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Microsoft Businesses Software Apple

Microsoft to Continue Office on Mac 236

Posted by Zonk from the at-least-for-now dept.
LiMikeTnux wrote to mention a CNN article giving details about the five year agreement now in place between Microsoft and Apple to keep Office alive on the Mac platform. From the article: "Though Apple clearly benefits from having the widely-used Office software available to its users, it may seem less obvious what Microsoft stands to gain from continuing its relationship. But according to Greg DeMichillie, a senior analyst with Directions on Microsoft, an independent consulting and analysis firm focusing specifically on Microsoft, the business is still a profitable one for Microsoft. While it's not a huge part of Microsoft's business, given the company's sheer scale, 'Apple's 3 to 4 percent market share doesn't hurt them either,' DeMichillie said. 'Also, to have them be seen going out of their way to hurt a competing operating system is not really helpful from an anti-trust perspective.'"
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Microsoft to Continue Office on Mac More

Microsoft to Continue Office on Mac

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  • Ok, so it's true that they're allowing people to use Apple laptops and computers while still receiving the benefit of Microsoft's Office Suite. But let's consider that the average Apple user just plain doesn't like Windows. Sure, there's some people running both Windows and OSX in their homes right now but I'm guessing that's pretty rare. I would say these users are about as polarized as the last U.S. presidential election.

    So Microsoft is still charging a lot of money for this software so it's not like they're taking a profit hit or just handing this out.

    On top of that, they may be quashing any possibility of an Apple user being forced to seek alternatives. What I mean is that, without this alternative, Microsoft Office fans (who are also Apple operating system advocates) would be forced to look for an alternative. Maybe even a free open source alternative such as OpenOffice.org [openoffice.org] or selecting other free word editors?

    I see this as a smart move for Microsoft in that it allows them to still maintain a dominant control on these people for publishing suites even though they might have lost them on the operating system level.

    Furthermore, I don't think it's fair to compare Office on the Mac with Explorer on the Mac. There are a large amount of benefits that Microsoft Explorer gains from staying on top as the number one used browser. One of them being that Microsoft gains more clout in determining standards for webpages and the communications through the internet.

    Now, back to the original article, who the hell is Directions on Microsoft [directions...rosoft.com]? And, more importantly, what do they have to gain from authoring and publishing Microsoft's Top 10 Challenges for 2006 [directions...rosoft.com]?

    If you check out their About Us page [directions...rosoft.com], they seem to paint themselves as a resource in understanding the greatness that is Microsoft. I know this is just speculation but I smell Microsoft cooking up a website devoted to thrusting themselves even further into the limelight (since 1992). If this site was a little less biased, I'd be inclined to enjoy it.

    • Re:I Can See Gains for MS with This Move (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Radical Rad ( 138892 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @02:59PM (#14471911) Homepage
      What I mean is that, without this alternative, Microsoft Office fans (who are also Apple operating system advocates) would be forced to look for an alternative. Maybe even a free open source alternative such as OpenOffice.org or selecting other free word editors?

      If Microsoft were to drop MS Office on the Mac then they would be opening up about 4% of the OS market to the alternatives you mentioned. That is something they don't need right now because even their grip on the Windows Office market is loosening. How many hundreds of thousands of licenses have they lost worldwide to Star Office or Open Office. They aren't doing Apple any favors here. They are just trying to prolong their time on top.

      • Re:I Can See Gains for MS with This Move (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @03:30PM (#14472049) Homepage
        How many hundreds of thousands of licenses have they lost worldwide to Star Office or Open Office. They aren't doing Apple any favors here. They are just trying to prolong their time on top.

        Not all too many, really. What they are trying to avoid is that there is a non-neglible minority that people will demand interoperability with. Look at Firefox, it's still a dwarf compared to the 80-90% marketshare of IE, but it has made very many websites follow W3C standards. I use Opera which hardly registers, but because it is standard that too has become a far more pleasurable experience in recent years, and I don't mean just because of the product.

        If you can't win, bundle. That has been the way to sell IE, it's been the way to sell WMP, it's been the way to sell Zip/Unzip, movie editing, cd burning and the list just goes on. The windows platform is the key to everything. They are fighting very hard to avoid alternatives. They lost the IE-specific web, they seem to be losing the Office-specific document format, so far it seems the media codecs are their greatest success. Next up will be the "great firewall" of DRM. Even if Microsoft loses every battle, they seem to win the war because for every lock-in broken there seem to be two new, like a hydra.
      • f Microsoft were to drop MS Office on the Mac then they would be opening up about 4% of the OS market to the alternatives you mentioned. That is something they don't need right now because even their grip on the Windows Office market is loosening. How many hundreds of thousands of licenses have they lost worldwide to Star Office or Open Office. They aren't doing Apple any favors here. They are just trying to prolong their time on top.

        While I don't have any hard numbers, I seriously doubt that their grip is

      • Re:I Can See Gains for MS with This Move (Score:4, Insightful)

        by pvt_medic ( 715692 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @06:39PM (#14472817)
        Its not the 4% that is the problem of loosing its loosing the cross compatibility with windows. Currently having a software that can work on both systems is important. While Apple has no means a large corporate influence there is still some influence. What if people no longer could communicate with their mac counterparts. That might help the transition to an open source alternative because then they can still communicate... oh and it be cheaper too.
      • If Apple were to push OpenOffice or any other suite that supported Open Document Format it'd create a real alternative to the Windows/Office pair. So long as Mac users stay in the MS Office camp it keeps Apple from adding strength to a dangerous rival. I think if anything Apple is foolish to agree. They'd be better off to create a real alternative. OS X has enough support that throwing their weight behind ODF and their own office suite would be unlikely to hurt them much in the short-term (since they could

    • Re:I Can See Gains for MS with This Move (Score:4, Funny)

      by zwad ( 937823 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @03:06PM (#14471945)
      But let's consider that the average Apple user just plain doesn't like Windows. Sure, there's some people running both Windows and OSX in their homes right now but I'm guessing that's pretty rare. I would say these users are about as polarized as the last U.S. presidential election.

      The average windows user doesn't like windows. I don't think it's polarized, I think nobody likes windows.

    • On top of that, they may be quashing any possibility of an Apple user being forced to seek alternatives.

      VERY insightful comment. But I must say, Office for Mac is the "crispest" Office suite for mac out there - MS has way to much experience with this subject. I've spent a lot of time with StarOffice, and its ok, but just not the same performance or familiarity wise. iLife is very clear but missing features I need. I can't wait for an "Office Killer" but I have just not seen it yet. I'm guessing we will

    • Re:I Can See Gains for MS with This Move (Score:5, Insightful)

      by guildsolutions ( 707603 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @03:10PM (#14471964)
      <i>Ok, so it's true that they're allowing people to use Apple laptops and computers while still receiving the benefit of Microsoft's Office Suite. But let's consider that the average Apple user just plain doesn't like Windows. Sure, there's some people running both Windows and OSX in their homes right now but I'm guessing that's pretty rare. I would say these users are about as polarized as the last U.S. presidential election.</i>

      With the advent of sub $500 macs, I know quite a few people who have both at their homes now. To me, the windows PC is a must have evil for work a few selected applications.

      A year ago, If you had told me that I would be typing this on a Mac Powerbook, I would have told you that you was out of your mind. Now I enjoy OSX, And I painfully submit to my windows based PC's, and graciously do both without a lot of fanfare and complaint. There is a lot that both platforms offer, and more and more people are realizing this. Thus more and more people are becomming 'dual users'.
    • I think you're assuming people first buy their mac, then look around and say "Now what can I use to get work done?"

      Whenever I'm talking to someone about switching to a Mac, one of their first questions is "But I have to open Word files for my job, so won't I need Windows?" Thanks to Microsoft, this is one more thing switchers don't have to worry about.

      I agree with most of your other points though.
    • Of all the Mac people I know who still use MS Office, they all use it because they have to for professional writing/editing work. And they all use it because the "Track Changes" Functionality is mandatory. They tell me that because OpenOffice does not support this feature (or perhaps doesn't support it well?) they can never use OpenOffice.

      Some of them have been looking into NeoOffice, which apparently does have good support for tracking changes.

    • On top of that, they may be quashing any possibility of an Apple user being forced to seek alternatives. What I mean is that, without this alternative, Microsoft Office fans (who are also Apple operating system advocates) would be forced to look for an alternative. Maybe even a free open source alternative such as OpenOffice.org [openoffice.org] or selecting other free word editors?

      Indeed, contrary to the article, Microsoft has more to benefit than Apple, IMO. Isn't Office the second moneymaker next to Win

    • So Microsoft is still charging a lot of money for this software so it's not like they're taking a profit hit or just handing this out.

      One important fact to keep in mind is that very few Windows users pay "retail price" for MS Office. It's either bundled cheaply as an OEM edition, or corporations get massive discount. The actual cost of MS Office for Windows is usually around $100-$150

      Meanwhile, on the Mac side, there's no volume discounts and the OEM packages are limited. So the average Mac Office user is
    • I see it as simply Microsoft saying what they need to improve on. And they are pretty much right with what they say, but it will be a looooong road to get there. I believe that they should have put a big security goal in there- if not for Vista (it is pretty much already finalized), then for the next version, "Blackcomb," to meet certain security goals. There should be enough time to thoroughly rewrite the OS between now and 2008-2009 when it is supposed to ship. I firmly belive that needs to be done or Mic

  • Students often get steep discounts (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jim in Buffalo ( 939861 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @02:52PM (#14471873)
    Don't forget that if you're a college student or work at a college or university, you can often get a license for Office X very cheaply. The school that I work at offers it for just a few dollars. Check with your college bookstore or computer store before shelling out big bucks.
    • If MS products only cost you a few dollars, then you have already paid MS the licensing fee for all thier products. In fact, if one works at least 30 hours for a school, and takes classes, then perhaps one has paid MS twice. The thing that the 'few dollars' pay for is the cost to produce the media.

      The actual educational licensing fee for MS Office is around $150 for Standard edition on up to $300+ dollars for the pro edition, although some schools seem to license copies for $100.

      Since people tend to l

  • While this is slightly off-topic... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ellem ( 147712 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {25melle}> on Saturday January 14, 2006 @02:53PM (#14471879) Homepage Journal
    Office 2004 for OS X is light years better than Office 2003 for Windows.

    Tons of the features in 2004 are showing up in other products for MS, like OneNote, Project etc. The only thing keeping Entourage from being better than Outlook by leaps and bounds is MS's intentional crippling of Entourage as an Exchange client.

    Perhaps MS uses OS X for advanced products beta testing?
    • I use Entourage every day and while it's a very nice email client, why someone would call it better than Outlook is beyond me.

    • Re:While this is slightly off-topic... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by phillymjs ( 234426 ) <slashdot AT stango DOT org> on Saturday January 14, 2006 @03:15PM (#14471979) Homepage Journal
      The only thing keeping Entourage from being better than Outlook by leaps and bounds is MS's intentional crippling of Entourage as an Exchange client.

      I'm not a tinfoil hat type, but I too feel that Entourage's Exchange abilities are intentionally subpar to keep the Mac at bay in corporate environments. There's no other explanation for why they couldn't just implement MAPI and instead went with some sort of DAV/IMAP abomination to retrieve mail. It's also taken them much too long to even implement all of Outlook 2001's features, which themselves are just a subset of those on Outlook for Windows. It is indeed very suspicious when you step back and look at how superior Mac Office is in nearly every other way.

      I still keep my clients on Outlook 2001 wherever possible, which unfortunately will cease to be an option on Intel-based Macs since the Classic environment won't work on those.

      If you don't like Entourage's Exchange implementation, complain. [microsoft.com] I know it's unlikely they'll actually listen to us and redo it right, but it can't hurt to try.

      ~Philly
      • If you don't like Entourage's Exchange implementation, complain. [microsoft.com] I know it's unlikely they'll actually listen to us and redo it right, but it can't hurt to try.

        Are there serious reasons for staying with an exchange solution and at the mercy of MS or is it more inertia? The corporate environments I've been in which used exchange didn't use many of the features other than straight email, and the other ones (collaborative calendaring for one) could easily be dealt with using other solutions (no
    • No, it isn't. Except for the "list" functionality, Excel 2004 for Mac is roughly on a par with Excel 2000 for Windows. Just look at the Protect Cells dialogue in Excel 2004; it's a direct copy of 2000's.

      The interface in Excel 2004 is all Carbon, not Cocoa. Little animations meant to resemble Mac OS X behaviors (the infamous "genie effect" on toolbars) are all hacked in and are really annoying to disable. The whole thing performs much slowly, megahertz for megahertz, then on a comparable Windows machine.
    • Its great that most macros work independent of operating system. But the debugging environment is far superior on Office for Windows (variable watches, etc). Also, there are some odd differences in a few places (FileFind vs. FileSearch, for instance) that can be accounted for but don't seem necessary on the surface.
    • Office 2004 for OS X is light years better than Office 2003 for Windows.

      Ridiclous -- the featuresets between the two suites have diverged. While the Mac version has some consumer and student-oriented features not found in the Windows version, there's a TON of corporate/groupware stuff that's not in the Mac version.
    • Uhm, I'm not sure I agree with this at all. SOME areas maybe more developed, but there are some critical features for me missing from the Mac version--such as support for RTL languages in Word. I don't use Entourage, so I can't comment, but in general I find Word and Powerpoint both more fully featured on the PC (I've run into some powerpoint features that aren't supported on mac as well)

  • Macworld 2006 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dottedlinedesign ( 754366 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @02:58PM (#14471906)
    Yet Windows Media Player and MSIE will no longer be offered... interesting... The MS representative at Macworld was trying to show that they are "in for the long haul" but they're backing out at the same time. Doesn't matter much to me, I hate WMP, MSIE and Office 2004. I wish they would leave Apple alone altogether then maybe apple would release the rest of their iWork suite (that I'm sure is finished but waiting to release until MS pulls out).

    • Re:Macworld 2006 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by plusser ( 685253 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @05:37PM (#14472552)
      Microsoft don't make any money on Media Player or IE, unless it has been bundled with Windows. You have to pay for Office, and if they can make good money out of the product, then they will continue to sell it. It is likely that Microsoft make more money out of Office than any other product.
    • Yet Windows Media Player and MSIE will no longer be offered... interesting...

      They offered it long enough to convince content creators that deploying a media site based completely on WMP was a platform neutral decision, since a player existed for Mac. Once MS felt they proliferated that market to a satisfactory extent the plug was pulled.

      Ross Ho's presentation at MacWorld was the epitome of mediocrity. She was totally non-enthusastic and either reading off a teleprompter or cue cards, with seemingly inappr
    • In other news, Microsoft encourages consumers to choose Windows 3.1, whilst emphasizing the coming collaboration with IBM on OS/2 as the future OS for business users.
    • They're just finally giving up on the useless stuff. I don't know anybody who even thinks about using IE since Apple stopped including it in Tiger, and even though it was in Panther it wasn't the default browser so barely anyone knew it was there. Since the web is actually going towards standards there's even less reason to use IE.

      WMP was always a silly idea. Write a codec instead of a whole app.

  • That's why no Numbers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by intmainvoid ( 109559 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @02:59PM (#14471912)
    Microsoft's announcement explains why we haven't seen the rumored "Numbers" spreadsheet app added iWork yet. It's being worked on for sure - we know Apple is happy to keep teams working on "just in case" projects, like they way they've had an OS X on Intel team working for the last 5 years. So part of the deal is probably that Apple keeps Numbers on the backburner for now, but having it ready to go probably helps Apple negotiate. And for now, having office available on the Mac is better for everyone.
    • Numbers is kind of there - just hidden. You can add tables to either Pages or Keynote documents that support calculations now.
      • Since the table feature in iWork '06 is not called Numbers, it clearly isn't the product for which Apple trademarked the name 'Numbers'.

        I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that Apple has a professional-quality office suite in the box labelled 'In Case of Emergency', right next to the spot where OS X for Intel used to be. And if that's true, I would be even less surprised to learn that MS agreed to continue Office for Mac on the condition that Apple not release its office suite.

        It makes a cutthroat
  • Another benefit for MS is a "not so bad after all" image. If they dropped support people would loathe MS even more for not supporting their system which used to work always fine with Office. They probably gain not much financially but get some positive feelings. Maybe.

  • The last 5% is called a monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bhav2007 ( 895955 ) <bhav2007@NospAM.houston.rr.com> on Saturday January 14, 2006 @03:03PM (#14471931)
    Of course, I think the most important aspect of this deal is that if Microsoft stops making office software for the Mac, then even the most Windows hardened of the IT guys is gonna have to learn about the alternatives available. Macs are deployed in a great many IT environments (cuz the Graphics people love em, for one thing), alongside a 95% windows operation. If there's no Mac Office, then Office Documents can no longer be a perfect "standard", like most of the IT guys consider them now. Suddenly, compatability will be a concern for even the most timid Windows-junkie Administrator, and Microsoft would soon be facing an even greater pressure to provide some semblance of interoperability. I think this move is much more about protecting Office as a "standard" than it is about the profit (which is probably not a great amount when weighed against Apple's competition in the Desktop OS market).
    • Well, the business could mandate that the graphics folks run Windows, or outsource those folks (unless their business is graphics). Photoshop runs on Windows. They could also provide two systems to users, as is common with people who need to use Unix for real work. No office, and Apple moves out of the workplace.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by soundF*!k ( 655296 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @03:06PM (#14471947)
    Software companies like to sell software to people with computers.
  • But they leave Office

    "The Lord Giveth, and the lord taketh away"

  • Cross-platform documents (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ankh ( 19084 ) * on Saturday January 14, 2006 @03:09PM (#14471958) Homepage
    Many large organizations (say, with tens of thousands of desktops) are cross-platform, e.g. with mostly PCs running Microsoft Windows with a few Apple macintosh systems scattered around for graphic design.

    They use Microsoft Office everywhere because then all their users can edit documents.

    Of course, all here doesn't always include Unix users, and those people sometimes have two desktop computers.

    If Microsoft were to drop support for the Mac, a lot of large organizations would consider switching to OpenOffice (or StarOffice, or some other solution).

    When I worked at a software company that made SGML software some 10 years ago, we could sell 30,000 desktop licences to someone only because 300 of those would be able to run on the Macintosh (the others were HP/UX and Windows). They required cross-platform support on everything.

    • ...with a few Apple macintosh systems scattered around for graphic design.

      This is the second comment with a clause like this and I have to comment, albeit offtopic. Yes, I know, it's a stigma that's been attached to the Mac for years and years, but let's face it - for one, Wintel has been just as good for graphics design for years from a speed perspective, and two, with Apple's move to Intel chips, there is simply no way to argue any performance gain to be had by using a Mac.

      I have, hence, come to the concl
      • The Mac OS does various graphical elements at a more core level. It means that fonts and colors look more accurate and consistant from program to program, and even computer to computer. It's much easier to set up graphic profiles to ensure a consistant workflow.

        I'm not a graphical designer, this is just what I've been told, and what I've seen.
        • Yes that's true, and I certainly agree that doing graphical work in OS X is probably a lot nicer than doing it in Windows. But, that goes for everything else, too - OS X is simply awesome. Convincing corporate America that a Mac isn't "just for graphics" is the part that Apple needs to work on.

          Disclaimer: I converted to using a Powerbook at work and home 2.5 years ago, and never looked back.
        • Almost all of the design programs are built on cross-platform frameworks, so there really that much of a platform advantage as some would believe. Photoshop/Illustrator/Quark/etc don't use exotic Mac APIs. The color-matching is better on Mac, but perhaps more importantly, most Apple displays have similar properties, unlike the mess of stuff you seen in the PC world.

      • Re:Cross-platform documents (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Ankh ( 19084 ) *
        Wintel has been just as good for graphics design for years from a speed perspective...

        It's not about performance (although you can certainly find Macintosh enthusiasts who will say otherwise). In the past it has been that Apple provided the necessary infrastructure for things like automatic central font management, image replacement and asset management, monitor and printer colour calibration and correction, 72dpi screens, and of course for a long time there were typesetters (high-resolution printers, if y

  • Originally... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pvt_medic ( 715692 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @03:10PM (#14471961)
    this agreement was speculated to be part of a settlement between microsoft and apple. Aplle had microsoft on a patent violation and they made a settlement out of court and quite secretively. This initial agreement was speculated to be part of the agreement,.

  • More like 1/2 of office (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @03:15PM (#14471980) Homepage Journal
    While its nice to have word and excel, there are a few things missing like access, viiso, project. Just enough missing components to still need to run a windows desktop in most companies.

    More like a 'teaser' than real support.
    • Microsoft decided not to even try porting Access to the Mac, instead advocating FileMaker Pro, a few years ago. Both Access and FileMaker can make nice friendly front-ends, but I don't think either file format is portable to the other app without serious data lossage.

      Visio can work with OmniGraffle Pro ($150). I really like Graffle; the non-pro version comes with some Macs, so you can upgrade for less. My PowerBook included non-pro version 3.

      I don't know if there's any satisfactory native replacement for

      • Visio can work with OmniGraffle Pro ($150). I really like Graffle; the non-pro version comes with some Macs, so you can upgrade for less. My PowerBook included non-pro version 3.

        As much as I prefer OmniGraffle to Visio, it's worth pointing out that OmniGraffle Pro only supports importing and exporting Visio's XML data format, not the default binary format. If you absolutely must read legacy Visio files, then you need to keep a Windows workstation (or a Windows image in Virtual PC) around for conversion

    • You can import&export MS Viso Files with Omnigraffle Pro (by http://www.omnigroup.com/ [omnigroup.com]), which is even better than that. MS Project is AFAIK accesible by Merlin (by http://www.projectwizards.net/en/merlin/ [projectwizards.net]). Only Access is missing, where I tend to agree, that causes major headaches - for linux migrations, too. But since most Access-"databases" are so bad, they should be replaced anyway.

  • Office is just as important as Windows to MS... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Deviant ( 1501 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @03:32PM (#14472059)
    Office is just as important to MS, if not more so, than Windows is. Buisinesses might have Linux webservers or Oracle database servers but they all use Microsoft Office with very few exceptions. It is the software that actually gets the real work done, and the document formats that everybody writes that work to exchange them in, and it is a larger and more important monopoly for them in the long term.

    Now Microsoft has a dilemma - do they ensure the survival of Office by making it availible on platforms like Linux to ensure it can run on every desktop or do they force you to stay on their platform by making that the only way to run it? So far they have choen to not lend legitimacy to Linux as a desktop platform and it has not hurt them very much. However, OSX is a much more appealing desktop, one that is gaining in popularity, and Microsoft chose to support it to keep the people who chose it using Office.

    I think that the current balance that MS is striking between supporting their platform and supporting Office also the Mac as a second platform is working for them and to their benefit. The last thing they want is for all the Mac users to turn to another office platform - especially one that has a windows version and/or is less expensive - that they could evangelicly convert their friends and family to. People stay with Office because it is the easy and safe choice and it actually is a good product that does most of what they want and need. The most important thing that Office has, though, is it's ubiquity - and so far they have managed to be able to keep that and it is well worth what they pay to port Office to the Mac.

    I think that if Linux gains enough popularity where it is 10-15% of worldwide desktops in countries that can afford Office you'll see them port it to that too...

  • sounds like... (Score:4, Funny)

    by blue_fireball_eater ( 926755 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @03:44PM (#14472138)
    Microsoft doesn't want to lose its most talented developers. Seriously, just compare the mac office to the windows office....its night and day.

    • Re:sounds like... (Score:2, Informative)

      by arachnoprobe ( 945081 )
      I agree - Office:mac is far better than the windows counterpart. The Adobe-like palettes are far more efficient and user-friendly.
    • Parent was modded funny, but in all seriousness if MS ever drops the Mac business unit of microsoft you know damn well apple will grab all of them. Think about it.. put Office people on iWork and you already solved the "problem" in 6 months.

  • History can repeat, Vista for Macs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14, 2006 @04:03PM (#14472232)
    Keep in mind that Office dominates the Windows market because Microsoft was bold enough to develop it for the new Mac platform at a time when WordPerfect and 123 dominated the PC market. Only after Word and Excel were a success on Macs did they move to PCs.

    History could repeat itself. If Microsoft abandons the Mac, the product that replaces it might be good enough to establish a beachhead there and eventually challenge Office for Windows, one of Microsoft's biggest cash cows. In that context, keeping the profitable Mac Business Unit going is free insurance.

    Now if Microsoft would just set up a group within the Mac-loving Mac BU to develop and maintain a version of Vista for the Mac. It makes perfect sense. The copies of Vista they sell would almost pure profit and, given the small size of the Mac product line, they're likely to be the most stable version of Vista on the market.

    I know an InDesign instructor who'd be absolutely delighted. He could buy easily transported Intel iMacs and use them to teach InDesign for both OS X and Windows. And I'd get it to maintain the books I have in FrameMaker. Whether you like or hate Microsoft, Vista for Intel Macs would be a win-win situation for everyone.

    --Mike Perry, Untangling Tolkien

  • Still no obvious reason to commit to 5 years (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RetiredMidn ( 441788 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @04:05PM (#14472241) Homepage
    OK, TFA and several posters here have provided reasons for why Microsoft would continue to produce Office for the Mac, such as "they make a profit on it". But nobody has really offered a reason as to why they would commit, in writing, to producing it for any length of time.

    The only explanation that I can see is that they got some sort of concession out of Apple in exchange for the commitment.

    I suspect that the concession from Apple was to not actively support OpenOffice. Maybe they offered in exchange for help (that I don't think they need) to get VirtualPC working on the new Intel Macs. But I'd welcome more informed speculation.

  • MS dropping WMP on Mac (Score:2, Informative)

    by rkaa ( 162066 )
    Office has a 5 year additional life on the Mac, but MSIE and Windows Media Player [betanews.com] are terminated, including the support. Which, IMO, is good news. WMP is not good, navigates poorly on DVDs, and v9 and 10 cause random freezes and even crashes on WinXP PRO. At least on two (different) laptops I have. I've had to stop using it for DVDs.

  • Shock, horror: MS as longterm supporter of Apple. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 6350' ( 936630 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @04:14PM (#14472283)
    I myself have to be reminded of this point now and then, so perhaps it's worth mentioning:

    One of the most longtime supporters of Apple, and one of the most loyal (and by loyal I mean "did not bail when Apple's star was dimming at various times in the past") is, oddly, Microsoft. They have quietly kept a large selection of their products supported on the Macs over the years, even when other software companies were ditching Apple for the growing green pasturues of the Windows world.

    Now, I can already hear guns being cocked, so let me be clear as to how I intend all this: we should not percieve announcements such as being discussed above as being some new drive for MS. Instead, it is actually, pretty much, more of the same type of thing they have been doing for a very long time. As for their reasons, plans, or evil coniving - couldn't tell ya, and that isn't the point of what I mention. But Microsoft, for decades, has made many of it's bits of software available on Apple computers (perhaps the plural on decade is a bit of a stretch, but you get what I mean.)

  • mac users pay for it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by estivate ( 891741 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @04:24PM (#14472336)
    There's another reason for continuing to produce Mac versions of Office, which is that this market usually pays full retail. In the Windows/Linux world, it either comes preinstalled, or you steal it, which is to say, borrow it from your pals or at work. Since it is so ubiquitous, it's easy to find copies. When Linux was my sole desktop, I always had "borrowed" copies of office running on crossover office, for when openoffice.org compatibility wasn't good enough, or when I had to look at some access database. I don't have it on my Mac laptop, because I would have to pay handsomely for it.
  • "it may seem less obvious what Microsoft stands to gain from continuing its relationship."

    About $500 per copy sold

  • I stopped by the Microsoft booth during MacWorld and asked when support for the Intel Macs would appear. They (experts at the main Office help desk) said that there wouldn't be a MacTel native version until next version of Office is released (i.e. they won't be translating Office 2004 to Universal Binary).

    Office will still run on the new Macs under Rosetta, but there could be quite a performance hit. I'm having enough problems with Office running native on my PowerBook as is (strange hangs, etc.). I can onl
    • I was curious about this, too, so I spent a good hour on the intel Powerbooks (I refuse to call it the MacBook Pro... horrible name) trying to stress test it, including word and excel.

      I came to the conclusion that the new hardware is so much flabbergastingly faster than the old one that there is no perceptible performance hit in user-limited tasks like office apps. Word showed no lag to speak of. I intentionally created a thousand-ish cell spreadsheet with deep inter-cell dependencies to try to slow it do
    • Office 2004 runs just fine under Rosetta. It doesn't feel any slower than it did on a low-end G5 to me...and the dual core yonah systems are faster than the last ones that were being used.
  • My bet is that this agreement with Microsoft is a stopgap for Apple while they are waiting for Microsoft to get their open XML document formats passed through the Ecma standardization process. Once this open format is available, Apple is free to release their own full office suite including a spreadsheet that will read and write fully MS Office Windows compatible documents. Remember Apple did support the Microsoft announcement for an open Microsoft XML document format?

    Another thing is of course that Microso
  • it may seem less obvious what Microsoft stands to gain from continuing its relationship.

    MS Office formats stay an industry standard? Duh

  • Microsoft provides Office on Mac, Apple supports Word XML in ECMA. Seems like a reasonable deal to me.

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