile. GetMetadataForFile takes a data structure of attributes, a content-type value and a path to a file on the disk as arguments. You write the function in such a way that you extract the metadata from the file and put it into the attributes data structure, then return boolean true.

      Easy, easy.

  3. 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

  4. What about windows media player by kev0153 · · Score: 2

    I'd like to see an update to the mac version of their media player. The current one is too slow and clunky.

  5. Sick of Microsoft's Lack of Dedication to Mac by bedouin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    With all the hype Office gets for the Mac, it has serious issues. As far as speed is concerned, it performs no where nearly as well as its Windows counterpart. Scrolling through large documents in Word is a horrific experience, and that's assuming it doesn't mysteriously crash while editing a table or equation. While unicode support was added in 2004, it still cannot properly support right-to-left languages. When it comes to Mac, Microsoft cuts corners wherever possible, just to get the product out the door. Not to say they don't do the same with their Windows products, but at least to a lesser degree.

    Applications that bring MS absolutely no financial incentive are only maintained for the sake of propagating their proprietary formats. It was likely that a person would rethink publishing content in WMV if he knew Mac users have absolutely no way of playing it back; now, individuals will be a bit less reluctant to take the full plunge into WMV, oftentimes unaware that the Mac user's experience (especially with streaming, imbedded media) is horrific.

    MSN Messenger has not really seen a major change in ages, and is far behind its Windows counterpart. I realize things like audio/video conferencing are difficult to implement, but something as simple as pictures could have been done in a minor revision.

    I haven't used the latest version of VPC, so I won't comment on its overall quality. However I suspect that if it were still in the hands of Connectix a G5 capable version would have arrived much sooner, and it likely would not have been delayed numerous times simply because of SP2. Let's hope Darwine will save the day.

    After replacing Powerpoint with Keynote I fully welcome Pages. As clicheish as it may sound, Microsoft's applications emit an aura of conformity and stagnation, while Apple's seem to feel a bit more flexible and fun, something that's important when writing anything other than a business letter.

    1. Re:Sick of Microsoft's Lack of Dedication to Mac by GymW · · Score: 2, Interesting

      First of all, from the other stories I have read, MS does Mac for the money. I have head it said that if Word on Mac stops making money, MS will abandon it. I also understand that the MS development group for Mac are really a dedicated group to the Mac.

      That said, there are a lot of things I do not like about Office, especially Entourage. It's printing capability as a PIM is very limited for my tastes. It also lacks the ability to sync w/ Mail and ICal. Yes I know about the shareware scripts but that adds $50 to the price of the package. Despite all its faults It does integrate will with its modules, offers features that Apples products do not, and provides compatibility with my Windows friends.

      Regarding IWorks: It seems to be an incomplete package, lacking a spreadsheet, other capabilities present in AppleWorks. Given Apple's history of charge their users full ticket for every major upgrade (Ilife, OSX) I think I will wait awhile for a future version that is complete instead of blowing around $80 on the first version as I am tired of paying for them to fix their products when they ought to be complete and work correctly in the first place. I would advise others send a message to Apple concerning their no upgrade policies by doing the same. Please note that I distinguish update from upgrades; Upgrades are major revisions; updates are minor changes, fixes and additions.

    2. Re:Sick of Microsoft's Lack of Dedication to Mac by iamacat · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't know about Word - I am not too impressed with it's performance, stability and especially ability to read documents created with different version/OS/installed fonts on Windows.

      But Windows Media Player is definitely more pleasant to use on Mac than on its native platform. It just launches and does its job. No loading unwanted ads, no washing top of the window with a mouse to get the menu to pop up, no confusing tabs.

      I suspect Microsoft has a secret fascination with Mac. They made their own OS messy, unstable and unpleasent to people with taste. But they can not make a radical change without breaking backward compatibility or alienating people who are used to stuff as it is. Mac applications offer them a chance to do things right. They would be much relieved if Apple gained a moderate (say 20%) market share and they could start offering the rest of their products - Office, SQL Server, Business apps - to customers who demand more stability and less administration than is possible with Windows.

    3. 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!
  6. 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?

  7. Internet Explorer 5 for Mac ... new & exciting by Matt+Clare · · Score: 2, Insightful

    From Mactopia.com (NOT Macworld, I know): "Find out how Internet Explorer 5 for Mac can show you the Internet in new, exciting ways."

    Wow, IE 5, I've been waiting to see what the Internet would look like fresh technology like that. Will it match my brand new blueberry iBook?

    --
    .\.\att Clare
  8. Exchange Support in Entourage by Vandil+X · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm disappointed that Entourage still lacks the Exchange support needed to fully eliminate the need for Outlook 2001.

    All the Macs in my workplace have to keep Classic just to run Outlook. When you have a shop full of non-OS9 G4s and G5s, it's a disgrace. And while Mail.app can work with Exchange servers, it can't touch the Global Address Book and other important things.

    Maybe someday...

    --
    Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START