Microsoft drops VBA in Mac Office 2007 374
slashdotwriter writes "Macworld features an article stating that the next version of Office for the Mac will not include Visual Basic scripting. From the article: 'Microsoft Office isn't among the apps that will run natively on Intel-based Macs — and it won't be until the latter half of 2007, according to media reports. But when it does ship, Office will apparently be missing a feature so vital to cross-platform compatibility that I believe it will be the beginning of the end for the Mac version of the productivity suite...'"
QUICK!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
OpenOffice anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:MS trying to sell more copies of Windows? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Let's Be Honest (Score:4, Interesting)
Not a big deal at all... (Score:4, Interesting)
Honestly, if they left VBA in we'd be questioning M$ for persisting to include a platform that has been notoriously insecure.
Considering that Office 2007 is including InfoPath and Groove as alternatives to distributing forms one has to believe that M$ first move away from VBA is not their last. Frankly having done many Office automation projects over the years I can say that VBA is quite a programming limitation, difficult to scale and prone to memory leaks.
As for alternatives, I have yet to find a management-type who wouldn't leap at the offer of replacing a stodgy, circa-1995 automated Word document with some sort of web-based application instead. For that matter, you can be outside of the M$ camp entirely by rolling out the replacements in PHP, JSP, Struts or FlashMX.
iWork '07 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So half-assed Exchange support wasn't enough? (Score:5, Interesting)
Exchange is a great mail program, unless you want to use it to talk to a non-Exchange server. As a non-Exchange server, it sucks.
Really, it wasn't made with interoperability in mind. It was designed to woo over the Novell Groupware crowd, and then lock the users in to one system. Unfortunately, it's succeeded far to well, something even Microsoft admits. They've been trying to open it up just a bit more, but as soon as one arm of the company manages to get it to work with an open product (like WebDAV or mbox spools), another arm of the company implements another incompatible and ill-documented lockdown feature (like Sharepoint integration).
It's a shame that Novell decided to quench the pipe for the open-source Hula, which could have filled a pretty big part of the whole left by yanking out Exchange. But I guess that when you choose new sleeping partners, you also have to change the bedding accordingly.
Converter? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What's wrong with X?! (Score:4, Interesting)
If someone (Apple or anyone else) could come up with a window manager that followed the shared-menubar style UI of the Mac, it would be a big step in the right direction. X apps simply don't "fit" in a Mac environment. The feel is completely wrong, due to wrong UI element placement and appearance. Mac users (rightly) see X11 apps as a last resort. It's like running GNOME apps in a KDE session, or vice versa, but even worse. Different, not-entirely-compatible mechanisms of doing the same things are at work, and it's not seamless.
If there is a wm that supports Mac-style menubars, I'd love to know about it. Anyone?
Re:What's wrong with X?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Most users want their programs to look like they were written for their OS, and they don't want to feel that it was dumped on their OS by accident. X-Windows based applications are fine as stop gap solutions for people who don't mind what their applications look like, as long as they get their work done. Most users tend to a bit more fussy and want something that does the job, while looking the part. Remember Mac users expect things to 'just work'. You can accuse them of being spoiled, but this is the markert you have to cater for. Attention to detail, such as UI design and localisation make a huge difference in your application getting accepted.
If your application is the only one that fills a certain purpose for the given OS, then they will choose your application because they have no choice. But when there is competition, skimping out on important details is going to lose you first place.
Re:So half-assed Exchange support wasn't enough? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? I've heard people say this before, and yet I use Entourage every single day, connected to our corporate Exchange server. We have a mostly Windows shop, with a few of us on Macs.
My email is seamless, my contacts are seamless (LDAP I believe), my calender is perfect. I've never even seen a hint of an issue.
So what features and issues do people have with Entourage? Is it just stuff I'm not using?
Re: What's wrong with X?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Standardisation in Windows apps? That's a laugh...
Let's take just one example which bugs me every day I have to use Windows at work: Find again. In many apps I want to go through a page, stopping at each instance of a particular string. In most cases, you start off by pressing Ctrl+F for Find. But once you've found the first match, what do you do to skip to the next? Oh, that's easy, you press Ctrl+G. Except it's not. Sometimes it's Ctrl+Y (Y? Goodness knows.) Sometimes it's that nice memorable F3. And sometimes you can't do it at all; you have to keep the Find dialog visible, which means you have to reach for the mouse every time you switch between going to the next match and editing it. I am *forever* forgetting which strange method of control to use in which app.
And that's just one single almost-universal action, across a small handful of common big-name Windows apps I use every day. Compare that to the Mac, where it's Cmd+G in every app I've come across. And repeat across tons of other little shortcuts and common actions.
'Standardisation'? Hah.
Fix java first (Score:3, Interesting)
OpenOffice is working on an Aqua version [openoffice.org] that can run natively on OSX. I suppose that will run faster than NeoOffice.
From their mission statement:
For me, NeoOffice works, and I've been using it since more than a year. The big problem here is not NeoOffice, but Java Swing I believe, as NeoOffice is java-based. Java is slow on the Mac, and that should be fixed! Try to use Eclipse, then NeoOffice is lightning speed.
Applescript! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's not us that have a problem with it... (Score:3, Interesting)
The standard (Score:3, Interesting)
Think about this for a second. Do you think the people who are interested in "the standard" rather than what they think is best would be using OSX at all? X is designed to work well for people who like Unix apps (Darwin users). Its also designed to offer some level of support for an integrated environment. But that's far short of a mac app.
Re:Fix java first (Score:3, Interesting)
Most linux distros ship the native version. I think that on OS X you're locked into Apple's JVM (for the Cocoa widgets, etc.), and Apple's JVM just isn't particularly good. It's not fast, and it won't emit native code. (So try Eclipse on Windows or Linux with a Sun or IBM JIT JVM. Much nicer.)
Third party support? (Score:3, Interesting)
According to one MacBU developer's blog, the Mac version of OS X will have support for basically the same object model used in Office for Windows, but will only lack support for the VBA language itself. In its place, developers can use AppleScript or other languages to script Mac Office.
So what are the chances that someone like Real Software will step in with a Mac Office plugin to allow it to handle VBA scripts?
Let's be practical (and sell out) (Score:1, Interesting)
Given all that, why would anyone, anywhere touch Office with a 10 foot pole? Because it's MS; because management idiots buy it, not users; because it's possible, with enough expensive training, to make it work well enough to keep things creaking along. And, of course, because every business document out there is in the misbegotten
I should be thrilled at the prospect that Neo or OOo might get a well deserved boost from this; I should be excited that the new XML formats, as atrociously designed as they are, make interop more possible (harder to block at least) than ever before.
Instead I'm thinking: my company provides me full MSDN, including Office development. MS is planning to provide pretty much the same object model in the new Office, except that it will be exposed by Applescript instead of VBA. What would be the market prospect for a VBA / Applescript translator?
Re:Just for stability? (Score:3, Interesting)
This saved one of my co-workers untold grief retyping the file.
Go Open Office!
And, btw, Calc at least starts up in just a few seconds on an Ubuntu 6.10 VM with 512 Megs in Parallels on a Mac Mini Core Duo 1.66