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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?
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
That has to be one of the BEST features ever that Microsoft could do for macintosh.
My UID is prime is yours?
MS is actively fighting Apple, for the first time in many years. They're scared enough to notice, now that Apple is moving in on *their* pet platform. Great and good things are afoot.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
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
I wonder how significant this is, being timed with WWDC. Maybe MS heard about all the "Hasta La Vista, Vista" jokes and now they're firing back. (Balmer thought it a better idea than Gates's "Hasta La....Apple.....APPLE!!" comeback quip)
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
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
The amount of time it would take to bring Virtual PC to Intel would be roughly equivalent to creating [a Microsoft] product from scratch...
Or, in other words, 6+ years. I don't blame them!
Not important? What do you think macro viruses are written in?! :P
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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.
Then you can simply install a MacOs-compliant version of Wine and run Windows builds of MS Office natively. Office 2000 is Gold status with CrossOver. And if VBA support in Office 2000 is not enough for you, I hear that CodeWeaver will announce improved support for Office 2003 soon.
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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.
This must be some new and novel definition of "compatible" of which I was previously unaware.
MS-Office --- the office-suite that is not even compatible to the same version of itself .
Hilarious.
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.
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.
...will be hammered down. That's all that's happening here. Macs entered the Intel world and Microsoft is none too happy. So Microsoft is going to try and find what tiny balls Apple has and give them a repeated and hard kicking. Good luck though because I know you've all seen an ant fall many hundreds of times it's size and be unphased. I supposed having micronads like Apple's will come in handy in this case. Of course, we've also seen ants easily crushed under our boots too. Yowie!
This was quite possibly the most nonsensical comment that I've ever read on slashdot. Most impressive.
Great. Now I have to spend the next 20 minutes scraping coffee and lung material off of my keyboard and monitor.
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
Sure Apple can poke fun at Microsoft. But I would think Virtual PC and Scripts in their Office Documents would be a big seller. First with Virtual PC you can get the Virtualization software and a legal copy of the OS in one package. Vs. Using others where the Mac user may want to use a less legal copy, as well as stripping office down. If Microsoft presses to hard on Apple. All apple needs to do is disable some code and their OS can compete with them in the OS Space with all systems. Apple has been playing nice with Microsoft even with the Intel transistion, that made sure that OS X will only run on Apple Hardware. As for Virtual PC, I think most people can take it or leave it, there are other alternives out there. But disabling VB scripting I feel it is a greater threat to office compatibility. Unless Microsoft turns it off in their next gen Win Office too.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This is such bullshit, it makes my head hurt - considering the following:
- Virtual PC runs on Windows
Wait - that's the only one. It already runs on an Intel platform. The codebase already exists. Starting from scratch is a load of crock that's an easy excuse for slowly closing down any support for OSX, considering that MS is loosing market share EVERYWHERE.Yeah, they're still the big dogs - for now. But Apple, OSX, Google, Firefox - MS is losing ground everywhere, and closing down their OSX division is probably just one of the areas that they're going to try to shore up a sinking ship.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
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.
"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."
This sounds like a huge benefit! Maybe it'll encourage a few more people to switch, to improve the security of their Office environment. I'm not an Apple fanboy, but kudos to Microsoft for this security unhancement. Perhaps if this goes well, they'll similarly unhance the Windows version of Office.
Does that mean that the next version of MSOffice for OSX won't have a macro language?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
People are confusing emulation and virtualization.
e -day/
VirtualPC is an x86 *emulator.* Why would you need to emulate Intel on an Intel chip? What Macs need is virtualization, and that's what they're getting with Parallel and VMWare.
As far as VB goes, it never worked well on the Mac version of Office for a while.
http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/07/news-of-th
It was released at v3.1 (not v3.0), because the Novell Netware cross-licensing terms only extended to "Windows 3.1". Once WfWg (Win16 v3.11) came out, Netware support kinda became a non-issue, so the next version was v3.5.
Yes, VPC runs on Windows, but how similiar is the Windows and OSX codebase? Not very.
Bullshit.
There's already a VPC for x86/windows. They're full of crap and vastly overstate what will be needed. Unless Connectix has so deeply coupled the cpu-emulator, and the VM manager, that they can't be decoupled.
And it's been over a year since Jobs announced the Intel switch - MS has had all this time to check the situation out, I am somewhat suprised to be hearing this kind of announcement out of Microsoft now.
This sounds like a strategic move. Particularly as it's coupled with the MS Office Mac announcement. They're hitting the Mac/Office userbase where it hurts. Document compatability. They're making sure that Macs never make it into the business space where MS Office/Windows dominates overwhelmingly. (also why they don't provide a full-on Outlook client).
It was never meant to be.
Unless Apple gets their shit together and codes up a comparable, and compatible product.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The real reason they've dumped it is because anyone can buy Parallels now for 80 bucks, and vmware is getting into the ring.
-b.
Well, Parallels and VMWare are pulling it off, right? And you have to assume they're reusing plenty of code from their Windows and Linux products. Presumably, most of the hard work is in the actual virtualization engine, not the presentation UI.
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Not to mention that the primary reason that most people bought Virtual PC to begin with was to run Windows applications on their Mac. Now that the new Intel Macs can dual-boot Windows, being able to run Windows through emulation isn't quite as necessary or important as it was before.
It entirely depends how the codebase is constructed, considering that the VPC codebase has only recently become Microsofts and that there were TWO (2) different VPC products in the first place anyway (VPC with emulation for OSX and VPC with virtualisation for Windows), who knows WHAT the state of the internals are like on each, its probable that the two werent maintained in a compatable way - there would be a world of difference in the virtualisation engine for the different platforms. With two other companies already entering the arena, one with a saleable product at the moment and one fairly far down the path to having one, does it work out financially viable for MS to make the time and money investment?
From the eweek article:
What? Did they need a cross-compiler or something?
The announcement basically says that since you like Apple so much, now you can use Apple's scripting technologies because "the longer-term solution and support of Apple technologies is worth the effort".
The real irony regards ODF and is too rich for words. Microsoft said we need Office XML because ODF isn't good enough. Then they founded an open-source project to sort-of support a converter. Now we see that Office isn't compatible with Office: if you run the same application on two different platforms it's own macro language won't work.
If you ask me, this is a strategy of convenience. On one hand, Microsoft wants to make Apple less convenient, to sell more Windows. On the other hand, the Microsoft really wants to sell more Office, because that's where the real money is.
One the third hand, making VBA work on OS X is doubtless harder than it looks, because there's no such thing as a clean interface at Microsoft. VBA is supposedly just a macro language; it should be written only in terms of the Office object model. But if doesn't include calls to Win32, I'll eat my hat.
That makes the equation: maintenance_cost > revenue.office - revenue.windows.
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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One of the first things they did after they purchased Virtual PC from Connectix was to kill the OS/2-native version of Virtual PC. The Mac version was the next logical step.
So, what other platforms are left that Virtual PC will run on? Oh... Windows. That's a surprise...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
VBA and VB in general, however, are widely used in Enterprise markets for rapid app development and custom one-shot pieces of software (for good or ill--- that's another discussion). VBA in Office is a common way to build custom apps on top of Word or Excel. As it stands now, these custom apps (more common than you'd think) work on either platform.
Cutting off VBA support in Office-X will take this cross-platform functionality away, and (they hope) make Macs less attractive to enterprise customers. "What do you mean I can't run my custom Accounting program on a Mac anymore?"
Technical issues have nothing to do with these decisions. This is just Microsoft circling the wagons in to protect against Apple making any further inroads into what they see as "their" business market.
With the switch to Intel, and multiple ways to run Windows programs on a Mac, the business leverage of the Windows mono-culture is on the decline.
All MS have left is Office now, with its millions of entrenched users, and they intend to fight like hell to protect that last piece of turf.
And if there is one thing Micorsoft doesn't do, it's rewrite software from scratch.
Between Parallels and VMWare, there is really no need for Virtual PC. And I suspect Xen and various forms of user mode Linux are going to become available for OS X at some point, too.