Microsoft drops VBA in Mac Office 2007

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...'"

Comments

Re:Can Microsoft even *do* this?

[mrchaotica]

IE: Safari is free. IE can't make money on the Mac platform. Why would MS keep putting money into something that they can't make money on?

Firefox is free. IE can't make money on the Windows platform. Why would MS keep putting money into something that it can't make money on?

Virtual PC: Again, MS can't make money with this. Parellels[sic] and VMWare kick Virtual PC in the ass and they decided to focus on improving their Windows version. Who would buy Virtual PC 2007 for Mac if it was released next year?

At the time, neither Parallels nor VMware (using OS X as the host OS) existed. In fact, VMware still doesn't! If MS had chosen to continue developing VirtualPC it could have probably beaten both of the competitor products to market.

Never releasing Access, Project, or Visio for the Mac: So now it's anticompetitive to not spend millions of dollars making every piece of software cross platform?

The OP asserts that enough demand for those programs on a Mac platform that it would be profitable. Therefore, MS could be forgoing that profit for only one reason: to tie Office to Windows. Yes Virginia, for a monopoly, product tying is illegal.

Killing Windows Media Player for Mac: This is the closest thing you have to unethical. I would be surprised if it's illegal, and if it was than the law is too far reaching. The only reason this is a problem is that it locks the proprietary DRM to Windows. There should be a solution to this (e.g. opening up the DRM format for 3rd party players, easier said than done for obvious security reasons).

Once again, you're ignoring the fact that the rules become different after the DoJ rules a company to be abusing its monopoly!

I think they should use the same subset for Office scripting so that people can port their VBA to VB.NET.

VBA and VB.NET are like Javascript and Java -- not even slightly the same thing.

But make no mistake, this is not anticompetitive. If anything it's pro competition because it gives their customers a reason to look at alternatives like OO where they had no reason before.

No, it's anticompetitive because it attempts to force companies with a large "investment" in VBA to switch from Mac OS to Windows.

Re:What's wrong with X?!

[killjoe]

"That's the whole point: for them to use it. Why do you think the Gaim folks started libgaim in the first place? If the Adium devs come across a bug in libgaim, they file it or offer a patch just like anyone else."

So your original contention that the Adium folks have done a favor to libgaim is bullshit then.

"The Cocoa APIs do not exist on Windows or Linux, neither does the Objective-C runtime. "

Why not? I tell you why not, it's because Apple chooses not to. This goes back to the whole selfishness of the apple crowd.

Anyway the same thing can be said of the win32 API. The point is that the vast majority of the open source community shuns proprietary frameworks in favor of open frameworks, even if they choose proprietary frameworks they choose the ones that are cross platform.

"And they're right to be resentful of it because the user experience blows. They're not obligated to tolerate it silently."

Oh the humanity!!!. I really feel your suffering there. Imagine that. Tolerating the UI of a program somebody gave you for free. Oh the agony of it all.

"We have standards. Expecting developers to live up to those standards isn't being "spoiled". "Spoiled" is when everyone writes web pages to cater to one platform's broke-ass browser. Spoiled is getting every game first and not having to wait a year, if it even comes out. We're not beggars, so we're allowed to be choosers. Deal with it."

Bhahaha. Deal with it!!!. Yes we will all bow down to your demands and rewrite all of our apps in cocoa.

Look man you keep making my point over and over again. There is nothing to be gained from an open source project making any effort to port to the mac. All they will get is the likes of you shitting on them constantly while not lifting a finger to help. They all have to deal with your attitude. You will not tolerate crappy windows or java or gtk or qt or swing or swt or wxwindows GUIS. No sir. Those all beneath you. You will not be satisfied till every line of cross platform GUI code gets ripped out and replaced with objective C and cocoa so that the application will be mac only.

Why would anybody want to deal with people like you without getting paid for it?