Now that M$ have Virtual PC bundled with XP and Office, will they sometime abandon Office for the Mac, suggesting that Mac users run Office through VP and XP?
Only if they want to abandon hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue when users refuse to upgrade their office suites, and Apple either ports an open source suite to Mac OS X or rolls their own.
Personally I still find Apple works does most tasks reasonably well. And in some cases superior to M$ especially where simple graphics are included.
AppleWorks has to be the single worst major application for Mac OS X. I can't believe you're saying that.
The drawing program is better, but then Office doesn't have a drawing program to begin with, so that's not really a vaild point.
I'm no fan of MS Office (I really love running OpenOffice on my PC - it's a really enjoyable application), and if Microsoft cancelled Office tomorrow Apple would have at least a year to get their own office suite out. MS Office would surely remain compatible with the latest Mac OS and Windows Office versions for that time, and users could wait it out.
but I'm still using OS9 and Apple Works 5. Yep...I've seen OSX Apple Works and 'urrgh' is a word that comes to mind.
But for basic letters, reports it isn't too bad.
I work with someone else who uses M$ Word on PC and I'd have to say the letters I produce are far superior to his (In terms of appearance). Text and graphics both look better in printed form.
Only if they want to abandon hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue when users refuse to upgrade their office suites, and Apple either ports an open source suite to Mac OS X or rolls their own.
Barto
And what makes you think MS won't do that? Hundreds of millions of dollars is chump change If they ever feel the least bit threatened, that's precisely what they're going to do. This move is the groundwork just in case. IE disappeared in the blink of an eye on the whims of the MS brass. Halo for Mac/PC...promised in 1999, then 2000, then 2001...purposefully abandoned in-house by Bungie because the top-brass forced them to. Or do you believe their official word? ...
In some ways it makes sense. M$ gets to sell XP at the same time as Office in the 'hope' that the wayward see the light. Cripples VP so that the user experience is less than on a PC and blames the whole thing eventually on emulation difficulties. And then casually suggests that we'd all be better of using a PC
I don't think this will happen, at least not before Apple releases a so-called "Office-Killer." Or even if MS gets major wind of such a project.
Microsoft has a substantial investment in the Office v. X codebase. I really don't believe that they would stop offering it.
Just remember that they care about money, money, money. You really think they'd make more money by ditching a native version of Office and offering only VPC+XP+Office packages? No, and I can almost guarantee you that they know this as well. They're probably not so naive as to think that they'll have nearly as much sales as with the native version.
Will they stop selling Office when Apple's product is beating the hell out of it? I don't see a reason why not.
Don't forget Microsoft uses Visual C++ for Mac. It's as big an effort to maintain Office with access to the same IDE.
Which needless to say they don't sell to 3rd parties. Thanks U.S. DoJ for not seperating Windows from the applications side, keeping the Mac platform disadvantaged!
And what makes you think MS won't do that? Hundreds of millions of dollars is chump change If they ever feel the least bit threatened, that's precisely what they're going to do. This move is the groundwork just in case. IE disappeared in the blink of an eye on the whims of the MS brass. Halo for Mac/PC...promised in 1999, then 2000, then 2001...purposefully abandoned in-house by Bungie because the top-brass forced them to. Or do you believe their official word? ...
This topic is not new, but I will chime in here. As Spart said, M$ is about "money, money, money." It is a myth that M$ can abandon markets willy-nilly. The IE example does not apply. M$ has abandoned IE as a standalone application for all platforms. It will become a part of the OS in Windows. But remember, IE was not a revenue source. Office v.X is a source of major profits. M$ loses money on something like 4 of its 7 units. It needs Office:mac to help offset those loses.
N.B. apologies for the multiple thread posts, but i think i need to start evangelizing this company again, especially when it comes to microsoft alternatives...
the only drawback is that they didn't have a powerpoint contender, but now that keynote is out, i think that the combination of these three apps (keynote, write and calc) would make a pretty powerful team on anyone's desktop, without breaking the bank. small by comparison to most bloatware, and it was os x native before office was (though no one seemed to notice).
p.s. it still annoys me to no end that when macworld did a comparative review of office alternatives, they ignored these apps, but reviewed TEXTEDIT?!?!?! WTF?!?!
This topic is not new, but I will chime in here. As Spart said, M$ is about "money, money, money." It is a myth that M$ can abandon markets willy-nilly. The IE example does not apply. M$ has abandoned IE as a standalone application for all platforms. It will become a part of the OS in Windows. But remember, IE was not a revenue source. Office v.X is a source of major profits. M$ loses money on something like 4 of its 7 units. It needs Office:mac to help offset those loses.
And what makes you think MS won't make more money destroying the Mac platform altogether? It'll take time, but eventually the Mac platform wouldn't be viable. It's not about money, money, money. It's about destroying the competition, or 'vision' in Bill's terms. Those displaced Mac users will eventually need Microsoft Office again anyway. You think people are going to switch to some other platform like the other free Unixes? Heh. Discontinuing the Mac version of Office is like an investment. You set aside some profits now, and it appreciates into something else later.
Like I said, you're falling into MS's trap. You've actually gobbled up their official statement about IE like it's so obvious. IE for Mac and PC had no similarities. One wasn't the part of the other's strategy. The Mac BU and the Windows IE team didn't work together. Guess what, they were working on IE 6.0 for Mac up until the decision makers got a whiff of Safari and axed it. The Mac MSN client uses the IE 6.0 core. You think the MSN client is going away? You think the Mac BU is incapable of maintaining both an MSN Explorer and a conventional style Internet Explorer?..with the underlying rendering engine being exactly the same?
The native Mac version of Microsoft Office will be gone before you know it. Be prepared.
The cancellation of the standalone versions of IE for Windows and Mac were related. Microsoft wants to focus its efforts on revenue streams. Which means that it wants you to pay to use its browser software. Windows users pay whenever they buy Windows, or when they subscribe to MSN, so IE persists as a component of the OS and as the core of MSN.
Mac users pay when they subscribe to MSN, and thus get the 6.0 IE software. There will be a 7.0, and maybe even 8.0, release of IE for the Mac (if MS continues its current strategy), but it will only be available to people who pay for it in the form of MSN subscriptions.
N.B. apologies for the multiple thread posts, but i think i need to start evangelizing this company again, especially when it comes to microsoft alternatives...
the only drawback is that they didn't have a powerpoint contender, but now that keynote is out, i think that the combination of these three apps (keynote, write and calc) would make a pretty powerful team on anyone's desktop, without breaking the bank. small by comparison to most bloatware, and it was os x native before office was (though no one seemed to notice).
p.s. it still annoys me to no end that when macworld did a comparative review of office alternatives, they ignored these apps, but reviewed TEXTEDIT?!?!?! WTF?!?!
I've checked out Mariner Calc in my quest for an Excel alternative. It looks promising. But the graphs it produces are horrible -- circa System 7 style graphics, much like the latest, detestable version of Quicken. If Mariner looked felt more like a Mac OS X program, I'd probably give it a fling.
Maybe the next version will fix the icky Mac OS 9 (or lower) look of the charts, column and row headers, etc.
I'd love to find an alternative to Microsoft Excel. It's the only Microsoft program I still use.
And Bush will give Bill a high five. Even though I read he likes Macs. Eugene if MS Office goes, Macs go. Nothing will ever be 100% compatible unless it's from Microsoft. And even then, you never know. Eugene you scare me.
Strange that you say that, when one of the few operating systems currently gaining market share, particularly in places outside the US, is Linux, which has no Microsoft software at all.
For too long people have thought that software was the key to compatibility. It's not. The software program used to author a document is quite secondary. The key is the document format. OpenOffice.org has shown that Microsoft's document format is not the walled off island some seem to think. A Microsoft format-compatible office suite from Apple (or other party) would be enough to keep the Mac alive. Sure, the loss of Microsoft would likely scoot the Mac out of most business environments -- but we're not in those environments, anyway. Office is a secondary application in the graphic design, filmmaker and consumer markets that are now Apple's core venues.
Strange that you say that, when one of the few operating systems currently gaining market share, particularly in places outside the US, is Linux, which has no Microsoft software at all.
For too long people have thought that software was the key to compatibility. It's not. The software program used to author a document is quite secondary. The key is the document format. OpenOffice.org has shown that Microsoft's document format is not the walled off island some seem to think. A Microsoft format-compatible office suite from Apple (or other party) would be enough to keep the Mac alive. Sure, the loss of Microsoft would likely scoot the Mac out of most business environments -- but we're not in those environments, anyway. Office is a secondary application in the graphic design, filmmaker and consumer markets that are now Apple's core venues.
Kirk
Without Office, most consumers would probably shy away from the Mac. Most aren't very computer-literate, so they just use what they are told to use. This is most likely Office.
Most computer users I know who fall below the level of "literacy" don't know what Office is. They want to know if the computer can read "Microsoft" files. With an Apple authored, .doc, .ppt, .xls-compatible software suite on the Mac, the answer to that question will remain "yes."
Not that I expect Microsoft to cancel its Mac product. Not so long as its profitable.
Ah Word 5.1 the only M$ app that didn't suck so much. Word X is decent but not polished. The chumps at MacBU apparently claim it's too hard to have it save a >31 character file name.
Well sure the format is fine now. What about when M$ introduces all this new "security" stuff and .NET. They control the format and they have illegally hurt small companies like Apple before. DR DOS anyone? or has anyone ever noticed how sketchy QT 6 on XP is? I think it is not a coincidence.
Office Mac might come out with a new version but after that I just don't know anymore. if Office goes Macs go. Why? Because like he said, computer users are stupid. The average person is stupid. They are impressionable and gullible too. They don't want to hear GPL lecture and how great open source stuff is, they want results. When they see half baked open source alternatives and then a PC, they'll buy the PC. Most people only use PCs because other people do. All they do is IE and Outlook and a few games maybe. They could do all this better on a Mac but they are lazy and don't want to change and assume that since everyone uses PCs they must be better.
Comments
Barto
The only problem would be if they did it before Open Office or Apple has a viable option.
Personally I still find Apple works does most tasks reasonably well. And in some cases superior to M$ especially where simple graphics are included.
Originally posted by orange whip
Personally I still find Apple works does most tasks reasonably well. And in some cases superior to M$ especially where simple graphics are included.
AppleWorks has to be the single worst major application for Mac OS X. I can't believe you're saying that.
The drawing program is better, but then Office doesn't have a drawing program to begin with, so that's not really a vaild point.
I'm no fan of MS Office (I really love running OpenOffice on my PC - it's a really enjoyable application), and if Microsoft cancelled Office tomorrow Apple would have at least a year to get their own office suite out. MS Office would surely remain compatible with the latest Mac OS and Windows Office versions for that time, and users could wait it out.
Barto
but I'm still using OS9 and Apple Works 5. Yep...I've seen OSX Apple Works and 'urrgh' is a word that comes to mind.
But for basic letters, reports it isn't too bad.
I work with someone else who uses M$ Word on PC and I'd have to say the letters I produce are far superior to his (In terms of appearance). Text and graphics both look better in printed form.
Originally posted by Barto
Only if they want to abandon hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue when users refuse to upgrade their office suites, and Apple either ports an open source suite to Mac OS X or rolls their own.
Barto
And what makes you think MS won't do that? Hundreds of millions of dollars is chump change If they ever feel the least bit threatened, that's precisely what they're going to do. This move is the groundwork just in case. IE disappeared in the blink of an eye on the whims of the MS brass. Halo for Mac/PC...promised in 1999, then 2000, then 2001...purposefully abandoned in-house by Bungie because the top-brass forced them to. Or do you believe their official word? ...
Microsoft has a substantial investment in the Office v. X codebase. I really don't believe that they would stop offering it.
Just remember that they care about money, money, money. You really think they'd make more money by ditching a native version of Office and offering only VPC+XP+Office packages? No, and I can almost guarantee you that they know this as well. They're probably not so naive as to think that they'll have nearly as much sales as with the native version.
Will they stop selling Office when Apple's product is beating the hell out of it? I don't see a reason why not.
Which needless to say they don't sell to 3rd parties. Thanks U.S. DoJ for not seperating Windows from the applications side, keeping the Mac platform disadvantaged!
Barto
Originally posted by Eugene
And what makes you think MS won't do that? Hundreds of millions of dollars is chump change If they ever feel the least bit threatened, that's precisely what they're going to do. This move is the groundwork just in case. IE disappeared in the blink of an eye on the whims of the MS brass. Halo for Mac/PC...promised in 1999, then 2000, then 2001...purposefully abandoned in-house by Bungie because the top-brass forced them to. Or do you believe their official word? ...
This topic is not new, but I will chime in here. As Spart said, M$ is about "money, money, money." It is a myth that M$ can abandon markets willy-nilly. The IE example does not apply. M$ has abandoned IE as a standalone application for all platforms. It will become a part of the OS in Windows. But remember, IE was not a revenue source. Office v.X is a source of major profits. M$ loses money on something like 4 of its 7 units. It needs Office:mac to help offset those loses.
Mariner Software - makers of Mariner Write and Calc
the only drawback is that they didn't have a powerpoint contender, but now that keynote is out, i think that the combination of these three apps (keynote, write and calc) would make a pretty powerful team on anyone's desktop, without breaking the bank. small by comparison to most bloatware, and it was os x native before office was (though no one seemed to notice).
p.s. it still annoys me to no end that when macworld did a comparative review of office alternatives, they ignored these apps, but reviewed TEXTEDIT?!?!?! WTF?!?!
Originally posted by Mr. Me
This topic is not new, but I will chime in here. As Spart said, M$ is about "money, money, money." It is a myth that M$ can abandon markets willy-nilly. The IE example does not apply. M$ has abandoned IE as a standalone application for all platforms. It will become a part of the OS in Windows. But remember, IE was not a revenue source. Office v.X is a source of major profits. M$ loses money on something like 4 of its 7 units. It needs Office:mac to help offset those loses.
And what makes you think MS won't make more money destroying the Mac platform altogether? It'll take time, but eventually the Mac platform wouldn't be viable. It's not about money, money, money. It's about destroying the competition, or 'vision' in Bill's terms. Those displaced Mac users will eventually need Microsoft Office again anyway. You think people are going to switch to some other platform like the other free Unixes? Heh. Discontinuing the Mac version of Office is like an investment. You set aside some profits now, and it appreciates into something else later.
Like I said, you're falling into MS's trap. You've actually gobbled up their official statement about IE like it's so obvious. IE for Mac and PC had no similarities. One wasn't the part of the other's strategy. The Mac BU and the Windows IE team didn't work together. Guess what, they were working on IE 6.0 for Mac up until the decision makers got a whiff of Safari and axed it. The Mac MSN client uses the IE 6.0 core. You think the MSN client is going away? You think the Mac BU is incapable of maintaining both an MSN Explorer and a conventional style Internet Explorer?..with the underlying rendering engine being exactly the same?
The native Mac version of Microsoft Office will be gone before you know it. Be prepared.
The cancellation of the standalone versions of IE for Windows and Mac were related. Microsoft wants to focus its efforts on revenue streams. Which means that it wants you to pay to use its browser software. Windows users pay whenever they buy Windows, or when they subscribe to MSN, so IE persists as a component of the OS and as the core of MSN.
Mac users pay when they subscribe to MSN, and thus get the 6.0 IE software. There will be a 7.0, and maybe even 8.0, release of IE for the Mac (if MS continues its current strategy), but it will only be available to people who pay for it in the form of MSN subscriptions.
Kirk
Originally posted by rok
N.B. apologies for the multiple thread posts, but i think i need to start evangelizing this company again, especially when it comes to microsoft alternatives...
Mariner Software - makers of Mariner Write and Calc
the only drawback is that they didn't have a powerpoint contender, but now that keynote is out, i think that the combination of these three apps (keynote, write and calc) would make a pretty powerful team on anyone's desktop, without breaking the bank. small by comparison to most bloatware, and it was os x native before office was (though no one seemed to notice).
p.s. it still annoys me to no end that when macworld did a comparative review of office alternatives, they ignored these apps, but reviewed TEXTEDIT?!?!?! WTF?!?!
I've checked out Mariner Calc in my quest for an Excel alternative. It looks promising. But the graphs it produces are horrible -- circa System 7 style graphics, much like the latest, detestable version of Quicken. If Mariner looked felt more like a Mac OS X program, I'd probably give it a fling.
Maybe the next version will fix the icky Mac OS 9 (or lower) look of the charts, column and row headers, etc.
I'd love to find an alternative to Microsoft Excel. It's the only Microsoft program I still use.
Kirk
Strange that you say that, when one of the few operating systems currently gaining market share, particularly in places outside the US, is Linux, which has no Microsoft software at all.
For too long people have thought that software was the key to compatibility. It's not. The software program used to author a document is quite secondary. The key is the document format. OpenOffice.org has shown that Microsoft's document format is not the walled off island some seem to think. A Microsoft format-compatible office suite from Apple (or other party) would be enough to keep the Mac alive. Sure, the loss of Microsoft would likely scoot the Mac out of most business environments -- but we're not in those environments, anyway. Office is a secondary application in the graphic design, filmmaker and consumer markets that are now Apple's core venues.
Kirk
Originally posted by Kirkland
Aquatic,
Strange that you say that, when one of the few operating systems currently gaining market share, particularly in places outside the US, is Linux, which has no Microsoft software at all.
For too long people have thought that software was the key to compatibility. It's not. The software program used to author a document is quite secondary. The key is the document format. OpenOffice.org has shown that Microsoft's document format is not the walled off island some seem to think. A Microsoft format-compatible office suite from Apple (or other party) would be enough to keep the Mac alive. Sure, the loss of Microsoft would likely scoot the Mac out of most business environments -- but we're not in those environments, anyway. Office is a secondary application in the graphic design, filmmaker and consumer markets that are now Apple's core venues.
Kirk
Without Office, most consumers would probably shy away from the Mac. Most aren't very computer-literate, so they just use what they are told to use. This is most likely Office.
Not that I expect Microsoft to cancel its Mac product. Not so long as its profitable.
Kirk
but I'm still using OS9 and Apple Works 5. Yep...I've seen OSX Apple Works and 'urrgh' is a word that comes to mind.
I still use Word 5.1 and surprisingly it still works well under 9.2, just a couple of glitches.
Well sure the format is fine now. What about when M$ introduces all this new "security" stuff and .NET. They control the format and they have illegally hurt small companies like Apple before. DR DOS anyone? or has anyone ever noticed how sketchy QT 6 on XP is? I think it is not a coincidence.
Office Mac might come out with a new version but after that I just don't know anymore. if Office goes Macs go. Why? Because like he said, computer users are stupid. The average person is stupid. They are impressionable and gullible too. They don't want to hear GPL lecture and how great open source stuff is, they want results. When they see half baked open source alternatives and then a PC, they'll buy the PC. Most people only use PCs because other people do. All they do is IE and Outlook and a few games maybe. They could do all this better on a Mac but they are lazy and don't want to change and assume that since everyone uses PCs they must be better.
Originally posted by Eugene
The native Mac version of Microsoft Office will be gone before you know it. Be prepared.
Be prepared?
I'm praying for it.