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Microsoft to Continue Office on Mac

Posted by Zonk on from the at-least-for-now dept.

LiMikeTnux wrote to mention a CNN article giving details about the five year agreement now in place between Microsoft and Apple to keep Office alive on the Mac platform. From the article: "Though Apple clearly benefits from having the widely-used Office software available to its users, it may seem less obvious what Microsoft stands to gain from continuing its relationship. But according to Greg DeMichillie, a senior analyst with Directions on Microsoft, an independent consulting and analysis firm focusing specifically on Microsoft, the business is still a profitable one for Microsoft. While it's not a huge part of Microsoft's business, given the company's sheer scale, 'Apple's 3 to 4 percent market share doesn't hurt them either,' DeMichillie said. 'Also, to have them be seen going out of their way to hurt a competing operating system is not really helpful from an anti-trust perspective.'"

8 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. While this is slightly off-topic... by ellem · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Office 2004 for OS X is light years better than Office 2003 for Windows.

    Tons of the features in 2004 are showing up in other products for MS, like OneNote, Project etc. The only thing keeping Entourage from being better than Outlook by leaps and bounds is MS's intentional crippling of Entourage as an Exchange client.

    Perhaps MS uses OS X for advanced products beta testing?

    --
    This .sig is fake but accurate.
  2. Re:I Can See Gains for MS with This Move by Radical+Rad · · Score: 4, Interesting
    What I mean is that, without this alternative, Microsoft Office fans (who are also Apple operating system advocates) would be forced to look for an alternative. Maybe even a free open source alternative such as OpenOffice.org or selecting other free word editors?

    If Microsoft were to drop MS Office on the Mac then they would be opening up about 4% of the OS market to the alternatives you mentioned. That is something they don't need right now because even their grip on the Windows Office market is loosening. How many hundreds of thousands of licenses have they lost worldwide to Star Office or Open Office. They aren't doing Apple any favors here. They are just trying to prolong their time on top.

  3. Originally... by pvt_medic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    this agreement was speculated to be part of a settlement between microsoft and apple. Aplle had microsoft on a patent violation and they made a settlement out of court and quite secretively. This initial agreement was speculated to be part of the agreement,.

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    30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
    Score:5, Troll
  4. More like 1/2 of office by nurb432 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While its nice to have word and excel, there are a few things missing like access, viiso, project. Just enough missing components to still need to run a windows desktop in most companies.

    More like a 'teaser' than real support.

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    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  5. Office is just as important as Windows to MS... by Deviant · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Office is just as important to MS, if not more so, than Windows is. Buisinesses might have Linux webservers or Oracle database servers but they all use Microsoft Office with very few exceptions. It is the software that actually gets the real work done, and the document formats that everybody writes that work to exchange them in, and it is a larger and more important monopoly for them in the long term.

    Now Microsoft has a dilemma - do they ensure the survival of Office by making it availible on platforms like Linux to ensure it can run on every desktop or do they force you to stay on their platform by making that the only way to run it? So far they have choen to not lend legitimacy to Linux as a desktop platform and it has not hurt them very much. However, OSX is a much more appealing desktop, one that is gaining in popularity, and Microsoft chose to support it to keep the people who chose it using Office.

    I think that the current balance that MS is striking between supporting their platform and supporting Office also the Mac as a second platform is working for them and to their benefit. The last thing they want is for all the Mac users to turn to another office platform - especially one that has a windows version and/or is less expensive - that they could evangelicly convert their friends and family to. People stay with Office because it is the easy and safe choice and it actually is a good product that does most of what they want and need. The most important thing that Office has, though, is it's ubiquity - and so far they have managed to be able to keep that and it is well worth what they pay to port Office to the Mac.

    I think that if Linux gains enough popularity where it is 10-15% of worldwide desktops in countries that can afford Office you'll see them port it to that too...

  6. History can repeat, Vista for Macs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Keep in mind that Office dominates the Windows market because Microsoft was bold enough to develop it for the new Mac platform at a time when WordPerfect and 123 dominated the PC market. Only after Word and Excel were a success on Macs did they move to PCs.

    History could repeat itself. If Microsoft abandons the Mac, the product that replaces it might be good enough to establish a beachhead there and eventually challenge Office for Windows, one of Microsoft's biggest cash cows. In that context, keeping the profitable Mac Business Unit going is free insurance.

    Now if Microsoft would just set up a group within the Mac-loving Mac BU to develop and maintain a version of Vista for the Mac. It makes perfect sense. The copies of Vista they sell would almost pure profit and, given the small size of the Mac product line, they're likely to be the most stable version of Vista on the market.

    I know an InDesign instructor who'd be absolutely delighted. He could buy easily transported Intel iMacs and use them to teach InDesign for both OS X and Windows. And I'd get it to maintain the books I have in FrameMaker. Whether you like or hate Microsoft, Vista for Intel Macs would be a win-win situation for everyone.

    --Mike Perry, Untangling Tolkien

  7. Still no obvious reason to commit to 5 years by RetiredMidn · · Score: 5, Interesting
    OK, TFA and several posters here have provided reasons for why Microsoft would continue to produce Office for the Mac, such as "they make a profit on it". But nobody has really offered a reason as to why they would commit, in writing, to producing it for any length of time.

    The only explanation that I can see is that they got some sort of concession out of Apple in exchange for the commitment.

    I suspect that the concession from Apple was to not actively support OpenOffice. Maybe they offered in exchange for help (that I don't think they need) to get VirtualPC working on the new Intel Macs. But I'd welcome more informed speculation.

  8. the Safari effect by BlueStraggler · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Microsoft's problem is that Apple could fairly easily make a smoking, open, cross-platform office suite just by taking OOo and giving it a hot little Aqua outfit and applying some of that Apple secret sauce, just like they did with KHTML and Safari. In fact, I wouldn't be surpised if they've already done that as a back-up plan, just like their Intel port of OS X. If such a critter was ever released, it would probably just be bundled with the OS for free, since it's free software to start with. A quiet little demo of this project with the Microsoft rep would be all that it takes to ensure that MS keeps supporting Office-Mac until the end of time.