Slashdot Mirror
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. "
And what is the justification to remove VBA support from MS Office for Mac? It's not like the code doesn't exist? I think part of the issue may be getting a Universal Binary. Do you believe there won't be a third party plugin of some kind to support this, or Apple won't add support for this to Pages?
I guarantee you by version 4.0, Pages will be a perfect drop-in replacement for MS Word, which is what Apple probably wants. MS Office makes Microsoft a LOT of money. And Apple fanatics will be more than happy to buy an Apple office suite over MS Office.
When iWork gets as good as MS Office, it's time to port it to Windows. It won't be a nail in Microsoft's coffin, but it will surely piss them off.
Now all we need is Yellow Box for Windows finished and released and GnuStep to support most of the OS X APIs, and people can program in Cocoa and port to other environments with a simple recompile...
I'd like to see Safari for Windows. That would REALLY PISS Microsoft off.
As long as this weird love-hate relationship continues, MS is never going to be able to fully embrace them, or feel comfortable supporting them in any way that might give them an edge over Dell and other PC manufacturers.
MS's worst nightmare is Apple gaining a corner on the PC market the same way they've cornered the MP3 player market (and using their position to bully MS and others in the PC market the same way they've bullied them with the iPod and iTunes). MS wants to be the one DOING the bullying, not the one BEING bullied.
-Eric
And for you nitpicking bastards, yes I am aware that schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder are completely different diseases from a clinical standpoint, but not in common usage.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Office/Mac and Office/XP just don't interoperate.
I try, I really try, to use my Mac laptop with files from work. 90% goes, 10% doesn't. The 10% that doesn't fly makes it useless to trust it.
I get powerpoints where metafile graphics that should work, almost do; I get Word docs where 3 out of 4 tables that our project manager embeds from MS Project are readable, the last one is not; it's hopeless.
They break it on purpose, I think. They always have, they always will.
Yes, VPC runs on Windows, but how similiar is the Windows and OSX codebase? Not very.