Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft drops VBA in Mac Office 2007

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the seems-more-secure-that-way dept.

slashdotwriter writes "Macworld features an article stating that the next version of Office for the Mac will not include Visual Basic scripting. From the article: 'Microsoft Office isn't among the apps that will run natively on Intel-based Macs — and it won't be until the latter half of 2007, according to media reports. But when it does ship, Office will apparently be missing a feature so vital to cross-platform compatibility that I believe it will be the beginning of the end for the Mac version of the productivity suite...'"

3 of 374 comments (clear)

  1. QUICK!!! by strredwolf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Someone get a port of OpenOffice.org up and running natively on MacOS X!

    --

    --
    # Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
    $Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
  2. iWork '07 by 644bd346996 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So apparently Apple has every reason to make iWork '07 a "no holds barred" release. I expect to see a powerful spreadsheet app and probably some nifty database or drawing thing to make Access or Visio, respectively, look clunky. Given how well Apple handled the transition from IE to Safari, they certainly have a good contingency plan for the gutting/cancelation of Office.

  3. Re:So half-assed Exchange support wasn't enough? by arth1 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Entourage is a great mail program, unless you want to use it to talk to an Exchange server. As an Exchange client, it sucks.

    Exchange is a great mail program, unless you want to use it to talk to a non-Exchange server. As a non-Exchange server, it sucks.

    Really, it wasn't made with interoperability in mind. It was designed to woo over the Novell Groupware crowd, and then lock the users in to one system. Unfortunately, it's succeeded far to well, something even Microsoft admits. They've been trying to open it up just a bit more, but as soon as one arm of the company manages to get it to work with an open product (like WebDAV or mbox spools), another arm of the company implements another incompatible and ill-documented lockdown feature (like Sharepoint integration).

    It's a shame that Novell decided to quench the pipe for the open-source Hula, which could have filled a pretty big part of the whole left by yanking out Exchange. But I guess that when you choose new sleeping partners, you also have to change the bedding accordingly.