[DR_K]

I exchange office documents with pc users 5-6 times daily. Mostly word but excel and powerpoint also - am I out of business or do I just kep whatever is current 204 or 2007. Now when a document does not open I use maclinkplus and everything works.

[mdawson]

Re-read tomems post.

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Neither I nor ANYONE I know have ever used visual basic as part of Office.

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He emphasized anyone as if to imply that no one uses VBA, which is a patently false statement. One of my roommates, who is working class and socializes mostly with other working class twentysomethings, could have very well said the same thing before he met me if he even knew what VBA was. Most of the people I associate with are college-educated professionals, many of whom are in technical or scientific fields, and would quite obviously have a different point-of-view on the matter as do people in the finance sector that Rob is associated with. His assessment of VBA based on who he knowsand none of us know the full extent to which every person with whom we are acquainted uses a computer or a given piece of softwareis an extremely erroneous conclusion.

Before anyone even thinks to flame me, this statement is not meant to belittle the working class, but to simply bring forth the point that working class individuals are very likely to use a home computer in a very different manner than a (college-educated) professional. My roommate does not even own a copy of Office, or any other type of application other than what came with the computer. He only uses his computer for e-mail, occasional, and I do mean occasional Web surfing, and has about a billion IM sessions from different services active. Most of the people with whom I interact or associate could not conceive of not having Office, or some form of productivity suite, on their home computer and they spend varying levels of a great deal of time using computers even when at home.

[mdawson]

If you depend on VBA for anything in Office:mac then you are going to have to stick with Office:mac 2004. MacLinkPlus will not help with the VBA macro issue as it cannot force a version of an Office:mac application that does not support VBA to run VBA code. Chances are said documents will still open, but their macros will be disabled pretty much making them useless.

[Shimanto]

So what this means is corporate, educational and institutional Apple users will be buying Windows Vista Professional (because virtualization is not possible with Basic) and Office for Windows and possibly Office for Mac as well. This kind of maneuver is so typically Microsoft. I have no doubt in at least a few meetings in Redmond, this was brought up and breaking VB support was not only because of how complicated it is to port. Now Gates can boast he makes twice as much from each Mac user than he does from Windows users all the while still peddling crapware like he always has. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif

[MacTel]

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So what this means is corporate, educational and institutional Apple users will be buying Windows Vista Professional (because virtualization is not possible with Basic) and Office for Windows and possibly Office for Mac as well. This kind of maneuver is so typically Microsoft. I have no doubt in at least a few meetings in Redmond, this was brought up and breaking VB support was not only because of how complicated it is to port. Now Gates can boast he makes twice as much from each Mac user than he does from Windows users all the while still peddling crapware like he always has.

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Well, I believe I could write a converter from Mac to PC and back again to convert between VBA and Applescript. This would be an interesting project to do. It can be done. The object model for the Mac Office applications will still be exposed for Applescript at least, so anything that can be done in a macro can be accessed by a higher level language. I'd prefer the translation take place on a Windows so I may code in a .NET language and use interops to the COM Office objects.
I guess I'll have to wait until the Mac BU comes out with the new Office for Mac before I can code this. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

[tomtom]

pcpro.co.uk/news/99509/mac-users-get-spring-date-for-office-2007-compatibility

[MacLeod]

I doubt there is any insidious plot on the part of Microsoft. With the huge task of rebuilding Office for Intel Macs in Xcode, what's the point of adding a technology that is being phased out in Office for Windows anyway? The real question is whether the successor to VBA for Windows will be supported on the Mac.

[mdawson]

If you can create such a utility you will become very popular with quite a few people here. I would love to see what you can develop when the time comes.

[tallscot]

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It doesn't matter if they kill Office for Mac... parallels saves the day... and I don't mean by running windows on a mac... using the new Parallels Cohercy mode, I literally run Office 2007 for Windows as a native Intel app....
Running parallels in cohercy mode with Office 2007 is FASTER than running Office 2004....
I won't buy the next version of Office for the Mac... I'm buying the windows version and running it in Parallels Cohercy mode.... literally, windows apps run like they are in finder, at twice the speed of a rosetta emulated app.

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So we will all end up using Windows software running in OS X that doesn't take advantage of any of the cool features and APIs in OS X.
Why should Adobe spend so much money making Mac versions when we can just run it in Parallels? Why should any gaming developer make a Mac version?
Here's hoping some brilliant person creates a translator between VB and Applescript.

[mdawson]

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I doubt there is any insidious plot on the part of Microsoft.

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Insidious. Perhaps not. Convenient excuse. Very much so. As another poster here has already pointed out, Microsoft has an army of brilliant software engineers, yet when they face the slightest obstacle on Mac development that simply drop the product:

[*]Apple introduces Safari and the MacBU ceases development of Internet Explorer for Mac.
[*]Macs go Intel and instead of reconfiguring VirtualPC as a virtualization product VPC development is dropped.
[*]Microsoft opts to switch to an Xcode base to create a Universal Binary version of Office:mac and drops VBA support.
[/list]Internet Explorer was agreeably no great loss except that there are Websites that use proprietary Microsoft technology and do not work correctly, if at all, with other browsers. If only for that reason, IE Mac should have continued to be available for the Mac and the MacBU had a responsibility to insure that IE for the Mac was just as compatible with those exclusive sites as IE for Windowsfrom what understand, said sites not only require IE but IE for Windows.
Others provide excellent virtualization options for Intel-based Macs, but the MacBU is sitting pretty with the source. As a unit within Microsoft, VirtualPC could have been turned into a virtualization engine with Windows well integrated. Instead, as always, when faced with a real challenge Microsoft just bailed.
Lastly, back to VBA, while it is understandable that Microsoft would not rebuild a dying technology, they did opt to keep VBA in the next version of Office for Windows because Windows users started whining when they found out, and rightfully so. If Microsoft believes that Mac users of Office do not deserve the same level of respect, and this is a consumer respect issue, they are dead wrong. Microsoft owes it to Mac users to either provide a VBA engine in Office:mac 2007 or create some type of translator while implementing whatever new scripting technology is going to be introduced into Office for Windows. In fact, they should be obliged to do the same in Office for Windows.
Forcing the market to rely on your technology, which is exactly what Microsoft did, then cutting off features that people not only rely on, but have invested thousands of hours of time and productivity into is monopoly abuse. The previous statement is a testament to why Micosofts position in the tech industry is a threat to any and all relying on technology.
If a company like Apple can find a way for Classic Mac OS users to continue to run any Classic app in what was a new, and completely different, operating system then a behemoth like Microsoft should have no problem retaining backward compatibility in their longstanding products. That is even more so the case for a product such as Microsoft Office which is an industry standard.

[tallscot]

Quote:

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Quote:

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I doubt there is any insidious plot on the part of Microsoft.

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Insidious. Perhaps not. Convenient excuse. Very much so. As another poster here has already pointed out, Microsoft has an army of brilliant software engineers, yet when they face the slightest obstacle on Mac development that simply drop the product:

[*]Apple introduces Safari and the MacBU ceases development of Internet Explorer for Mac.
[*]Macs go Intel and instead of reconfiguring VirtualPC as a virtualization product VPC development is dropped.
[*]Microsoft opts to switch to an Xcode base to create a Universal Binary version of Office:mac and drops VBA support.
[/list]Internet Explorer was agreeably no great loss except that there are Websites that use proprietary Microsoft technology and do not work correctly, if at all, with other browsers. If only for that reason, IE Mac should have continued to be available for the Mac and the MacBU had a responsibility to insure that IE for the Mac was just as compatible with those exclusive sites as IE for Windowsfrom what understand, said sites not only require IE but IE for Windows.
Others provide excellent virtualization options for Intel-based Macs, but the MacBU is sitting pretty with the source. As a unit within Microsoft, VirtualPC could have been turned into a virtualization engine with Windows well integrated. Instead, as always, when faced with a real challenge Microsoft just bailed.
Lastly, back to VBA, while it is understandable that Microsoft would not rebuild a dying technology, they did opt to keep VBA in the next version of Office for Windows because Windows users started whining when they found out, and rightfully so. If Microsoft believes that Mac users of Office do not deserve the same level of respect, and this is a consumer respect issue, they are dead wrong. Microsoft owes it to Mac users to either provide a VBA engine in Office:mac 2007 or create some type of translator while implementing whatever new scripting technology is going to be introduced into Office for Windows. In fact, they should be obliged to do the same in Office for Windows.
Forcing the market to rely on your technology, which is exactly what Microsoft did, then cutting off features that people not only rely on, but have invested thousands of hours of time and productivity into is monopoly abuse. The previous statement is a testament to why Micosofts position in the tech industry is a threat to any and all relying on technology.
If a company like Apple can find a way for Classic Mac OS users to continue to run any Classic app in what was a new, and completely different, operating system then a behemoth like Microsoft should have no problem retaining backward compatibility in their longstanding products. That is even more so the case for a product such as Microsoft Office which is an industry standard.


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Adobe didn't make Premiere Pro, Audition, or Encore DVD for the Mac for the same reason.
I never understood why Microsoft made IE for the Mac at all considering it's free. How did they make a profit on that? Why would you continue to spend money on a free product like that? You don't.
VPC is crap compared to Parallels. Microsoft was smart dropping that. What do you mean "reconfigure" VPC as a virtualization product? What the heck does "reconfigure" mean? So me tearing down my house and building a new one from scratch is "reconfiguring"? That's almost as funny as calling surrender "redeployment".
How many copies of Office does Microsoft sell to Mac users? I'd like to know because I'm guessing it's not very many. Given that, there is a limit on how much Microsoft can spend on development and still make a profit, and a profit is what they want, obviously.

[amadeopuzzo]

Pages will have to be beefed up to support all the macros. Maybe a Pages Pro app. It does spreadsheets already, but prettier, and does basic layout and word processing, with commenting right now. But it really needs to enhance all those aspects. Then it will be an Office killer.
The part that worries us writers is that our publishers use Word (Windows) and we live in macros all the time we write those great instruction books for you. Big house publishers (even those that write Mac guide books) aren't going to understand your complaints about not being able to use macros. They just want the formatted text so they can pass it off to their editors (in Windows). Yikes. Yikes, I say.

[tomtom]

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I never understood why Microsoft made IE for the Mac at all considering it's free. How did they make a profit on that? Why would you continue to spend money on a free product like that? You don't.

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I think you will find that this happened at the time that MS invested in Apple Computer and Apple made certain of its QT technologies available to MS and there was shaking of hands and MS was forgiven for copying Mac UI and other aspects for Win 95.

[hayesk]

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How many copies of Office does Microsoft sell to Mac users? I'd like to know because I'm guessing it's not very many. Given that, there is a limit on how much Microsoft can spend on development and still make a profit, and a profit is what they want, obviously.

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A lot. The MacBU is profitable and is the largest Mac development team outside of Apple. I don't know if it is still true, but for many years Microsoft made more profit from the average Mac user than the average PC user. This was due to the relatively higher price of Mac Office, and the lesser support requirements.