It took them a while to announce this. With Parallels and Boot Camp, I think it would be hard for a more expensive option, though Virtual PC was nicer save for the performance hit on the PPC units because of the emulation.
It would have been nice to have a system that allows the program to intermingle with OS X apps rather than be within a window like Parallels. Darwine is supposed to be heading that way.
um, so when did i miss the part that ms office 2004 will suddenly cease to work on the new intel macs? oh, i guess running office in rosetta on dual core processors is just, um, too slow? seriously, how fast do you need office to friggin' run? even excel, the biggest table to create and have them all live linked to each other... are you telling me the current lineup of processors couldn't chew through that data in the meantime on the current office suite? if this is such a big issue before purchasing new hardware, just buy the new hardware, use the current apps, and plan a roadmap for the transition to the new supported scripting. yeah, i know planning transition is more difficult than just doing it the way it's always been done, but if that were the case, for example, where the hell would the standards of the world wide web and browsers be today? someone hadd to change the rules, or we'd all be table-slicing-and-dicing the rest of our lives.
um, so when did i miss the part that ms office 2004 will suddenly cease to work on the new intel macs? oh, i guess running office in rosetta on dual core processors is just, um, too slow? seriously, how fast do you need office to friggin' run? even excel, the biggest table to create and have them all live linked to each other... are you telling me the current lineup of processors couldn't chew through that data in the meantime on the current office suite? if this is such a big issue before purchasing new hardware, just buy the new hardware, use the current apps, and plan a roadmap for the transition to the new supported scripting. yeah, i know planning transition is more difficult than just doing it the way it's always been done, but if that were the case, for example, where the hell would the standards of the world wide web and browsers be today? someone hadd to change the rules, or we'd all be table-slicing-and-dicing the rest of our lives.
I have no problem at all continuing to use Office 2004 BUT when I want to buy new hardware in a year and I can no longer buy 2004, and the new versions are no longer compatible between Mac and PC THEN there is a problem. I'm all for transitions and new (beneficial) technologies but this path is Mac only and breaking the compatibility.
Using Windows at work all day, we see really old Microsoft Word/Office files all the time from other companies we consult with. Old and new versions of Windows to Windows don't even work well. How does anyone expect Mac and Windows versions to ever really be compatible? For now or in the future?
Face it. No one on the planet thinks Office is any good. When crap happens, it is just simple to say, oh that's just how Word is. Doesn't matter if it happens from the Mac or Windows side.
Worst comes to worst, we can use Boot Camp or Parallels or VM or whatever. I can get Office for $20 at work for a home users license. We don't need MS Virtual PC. They know it. We (at the corporate level) to date need office. They know it.
The reason MacBU has had to abandon VBA is that the Mac compiler won't work on Intel Macs. And Microsoft has already announced that VBA is being deprecated on Windows (it will go on working for a few years, then will end). So there's no point devoting enormous efforts to making a new compiler only for it all to go away shortly afterwards. There is some reason to believe that eventually VB.NET will work on the Mac as it does on Windows, as a cross-platform solution. Until then, VBA macros need to be translated to AppleScript. There can be no better signal that MacBU is committeed to the Mac than to see the huge investment they have made in AppleScript. Office's AppleScript is already working as of Office 2004, and it mirrors the VBA model identically: macros can be translated to AppleScript _now_, and will then "just work" in the next version of Office too.
Using Windows at work all day, we see really old Microsoft Word/Office files all the time from other companies we consult with. Old and new versions of Windows to Windows don't even work well. How does anyone expect Mac and Windows versions to ever really be compatible? For now or in the future?
.
.
.
Pretty easy to see where all of this is going.
While there are certainly problems with compatibility they are not usually severe. I have a very extenisive Excel model of our business. 6 multi-sheet excel workbooks that talk to each other. Developed on a Mac and, with minor formatting tweaks, ran fine on a PC. Even edit on the PC and send back. While we all like to bash on MS for lazy design and testing, it (Excel) still worked better than anything else out there for this kind of work and compatibility.
I see several different issues at work here. Let me first say that Word-compatibility is an oxymoron. Move a Word document between two Windows computers with different versions of Office and you will have problems. My experience is the Word 2004 is almost completely compatible with all previous Mac versions. It is also more compatible with different versions of Word:win than they are with each other.
To the vast majority of Office users, VBA serves no useful purpose. For a small subset of users, it is essential. MacBU has some explaining to do about how users of Office 2008 will function with VBA no longer available. Why upgrade when Office 2004 still works and has better than acceptable performance in Rosetta?
Virtual PC is another matter. Microsoft bought Connectix software for Virtual Server. Virtual PC for the Mac and Virtual PC for Windows came along for the ride. Well, Microsoft's plans for Virtual Server collapsed. It converted the product to freeware. The handwriting was on the wall for the VPC product line. This was confirmed with Microsoft annouced that VPC 2004, the current Windows version, has also been converted to freeware. Finally today, Microsoft announced that VPC 7 would be the last Mac version.
I am as willing as the next person to accept the notion that Microsoft is up to no good. In the case of removing VBA from Office 2008, this is consistent with the available evidence. In the case of today's announcement about VPC, it is not. Its death is a Microsoft failure on several levels.
While there are certainly problems with compatibility they are not usually severe. I have a very extenisive Excel model of our business. 6 multi-sheet excel workbooks that talk to each other. Developed on a Mac and, with minor formatting tweaks, ran fine on a PC. Even edit on the PC and send back. While we all like to bash on MS for lazy design and testing, it (Excel) still worked better than anything else out there for this kind of work and compatibility.
Hell on the Mac what other choices are there? I can get around Word and Power Point but Excel?
Virtual PC is another matter. Microsoft bought Connectix software for Virtual Server. Virtual PC for the Mac and Virtual PC for Windows came along for the ride. Well, Microsoft's plans for Virtual Server collapsed. It converted the product to freeware. The handwriting was on the wall for the VPC product line. This was confirmed with Microsoft annouced that VPC 2004, the current Windows version, has also been converted to freeware. Finally today, Microsoft announced that VPC 7 would be the last Mac version.
i guess the guys who sold connectix to microsoft got out just in the nick of time. well, okay, they had a few years to go, but they avoided having to make the g5 transition, AND having to compete with apple's FREE boot camp solution, and, one would assume with microsoft signing the checks, they made out like bandits in the deal, too.
They are still developing Office for Mac, but they are killing off a feature that allows many people to use Macs in a corporate environment.
Yeah, and look what they did for email. They killed off Outlook for Mac and threw us this Entourage application which is a joke when it comes to Exchange server support. Synchronizing large mailboxes takes forever, and it can't even access Notes and Tasks folders on the server, or configure mail rules on the server.
This is what's called token support. They make it look like they are committed to supporting the Mac platform. "See, we do make Office for the Mac. See, Entourage can communicate with Exchange servers." But they make the Mac version just different enough, and leave out just enough critical features so compatibility becomes a major obstacle in corporate Windows based environments.
It might not be noticed here much in the Mac world, but MS has been moving away from VB themselves. It will take a while, but it is happening. I'm not an expert in that area, but .net, and other technologies are changing things there as well.
You don't need it any more. Microsoft can go to hell and scrap all their crappy Mac products if they want. It's not like they put the development effort in to make them worth anything. You're better just running virtualization software and the Windows version or better yet find a way to phase out using their stuff altogether.
At work, I have this idiot system administrator whose idea of Mac "support" was to set up Windows Terminal Services and have Mac users do all their work in Windows, run all their applications in Windows, save all their files in Windows, and completely bypass the Mac OS.
It might not be noticed here much in the Mac world, but MS has been moving away from VB themselves. It will take a while, but it is happening. I'm not an expert in that area, but .net, and other technologies are changing things there as well.
They are. Ultimately they will move to VSTA (I think it stands for Visual Studio Toolbox for Applications), which is basically just .Net for apps but I believe Office 2007 still utilises VBA, either way it retains backward compatibility. To completely cut VBA from an entire iteration of Office for Mac is a huge blow. As has been stated before the cycle is around 3 - 4 years for an upgrade and after about 1 year you will no longer be able to get the current version leaving people who need VB and want to switch basically unable to do so.
Bad bad (and stupid) Microsoft. The ONLY thing they've done that's been good for mac users is to employ Flip4Mac instead of their own dirty Windows Media Player. All other choices they've made is just crap. In one sentence they're saying "As always, cross-platform compatibility remains a top priority" and in the next they're saying "VB macros within files will not be accessible and cannot be viewed or modified". Perhaps they're thinking advanced users that are likely to use VB are also likely to have a virtual Windows desktop of some kind installed. It's crap either way. And to kill such a fine product as Virtual PC. Bad. While Microsoft has been sitting on their hands spending money doing nothing other companies like VMware and Parallells has developed competent alternatives showing that it doesn't take years to develop good virtualization software 1.0.
Now I don't use Microsoft's software at all, so for me personally this isn't a big blow. But poor people who are dependent of MS software.. ya'll must meet disappointments all the time..
Comments
It must be a real kick in the nuts for Paralells to bring MS to it's knee's.
Things are in the crapper at MS.
Things are in the craper at M$. How does that relate to what you quoted me on?
Novell has reverse-engineered and implemented VB in it's version of OpenOffice. Maybe Apple could have a talk with them. Learn a thing or two.
Does this mean it comes back to the OS version? Is VB available in OO 2.0 or NeoOffice?
It would have been nice to have a system that allows the program to intermingle with OS X apps rather than be within a window like Parallels. Darwine is supposed to be heading that way.
um, so when did i miss the part that ms office 2004 will suddenly cease to work on the new intel macs? oh, i guess running office in rosetta on dual core processors is just, um, too slow? seriously, how fast do you need office to friggin' run? even excel, the biggest table to create and have them all live linked to each other... are you telling me the current lineup of processors couldn't chew through that data in the meantime on the current office suite? if this is such a big issue before purchasing new hardware, just buy the new hardware, use the current apps, and plan a roadmap for the transition to the new supported scripting. yeah, i know planning transition is more difficult than just doing it the way it's always been done, but if that were the case, for example, where the hell would the standards of the world wide web and browsers be today? someone hadd to change the rules, or we'd all be table-slicing-and-dicing the rest of our lives.
I have no problem at all continuing to use Office 2004 BUT when I want to buy new hardware in a year and I can no longer buy 2004, and the new versions are no longer compatible between Mac and PC THEN there is a problem. I'm all for transitions and new (beneficial) technologies but this path is Mac only and breaking the compatibility.
edit: spelling
Face it. No one on the planet thinks Office is any good. When crap happens, it is just simple to say, oh that's just how Word is. Doesn't matter if it happens from the Mac or Windows side.
Worst comes to worst, we can use Boot Camp or Parallels or VM or whatever. I can get Office for $20 at work for a home users license. We don't need MS Virtual PC. They know it. We (at the corporate level) to date need office. They know it.
Pretty easy to see where all of this is going.
Using Windows at work all day, we see really old Microsoft Word/Office files all the time from other companies we consult with. Old and new versions of Windows to Windows don't even work well. How does anyone expect Mac and Windows versions to ever really be compatible? For now or in the future?
.
.
.
Pretty easy to see where all of this is going.
While there are certainly problems with compatibility they are not usually severe. I have a very extenisive Excel model of our business. 6 multi-sheet excel workbooks that talk to each other. Developed on a Mac and, with minor formatting tweaks, ran fine on a PC. Even edit on the PC and send back. While we all like to bash on MS for lazy design and testing, it (Excel) still worked better than anything else out there for this kind of work and compatibility.
To the vast majority of Office users, VBA serves no useful purpose. For a small subset of users, it is essential. MacBU has some explaining to do about how users of Office 2008 will function with VBA no longer available. Why upgrade when Office 2004 still works and has better than acceptable performance in Rosetta?
Virtual PC is another matter. Microsoft bought Connectix software for Virtual Server. Virtual PC for the Mac and Virtual PC for Windows came along for the ride. Well, Microsoft's plans for Virtual Server collapsed. It converted the product to freeware. The handwriting was on the wall for the VPC product line. This was confirmed with Microsoft annouced that VPC 2004, the current Windows version, has also been converted to freeware. Finally today, Microsoft announced that VPC 7 would be the last Mac version.
I am as willing as the next person to accept the notion that Microsoft is up to no good. In the case of removing VBA from Office 2008, this is consistent with the available evidence. In the case of today's announcement about VPC, it is not. Its death is a Microsoft failure on several levels.
While there are certainly problems with compatibility they are not usually severe. I have a very extenisive Excel model of our business. 6 multi-sheet excel workbooks that talk to each other. Developed on a Mac and, with minor formatting tweaks, ran fine on a PC. Even edit on the PC and send back. While we all like to bash on MS for lazy design and testing, it (Excel) still worked better than anything else out there for this kind of work and compatibility.
Hell on the Mac what other choices are there? I can get around Word and Power Point but Excel?
Hell on the Mac what other choices are there? I can get around Word and Power Point but Excel?
open office
Virtual PC is another matter. Microsoft bought Connectix software for Virtual Server. Virtual PC for the Mac and Virtual PC for Windows came along for the ride. Well, Microsoft's plans for Virtual Server collapsed. It converted the product to freeware. The handwriting was on the wall for the VPC product line. This was confirmed with Microsoft annouced that VPC 2004, the current Windows version, has also been converted to freeware. Finally today, Microsoft announced that VPC 7 would be the last Mac version.
i guess the guys who sold connectix to microsoft got out just in the nick of time. well, okay, they had a few years to go, but they avoided having to make the g5 transition, AND having to compete with apple's FREE boot camp solution, and, one would assume with microsoft signing the checks, they made out like bandits in the deal, too.
They are still developing Office for Mac, but they are killing off a feature that allows many people to use Macs in a corporate environment.
Yeah, and look what they did for email. They killed off Outlook for Mac and threw us this Entourage application which is a joke when it comes to Exchange server support. Synchronizing large mailboxes takes forever, and it can't even access Notes and Tasks folders on the server, or configure mail rules on the server.
This is what's called token support. They make it look like they are committed to supporting the Mac platform. "See, we do make Office for the Mac. See, Entourage can communicate with Exchange servers." But they make the Mac version just different enough, and leave out just enough critical features so compatibility becomes a major obstacle in corporate Windows based environments.
You don't need it any more. Microsoft can go to hell and scrap all their crappy Mac products if they want. It's not like they put the development effort in to make them worth anything. You're better just running virtualization software and the Windows version or better yet find a way to phase out using their stuff altogether.
At work, I have this idiot system administrator whose idea of Mac "support" was to set up Windows Terminal Services and have Mac users do all their work in Windows, run all their applications in Windows, save all their files in Windows, and completely bypass the Mac OS.
Hell on the Mac what other choices are there? I can get around Word and Power Point but Excel?
This shows a lot of promise: Tables
It might not be noticed here much in the Mac world, but MS has been moving away from VB themselves. It will take a while, but it is happening. I'm not an expert in that area, but .net, and other technologies are changing things there as well.
They are. Ultimately they will move to VSTA (I think it stands for Visual Studio Toolbox for Applications), which is basically just .Net for apps but I believe Office 2007 still utilises VBA, either way it retains backward compatibility. To completely cut VBA from an entire iteration of Office for Mac is a huge blow. As has been stated before the cycle is around 3 - 4 years for an upgrade and after about 1 year you will no longer be able to get the current version leaving people who need VB and want to switch basically unable to do so.
Now I don't use Microsoft's software at all, so for me personally this isn't a big blow. But poor people who are dependent of MS software.. ya'll must meet disappointments all the time..
In the meantimeThinkFree Office looks promising.