“Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit, aka the Mac BU, just released the long – awaited Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office 2004 Macintosh. In recent months, they announced their commitment to not only the next version of Office, ‘Office 12’ for the Mac, but also to supporting the new XML formats that Office 12 on Windows will have,” John C. Welch writes for bynkii.com. “(Note that you’re going to have to go to Mac news sources on the Apple 2005 WorldWide Developer Conference to get the annnouncement from Roz Ho about Mac Office 12, and to Rick Schaut’s blog to get the XML announcement. Finding information on the Mac BU from Microsoft is like finding out about that brother that no one in the family likes. I’m kind of surprised the SP 2 announcement even made it into PressPass. The Mac BU tends to get ignored by the rest of the company.)”
Welch writes, “That last statement The Mac BU tends to get ignored by the rest of the company is a critical one, and the reason for this article. The Mac BU, and Microsoft’s treatment of them, are at a crossroads. Yes, they’ve made some good announcements, and yes, I think they’ll deliver as much as they’re able, or allowed to. I know some of the folks there, and who have worked there in the past, and they are brilliant, focused, and do the best work they can for the resources they have. The Mac BU’s problems aren’t caused because they don’t care about their customers. The Mac BU’s problems are caused because, from what anyone can see, Microsoft doesn’t really care about the Mac BU, and doesn’t really consider the Mac BU’s customers to be ‘real’ Microsoft customers.”
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Microsoft executives discuss Apple competition: preventing Apple from leveraging iPod success – September 23, 2005
Mac users should not buy Microsoft software (or hardware) – May 16, 2003
yahoo, first post.
screw MS
I wouldn’t consider MacBU customers “real Mac users” either!!
“I wouldn’t consider MacBU customers “real Mac users” either!!”
That’s an idiotic thing to say.
Oh dear. I’m still using Entourage and Exel so I s’pose I’m a Mac BU customer.
Not surprised there is a worry for MS in the recent turn of events. Apple could have the last laugh you know.
Why does it have to be a redheaded stepchild? As a redhead I take offense. There is nothing wrong with us!
It is an incredibly insulting and derogatory saying that somehow slips though the cracks. I have been in countless meetings over the course of my career where people said it right to my face. These days, the meeting ends immediately and I escort them out the door.
I have to tell someone….I just bought my first Mac. I have had enough already Microsoft and their crappy software, especially Windows.
I did however have to buy Office 2004 though (license from work allows purchase for $30) just to ensure that I don’t run in to too many incompatibilities with work stuff. I won’t use it though unless absolutely necessary. If MS ever wants to get another cent from me they had better make sure they maintain that last foot in the door. When Office is gone there is no looking back.
I think I might like MS more if I am not tied to them.
Actually, the Mac Business Unit is more like Microsoft’s CIA. Don’t they get the OS X developer kits? And then, surprise, surprise, Vista looks and functions a heck of a lot like OS X (or so they hope). I wonder why.
whiners, office:mac is a good product…
would be hell of a lot better if those two companies stopped taking the shit out of eachother and would just cooperate.. doing each what they can best…. apple doing everything, and ms making office and bring .net to osx :p
Well the feeling is mutual M$. I use Office 2004 only because I have to, but I also don’t mind the fact that I bought the Student/Teacher edition even though I’m not either a student or a teacher. It’s a two way street guys, and as soon as Apple or someone else comes up with a true Office alternative, I’ll be dumping your products completely.
and here, on the other side of the world..
i am wondering when will they implement Arabic and Hebrew into Office for mac!?!?!?!
seems like 20 years is not enough for some people…. to figure out that some people are living here… and smart enough to use macs…
Bad M$ !
more like bastxrd first born. Especially since there core products were deleloped first for the Mac (Excel/Word).
Who cares…..90% of the real business world uses M$ and that should be all they care about….
Why spend $$ to please 5%…
Yeah I support the Mac OS as well as win32 but let’s face it folks, Mac users don’t care about word processing, spreadsheets and creating presentations, so why bother.
If u work in a bank or many other corporate environment you “probably” do not have a Mac on your desktop, un less u r like the prez and u can get whatever you wanted.
Bob – I agree, why is it okay to discriminate against red headed people, especially step children? Replace “redheaded stepchild” with any racial epitaph and see what happens. Unwarranted hate about someone’s physical appearance is wrong. The need to use a derogatory statement is poor journalism, it spreads the belief that is okay to discriminate against a person’s appearance and heritage.
Apple should just support the OpenDocument format in Pages and then say screw Microsoft Office.
I’d bet good money that somewhere deep in One Infinite Loop there is already an Apple version of Office – the full iWork, with the Excel and Entourage equivalents, all fully compatible. As soon as Microsoft drop the ball, by dropping Office for Mac or letting it get too far behind the Windows version, Steve will drop the bomb. Hell, let’s go the whole hog: iWork for Mac and Windows!
I’ve read somewhere that the people at the Mac BU are quite the hardcore Mac users and that they carry their PowerBooks within MS corp. with pride. Must be very uneasy for them sometimes to work at MS. But let’s face it, without the BU, the Mac platform would be less attractive right now because there’s no real alternative to Office on the Mac. And when people switch, the first thing they think about is Office.
When the day comes that a viable alternative comes, MS BU will close down. Maybe, all the people there will form their own company, who knows? Question: Will the new MS Office XML Open Format cause other apps to be more compatible with MS own Office suite?
The sooner Mac users are unshackled from the Office the better. Maintain compatibilty w/translation/conversion utils.
Unless any given user determines that the product itself is the best solution to their needs. I’ve always hated Word from 1.0 so it’s not for me. I prefer other WP. Others may like it.
I’ve gone over to OpenOffice and I’m happily converting Word and Powerpoint doc’s/presentations. Likewise I’m beginning to create documents etc with this freeware application. Next stage is to dump my copy of Office.
I’m sure that many would disagree with what I’m doing but it works for me. Similarly I want my iMac to be as free as possible from Microsoft contamination.
If you have been following the story line regarding the adoption of the open doucument format by the state of Massachusetts you will see the the future of Microsoft Office is very much in doubt. (http://www.groklaw.net has provided excellent coverage of this battle).
Should other governmental, corporate, and educational organizations follow the lead of Massachusetts, the market place for office applications could suddenly become very competitive.
The possibility of an Apple office suite, and offerings from a range of third parties, becomes real when the issue of document compatibility falls into the realm of opensource and third party standards bodies, and is wrested from the proprietary clutches of Microsoft.
The fate of the Mac Business Unit is much less important under such a scenario.
I guess it’s a matter of who blinks first: MS drops Office for Mac and Apple licenses out OS X.
Luckily TextEdit and Pages are Word-compatible and Keynote is PowerPoint-compatible.
I’ve stopped using Word ever since Pages came out. For what I need to do, Pages is more than adequate. I don’t need to have files that are Word compatible. If I need to share a document, I print as a PDF. I don’t do any collaboration work with people using Word, so the lack of a ‘track change’ feature is irrelevant to me. Excel is the only app out of Office that I still use.
the thing is, at least for me, I probably would have to stop using a Mac if I couldn’t have the compatibility I have right now with Office. I remember using Dataviz translator software and the formatting was always a tricky thing.
in my opinion, the more seamless the user experience between Mac and Windows, the less tied to windows people will feel.
I hate Office and I want to use an alternative on those few occasions when I have to use an office product. I’ve tried Open Office/J and feel it is way too windows-like. I heard that they are working to make it more mac-like, and when they do, everyone should jump on board.
Dear loganson
Yes you’re right. And the first time I used it I freaked out over it’s semi-windows interface, then I trashed it on this site and trashed it on my computer.
Then I gave it another go and even though it’s got a fair way to go in it’s interface, it does have a few things going for it.
1. It works
2. It’s largely open-source
3. It’s free (make a donation anyway)
4. It’s not owned by Microsoft
Mr/Ms Finkelstein:
I hope you meant “epithet”, not “epitaph”. There is a big difference.
g$: “I’ve stopped using Word ever since Pages came out. For what I need to do, Pages is more than adequate. I don’t need to have files that are Word compatible. If I need to share a document, I print as a PDF. I don’t do any collaboration work with people using Word, so the lack of a ‘track change’ feature is irrelevant to me. Excel is the only app out of Office that I still use.”
I use Pages whenever I can too, but there is no bibliography manager software for it, so it can’t be used for scientific/technical writing. The developers of “BookEnds” claim that Apple won’t work with them to allow their bibliography software to interact with Pages. I hope that the next version of Pages will be more third party developer friendly and will work with bibliography software so that I can switch to it from Word.
MW: human, as in: I am just a human stuck in a computer world.
Be careful with language – I hope you meant “epithet”, not “epitaph”. There is a big difference.
Yes there is a difference, but both will work here. The play on words is intentional. It should be on a tombstone, as should all discriminating slurs and the contents should remain buried.
No one has voiced the obvious, Apple could just hire the MacBU programers. They could re-work iWork to be a serious Office replacement.
mw = rather “Wouldn’t you rather an Apple Office?”
For the redheads and stepchildren out there, one could say “A child that is ostracized when demonstrated to be the result of an extramarital affair through DNA testing”, but that just sounds awkward.
Thanks Paul. It’s a colloquialism for heaven’s sake.
MSOffice isn’t bad, but it isn’t really good either. I use it at work because I have to, not because I want to. Plus, Entourage is the only thing that our network (PC-based of course) will put up with. So that’s that. It sucks, but what can you do?
yeah.
red-headed stepchild.
except they actually make a millions in profit and the xbox team bleeds a see of red ink…
From what I understand, the guys (and gals?!) at the Mac BU love Macs, and provide some first-rate products, compared to the PC versions certainly.
I use MS Office when I have to (not often), but I’m grateful to that dedicated team who build it and help people to choose a Mac when they know Office is available for it.
From what I can see, the Mac BU doesn’t get support from the rest of Microsoft and doesn’t even get it from the Mac folk! Cut them some slack..
I don’t feel anywhere near as dirty saying I’m a MacBU customer rather than a MS customer.
It would be interesting to get the inside information on the corporate culture of the MacBU – I would hazard a guess it’s quite foreign (in a good way) to that of it’s parent.
I almost hate to admit it, but I do like Office 2004 for Mac. It’s much more intuitive and elegant than the Windows version and a lot more powerful that iWork, and although Keynote does provide a richer experience, I don’t use presentation software.
MS has deliberately crippled the Mac version of Office by not including their database (cr)app, Access, nor porting others such as Frontpage and Project.
So the way around that, would be Apple (Filemaker) doing a bundling deal with retailers where you buy Office and you get Filemaker and a WYSIWYG HTML builder (which I think already exists, but the name escapes me), for a modest extra cost. And of course that should get bundled with an “iWork Pro”.
You know those Corporate IT types, they prefer everything boxed together.
What do people think?
Well said, macpaul.
In many ways, these are the most dedicated Mac evangelists of all. These guys are banished to Microsoft Siberia with no money and no respect from their employers or from many in the Mac community.
And yet, they not only produce excellent software, but they are also a very profitable enterprise for Microsoft.
The fact that MS management rewards these dedicated employees by giving them the back of its hand speaks volumes about the corporate arrogance and self-importance that has helped create the mess MS is in right now.
From: Good Call…
Thanks Paul. It’s a colloquialism for heaven’s sake.
Absolutely, white people are the last ones we can discriminate against. If you start taking the feelings of such a small minority, only 2 percent of the USA population is redhead, you’d have total choas. It’s just one minority, it doesn’t matter. Although I don’t know why they didn’t just say “bastard child”.
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Office is Microsoft’s holy grail, any company that even attempts to go up against it better be ready to fight to the death.
Windows + Office in the office space is M$ main income generator and they are tied together.
Apple would have to convince, and provide, a total office solution to replace both.
Buisness will be slow to change, the retraining of the corporate drones will be high and Apple is the only hardware vendor.
Not happening even if it was free.
Redheaded Nonsense: There are probably more bastards around than redheads.
macaholic – My point exactly! Why should we worry about a 2 percent minority? This trying to get the facts straight about such a small group of people is ridiculous, certainly we should concentrate on the 90 percent majority… Oh, that would be like comparing this to the Mac/Windows debat… isn’t that what started this?
Isn’t that why MDN used that phrase? They certainly couldn’t use the “N” word, that would be offensive and wrong, apparently redheaded stepchildren , who were beaten, that is the implied part of the phrase, are better sports.