ITN: Disney, Mac Office, Leopard, Ticketmaster, and Apple

[AppleInsider]

In The News: Disney profits rise but the media firm refuses to break out iTunes figures. Meanwhile, Redmond is still pumping out updates to Mac Office 2004 while Apple dangles a "feature complete" Leopard beta in front of developers. And Apple ranks high in a list of most desirable employers.

Disney not ready to break out iTunes figures

Walt Disney said Tuesday that second quarter profits rose 27 percent, helped by double-digit growth in operating earnings across of all its business units.

For the quarter ended March 31, the entertainment conglomerate earned $931 million, or 44 cents a share, up from the $733 million, or 37 cents a share, a year earlier.

During an ensuing conference call, chief executive Robert Iger refused to break out a measure of the company's digital revenue, garnered from its Web sites and sales of movies from Apple's iTunes.

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.5 Update

No need to check your calendars... Microsoft on Tuesday indeed released an update to Office 2004 for Mac -- the current version of its industry standard office applications suite for Mac OS X.

Microsoft says the 59.5MB update contains several improvements to enhance security and stability, including fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant has maintained that it will wrap up the development of Office 2008 for Mac sometime later this year.

Apple dangles Leopard beta

Continuing with its campaign to draw the largest ever crowd at its Worldwide Developers Conference next month, Apple on Tuesday afternoon baited Apple Developer Connection members with a new teaser email.



"See the future. Then take it home with you," the company wrote in the email. "The Leopard beta. Available first at WWDC."

"At the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, we're planning to show you a feature-complete version of Mac OS X Leopard, and you can take home a beta copy," the message continued. "Be the first to get your hands on the Leopard beta and get a huge head start on development. Register now for WWDC 2007 -- it's your ticket to the future of Mac OS X."

Apple, in the email, also noted that it has extended early registration ($300 discount) till May 11th (Friday).

iTunes Ticketmaster promo

In the U.S., Ticketmaster is working with Apple to offer free song downloads to customers buying concert and event tickets.

The online booking service is offering every online ticket buyer access to a ten-song sampler of songs from emerging artists, and will offer a free iTunes download of a customer's choice in an offer which beginning May 28 through September 3.

Wanting to work for Apple

Finally, Apple this year is ranked as the sixth most desirable employer in a Fortune list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For.

Google topped the list, with Microsoft trailing Apple in the no. 7 spot

Of MBAs who offered their top five most desirable workplaces, 10.78 percent chose Apple. Some 9.75 percent of women surveyed placed Apple in their top five most desired workplaces, while 11.65 percent of men mentioned Apple in their top five.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[pazimzadeh]

wow, Microsoft sure has a lot of employees...

[bevos]

Apple may be 6th most desirable employer but its No 1 most innovative businessweek.com

[dan.blanchard]

What the hell?! I thought I read a long time ago that Microsoft was waiting to release an update for Office 2004 until they could make it a Universal Binary. This is a bunch of crap. Although, I guess we should expect as much from MS.

[elroth]

You read wrong. Microsoft said that the next full version of Office would be Universal, but they would not release a Universal update to Office 2004.

[jApple]

I'm surprised Microsoft ranked so high in employee ranking. Maybe I'm too much of an Apple fan but everything I read about Microsoft (such as "inside the empire") suggests that is a cutthroat miserable working environment.

[SpamSandwich]

Originally Posted by jApple

I'm surprised Microsoft ranked so high in employee ranking. Maybe I'm too much of an Apple fan but everything I read about Microsoft (such as "inside the empire") suggests that is a cutthroat miserable working environment.

It's probably very competitive internally, but that could be said of 90% of businesses.

[ascii]

It's important for developers to have access to OS betas to ensure their apps will work.

Such betas shouldn't be dangled around as some kind of a conference bonus. It's not a marketer's game, it's an important thing.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by dan.blanchard

What the hell?! I thought I read a long time ago that Microsoft was waiting to release an update for Office 2004 until they could make it a Universal Binary. This is a bunch of crap. Although, I guess we should expect as much from MS.

They never said that. Updates are updates. The new version will be Universal.

Why would they want to waste their programmers on making a soon to be discontinued version Universal?

This is the same nonsense people were giving us about CS2.

[crees!]

Regarding ticketmaster, last month I bought 2 tickets and for each received a free iTunes song credit. This just seems to be an expansion of that.

[JupiterOne]

Originally Posted by jApple

I'm surprised Microsoft ranked so high in employee ranking. Maybe I'm too much of an Apple fan but everything I read about Microsoft (such as "inside the empire") suggests that is a cutthroat miserable working environment.

Can you imagine what it must be like for an iPhone or Leopard developer right now?

[Abster2core]

Originally Posted by ascii

It's important for developers to have access to OS betas to ensure their apps will work.

Such betas shouldn't be dangled around as some kind of a conference bonus. It's not a marketer's game, it's an important thing.

I am a developer and there is no way that I want to be coding to a OS Beta. It would be waste of time having to debug and/or recompile for each iteration.

As Apple offers, major developers are ADC members, are dutifully informed when necessary to changes to the OS and have access to the tools to upgrade their apps. If you notice, virtually every major OS release has followed very quickly with third-party updates. Those that require a total recoding such as Word, Adobe Suites, etc., aren't going to even begin until they are confident that the new OS fits within their business strategy and that requires judiciary planning and investment.

We would rather create chicken recipes for a fully grown chicken than its egg. Unless of course we were making omelettes.

[vinea]

Originally Posted by Abster2core

I am a developer and there is no way that I want to be coding to a OS Beta. It would be waste of time, having to debug and/or recompile for each iteration.

We would rather create chicken recipes for a fully grown chicken than its egg. Unless of course I was making omelettes.

You code to an OS beta if you want to launch/update with the new OS...

As far as "dangling" given the OS is late the beta is probably in flux so shooting for a WWDC beta release is as good a date as any for an October launch. Full ADC devs have been seeded with leopard already.

Vinea

[ascii]

Originally Posted by Abster2core

We would rather create chicken recipes for a fully grown chicken than its egg. Unless of course we were making omelettes.

Well, that's your perogative. But I'm also a Mac developer and ADC member, and I'd like to have a Leopard patch ready for my apps on the day Leopard is released.

[Abster2core]

Originally Posted by vinea

Full ADC devs have been seeded with leopard already.
Vinea

That is what I said.

[max_naylor]

Originally Posted by jApple

I'm surprised Microsoft ranked so high in employee ranking. Maybe I'm too much of an Apple fan but everything I read about Microsoft (such as "inside the empire") suggests that is a cutthroat miserable working environment.

Well, not from the Mac Business Unit, at least. Look what some crazed employees did in their spare time: http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo/archiv...for-macbu.aspx

[Bergman]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

No need to check your calendars... Microsoft on Tuesday indeed released an update to Office 2004 for Mac -- the current version of its industry standard office applications suite for Mac OS X.

Yes, but who cares about MS Office for Mac when Sun has announced it will share developer resources to make a rock-solid port of OpenOffice.org for the Mac.

If bloatware is the question,MS Office is never the answer.

Best regards,

Bergman

[mdriftmeyer]

What's with this don't want to debug an OS in-flux. Give me a break. All OSes are in-flux. When major APIs are introduced, you hope that much of it includes work that you don't have to duplicate.

[nvidia2008]

Originally Posted by Bergman

Yes, but who cares about MS Office for Mac when Sun has announced it will share developer resources to make a rock-solid port of OpenOffice.org for the Mac.

If bloatware is the question,MS Office is never the answer.

Best regards,

Bergman

I tried the latest version of NeoOffice, while nice, I couldn't recommend it strongly to Switchers. Keep up the good work, though. Keep on rockin'.

[nvidia2008]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.5 Update

Please note that this is a full COMBO update: " In addition, this update includes all the improvements released in all previous Office 2004 updates. "

Which means, no need to keep all those other installers and update update update everytime I install Office...!!! Hopefully w000t!

[vinea]

Originally Posted by Abster2core

That is what I said.

I quoted you in full so that is not what you said as is also indicated by the "Last edited by Abster2core : Yesterday at 02:11 PM. " tag.

What you said is STILL silly. Neither debugging nor recompilation is a major issue (especially compilation as it's a buttonpress) while the OS is in major flux because mostly you're still getting the hang of what's new. Later builds are reasonably stable.

If you don't think MS and Adobe had started fiddling around with Universal binaries until after the intel launch (or are not fiddling with Leopard now) you're really not in touch and I wonder who you develop for. They sure as hell started even if they knew they didn't want to release universal binaries until the next release.

Vinea