“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
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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Reads and writes Excel and Word files, outputs PDFs and RTF, text.
Loads in a blink, does the job.
NeoOfficeJ
Cross platform office package, free open source. A bit ugly, but works.
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.