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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. "
Fortunately, Parallels is still available for the Mac and later this year VMware will be as well. I don't think MS will be missed at this party.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Maybe Microsoft didn't like the "Hasta la vista, Vista" banners at the Mac show yesterday? Or especially "Redmond has a cat, too. A copycat." Perhaps they feel like they're being threatened?
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Sure you can read and write compatible files with Ms Office. You can even run the "old" office under Rosetta with Support for VBA.
But going forward, Office 2004 for Mac will no longer be availble and no IT manager in his right mind will go with an office suite that doesn't support scripting.
VBA is slow enough as it is, nevermind under Rosetta emulation. Now if there is no more support for VBA, companies will shy away from Mac even more.
Apple better get their "Tables" (aka their Excel equivalent to Pages) working asap. And it better be fully compatible with VBA too.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
If VMware's Mac product is as good as Workstation is on the PC, then it's almost a given that my next machine will be a Mac - at that point, there really won't be anything of consequence that I won't be able to run on it.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Of course, who needs VirtualPC: yes, it certainly “works,” but it is a clumsy product in everything from installation to managing environments. It sucks and if it were not for the fact that it is emulating and x86 virtual machine on Power, I would guess its developers had no idea what they were doing. Apart from that, dropping the VisualBasic scripting support is certainly anticompetitive. There are no technical reasons whatsoever and basically spells out “we dislike that you are competing with us, so we are going to eliminate your chances of entering the corporate market.” (I hope I do not have to spell out why this is an anticompetitive practice in comparison to recent actions by Apple.) If this doesn't prove that Microsoft are complete failures when it comes to technology, I don't know what will. Instead of responding to Apple with real progress (and, hey, maybe even releasing a product), they are behaving like petulant little babies and taking their toys home (maybe throw a chair or two).
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I wouldn't have anticipated someone saying cross-platform compability is a top priority while dumping a cross-platform compability tool for reasons of it being too hard.
I can see why Microsoft doesn't want to support Virtual PC. Now that Apple's on Intel hardware, it's easy enough to just build a Windows partition and boot to it when you want to use stuff like PC games, Virtual PC, etc. Remember, people need to buy software to make it worth the while of a commercial software vendor!
The desupporting of VB macros should be a bigger concern. Anyone who's worked in a large corporate environment knows that the vast majority of data crunching is not done in fancy analytical tools. Despite what SAS, Oracle and everyone tells you, many key business processes boil down to VB macros in Excel spreadsheets. Business units have spent years doing an end-run around the IT department because they either perceive the analytical tools to be too much of a pain to use, or the IT department is too bloated and slow to help them. That's the number one reason why millions of social security numbers wind up on stolen laptops. Data is pulled from the main systems into spreadsheets and analyzed offline. It's incredibly easy to write macros in VB, even for people who can't program.
Microsoft killing VB macro support for Mac Office takes a big chunk out of the cross-platform compatibility pillar. I can see a lot of other vendors using this Intel platform excuse too. My favorite example is Quicken. The Mac version is years behind the Windows one...I'm sure they're just wairing for the chance to drop it.
BootCamp is intended for switchers who aren't quite ready to jump into Mac OS X. It seems to be working for them too, since Apple's sales have skyrocketed lately. The fact that people are using it to play games is a side-effect, and not necessarily a bad one.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
Now all that Apple has to do is to get the VBA scripting in their office suite up to par, but more secure (ie: not as vulnerable to viri and other attacks), and it's just another feather in Apple's cap as to why their platform is more secure. Just imagine a year from now after the first really nasty macro virus for the new version of office is released into the wild and, lo and behold, it doesn't affect Mac users. This isn't a problem for Apple, but rather a huge opportunity.
The real reason they've dumped it is because anyone can buy Parallels now for 80 bucks, and vmware is getting into the ring.
Actually, the removal of VBA will pretty much kill Excel for me... VBA is Excel's killer feature - without it, there really is no compelling reason to use Excel (for me). Frankly, a spreadsheet is pretty amateurish without a scripting language, and the only reason I was using Excel was because the scripting language was cross-platform. People will grouse about having to install Open Office, but my scripts are important enough that they will anyway.
The only problem is that I don't know the Open Office scripting language, and there are few resources to help me learn it.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If Microsoft wanted to port VirtualPC to the Mac, then they could use the peripheral support code from the Mac VirtualPC and the x86 virtualisation code from the Windows version. The 'only' thing they would have to do is write the glue code. In principle, this is nice and easy. In practice, it was several years since the Windows version was first released, and I have no idea how separate the development of the two products has diverged. It may be that it is easier to re-write the OS X-specific code than to import it from Mac VirtualPC due to diverging codebases. If this is the case, then it is almost certainly not worth the investment.
Mac VirtualPC on PowerPC had no competition. There was SoftWindows (later RealPC), but it doesn't exist anymore. If you wanted to run x86 software on OS X (PowerPC) then VirutualPC was really the only option. The Mac virtualisation market is a lot more crowded. Parallels have a very good product which they sell quite cheaply. They were first-to-market and have a lot of mindshare. VMWare has good brand-recognition and is coming soon to Mac. If they follow their pricing policy, then it will be free on OS X. VirtualPC on OS X86 would have to compete with these, and so would likely not be able to sell at anything like its current price, and might have to be free.
VirtualPC x86 currently doesn't run on anything other than Windows, because Microsoft want to ensure that you have at least one copy of Windows running. There is no Linux version, for example. Not porting it to OS X86 is a continuation of this.
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