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No Virtual PC for Intel-based Macs
Techie writes "Microsoft has decided not to move forward with a version of Virtual PC for the Intel-based Macintosh. The amount of time it would take to bring Virtual PC to Intel would be roughly equivalent to creating the product from scratch, Scott Erickson, director of product management and marketing for Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit, told eWEEK. The article says Microsoft will also be discontinuing support of Visual Basic scripting in the next version of Office for Mac." From the article: "As cross-platform compatibility remains a top priority at Microsoft, Erickson says that as the company develops the next version of Office for Mac, the files will continue to be compatible across platforms, including with the 2007 Microsoft Office System for Windows. VB macros within files will not be accessible and users will not be able to view or modify them. However, the files themselves can be edited without affecting or changing the macros. "
What some of the pundits (on Macrumours and elsewhere) seem to be forgetting is that what VirtualPC does (runs x86 code on a PowerPC by emulating the x86 processor in software) is technically very different to what Parallels and VMWare do (allow x86 code to run "natively" within a virtual sandbox) - even if the end result (Windows running in a window on your Mac) is similar. A simple port of VPC to Mactel would have its ass handed to it by Parallels and VMWare. So when MS say:
...they probably have a point.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Where are those damn mod points where you need them?
.NET scripting. Its quite possible that the new Mac Office will support this scripting as well, making the "next gen" scripting compatible across both platforms.
Office 2007/8/whatever will support scripting, but it will be done using Applescript rather than VBA.
Also VBA is being depreciated by Microsoft in the Windows versions of Office in favor of
The real reason behind this move, rather than MS being evil and "slapping" Apple, is that the VBA compiler doesn't work on Intel Macs, and as VBA is getting replaced anyway, MS made the decision to dump it completely rather than putting a huge effort into porting a part of the system that will go away in the next few years.
Its annoying to those who rely on VBA, sure. But if you want to support legacy apps, you can continue to use the legacy version of Office.