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Microsoft Businesses Apple

Microsoft Works To Find Its Place In Mac OS X 68

Posted by pudge from the yeah-yeah-we-shall-see dept.
eggboard writes "In the Seattle Times, published right across the lake from Microsoft headquarters, I argue that Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) has produced some wonderfully engineered Mac OS X software, but they're generating most of the resentment they get because they miss the details: no Palm sync months after it should have come out; six-year-old broken features in Word; no common format for mail among Outlook, Entourage, and Outlook Express. If the MacBU could fix things as well as they write new features, their Mac customers would have a much better outlook." Tim O'Reilly recently had his own thoughts after meeting with people at MacBU, and meanwhile, MacBU also released Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac OS X. What's the real future of Microsoft on Mac OS X? MacBU's marketing director told O'Reilly to reserve judgment: "Watch us for another six months."
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Microsoft Works To Find Its Place In Mac OS X More

Microsoft Works To Find Its Place In Mac OS X

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  • Make blender drinks (Score:5, Funny)

    by twoflower ( 24166 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @01:34PM (#4113366)
    The author must use his web browser to make frozen dacquiris or something:
    The Internet Explorer 5 browser has become the benchmark against which I measure the standards compliance of other browsers. The Mac version is far superior to the Windows releases of Internet Explorer except in one area: rendering HTML pages.
    How, exactly, can a browser be superior to its competition if the only thing it sucks at is -- rendering HTML?
    • I got a kick out of that, too, when I read this article yesterday. The only conclusion that makes sense is that Glenn is talking about performance. He says,
      The Mac version is far superior to the Windows releases of Internet Explorer except in one area: rendering HTML pages. Pages with 150 kilobytes of data with a few tables can take 20 to 30 seconds to display. Other pages can halt the entire browser for a minute. Other similar programs have no such rendering problem.
      In other words, IE 5 for Mac renders the pages well, but it doesn't render them quickly. I'll go along with that. Of course, the OS X version of IE is saddled with other problems, but there's always OmniWeb for that.
    • Yes, that's why I don't even have IE for X on my system anymore. It's slow, and doesn't always finish the job, making me hit reload. It also blurred images on pages while using the scrollwheel, so I couldn't see them until I stopped scrolling. No, I'll stick with OmniWeb, with Mozilla as backup/alternative for troubling sites.

    • Actually, because of the flaws in the other Mac OS X browsers that I've tried to date, including horrible crashes and occasional disk corruption with earlier versions of Netscape 6, the fact that rendering is slow is a small price to pay for standards-compliant CSS, JavaScript, DOM.

      I may be silly, and I hate the slow rendering, but IE 5.2.1 for OS X typically gets it right when other browsers seem to mess up on the details.
  • Did anyone else think this story headline was announcing the port of Microsoft Works [core.com] to OS X?
    Man, that wierded me out. :) There's an old app..
    • Yeah, me too. The first thing I thought was: "Why on earth are they digging up that dead horse?"

      Been a long time since I even saw a Works file, let alone used the program. Must be close to fifteen years now since I pilfered a copy of Works from the Comp Sci labs at me old alma mater -- easy enough to do when it all fit on one floppy disk!

    • Re:Microsoft Works? (Score:5, Funny)

      by medcalf ( 68293 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @02:23PM (#4113750) Homepage
      Talk about an oxymoron...
    • Yep - me too - I read "'Microsoft Works' to find its place in OSX" Aiiiiiieeeee!!!!!!!

      I know people who still use Mac MSWorks daily and swear by it. This is the hair shirt of integrated software.

      The last copyright on this thing was 1994. Though they still bundle it with Windows (version whatever) - where it is even more obtuse than the Mac version - at least in the Mac version you have one app, several doc types - which integrate so badly that - well, they really don't . The Mac version boasts worse graphing capabilities than AppleWorks GS, is not WYSIWYG to paper, you can't remove column and row headers until you print...

      Give me Claris/Appleworks any day. ThinnkFree Office is also very impressive for $50 and apparently it's a JAVA app - I take back everything I said about JAVA implementations. If I could only find some useful applet for my iButton Java ring...
      • I thought that MS Works and Apple Works were basically the same thing, just that the Microsoft version was branded different (both made by Clairis before it got folded back into apple?). BTW, Apple works 6 can be installed on Windows in case anyone is iching for an update to their old MSWorks.
        • Note quite. Claris made ClarisWorks before Apple liquidated the company and branded it AppleWorks. Microsoft Works is completely different. The two software do not share any common heritage.
  • Put out really buggy software that infuriates mac users -- aside from the subconcious associations of frustration associated with Macs, new users will also reject Macs as inferior -- "they can't even run the same applications without crashing"

    Not that I'm implying Macs _arn't_ inferior, of course...
  • Oh, don't mind me. I'm just doing my part to get a release of Outlook for OSX that'll render the custom forms I've created. It's my mantra. It's my prayer. Perhaps someone at MacBU is listening...

    Custom forms, custom forms, custom forms...
  • I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but microsoft has every reason to use their software to sabotage OS X and make it unstable. ;)
    • They do have that motivation, but they also make many many hundreds of millions of dollars off Mac users from sales of Office, from mice sales (their latest mice have Mac drivers), and on and on.

      Yesterday, they announced they're writing a ground-up version of the MSN 8 client for Mac OS X. They can make a lot of money as an ISP, too.

      If Apple still had the market share it used to, the conspiracy theory might have made sense. But because Microsoft can literally make as much or more money from a Mac user's "seat" as they can from a Windows user's, it's a moot point.

      The new OS X Remote Desktop Client lets them sell more Windows 2000 Server licenses to companies with Mac users, who can now "login" as Windows terminal session. Lots of Mac users in mixed environments have had to buy Virtual PC before this (which pays a fee for every copy sold to MSFT as well!).

      There's a good money for MS, and they follow the money.

  • Ah, Word (Score:4, Informative)

    by foobar104 ( 206452 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @01:47PM (#4113479) Journal
    I have recently reached a sort of uneasy detente with Microsoft Word 10 for Mac OS X. My co-workers like to use Word for everything from email to bookmaking, but I employ it only to write copy. The actual page layout and typesetting happens in InDesign. It's a good system.

    But Word... Word is one big frustration. I have come to live with it peacefully by turning off damn near everything. "Check spelling while you type?" No, thank you. "Background pagination?" At a price of 30% of my CPU all the time? Nuh-uh. I've set the "Normal" stylesheet to 10 point Courier on 24 pt leading and turned off all the toolbars. I divide my time about 50/50 between banging out copy in normal view and structuring documents in outline view. Periodically, for no reason I can put my finger on, Word decides that I really want to work in page layout view, but that's easy enough to fix. If TextEdit.app had stylesheets*, I'd be in business.

    All this can be yours, for the low, low price of five hundred bucks. Sheesh.

    * The only reason I'm using Word is because you can import a styled Word document into InDesign and let InDesign's stylesheet override the formatting in the Word document. So you can set your heading and subheading styles for a long document (I write a lot of 100+-page proposals) in Word, and then let InDesign apply appropriate formatting automatically. It's a system that works really well. As long as Word behaves, that it.

    • Re:Ah, Word (Score:2, Informative)

      by jhealy1024 ( 234388 )

      I've set the "Normal" stylesheet to 10 point Courier on 24 pt leading and turned off all the toolbars . . . The only reason I'm using Word is because you can import a styled Word document into InDesign and let InDesign's stylesheet override the formatting in the Word document.

      Have you considered LaTeX [ctan.org]? It lets you write your docs in a simple text editor (which is pretty much what you've turned Word into) and then apply the correct formatting, pagination, endnotes, citations, fonts, figures, and layout later.

      It works great in Mac OS X, and has a few good Mac OS-native frontends [apple.com]. It produces PS or PDF, and doesn't cost a dime! The markup language takes a little getting used to, but there are some excellent books [aw.com] available, or you can use a WYSIWYG front-end [lyx.org].

      • Yes, absolutely. My personal preference is TeTeX and TeXShop. But I have to work with mere mortals to whom the idea of editing a text file filled with what appears to be computer code and then running "make" is unpalatable.

        Besides, as wonderful as TeX is, it's limited in its ability to design arbitrary page layouts and such. At least, the learning curve at that level is steep.

        I started out on LaTeX, and migrated to InDesign as a way of compromising with my coworkers.

        Great suggestion, though.
    • Is for InDesign to accept an XML document. I've never used it, but it looks like InDesign does have the capability you need... At least that's what this page [coverpages.org] says.

      I'm guessing you could write XML in a text editor and dump it into InDesign. The problem you describe (turn off all the bells and whistles and just give me the outlining) seems made for a markup language solution. Trying to separate content from presentation with Word will make you crazy.

      Since it appears that InDesign can create an XML template for you, you could then fill in the content with a good text editor (like jEdit, BBEdit, Vi, or Emacs).

      Of course, XML is anoother ball of worms, but I'd rather use a text editor and XML rather than struggle with all the 'features' of Micros0ft Word.
      • InDesign does take XML input. I've tried it. Works really well.

        The roadblock there is that everybody in the company already has a license to use Word, but nobody has a license for an XML editor. Plus, everybody already has Word installed, while nobody has an XML editor installed. Finally, everybody knows how to use Word (at least to the minimal extent that they can use outline mode), but nobody knows how to use an XML editor.

        I agree that XML would be a good answer here, but it doesn't offer us anything that we can't do already, and presents us with a number of small to medium challenges that would have to be overcome.
        • ... you have an XML editor --- Text.app :-)
        • jEdit is a medium-sucky text editor that does XML pretty well. (When I say medium-sucky, I mean it's a Java app, with all the pluses and minuses). It's freely downloadable and open source. It's no XML Spy, but it's much better than BBEdit's XML support, and it's cheaper than either.

          If you use an external DTD, it will validate against it on the fly and even provide context-sensitive tag completion. It makes using DocBook tolerable, so I'm pretty sure it would make a more stringent schema easier to use.

          Anyhow, I feel for you. I'm currently working on a medium-complex project (where I'm automatically generating tables from queries on a database) that I wrote the pages in XHTML and the scripts in Python. It was the only option where I felt I had control over the presentation (But then again, I'm good with raw XML).

          I might have to check out InDesign for future projects...
          • I tried jEdit. Double-clicked it, went to get a soda came back. It still wasn't done initializing. That was the end of the experiment.

            InDesign isn't perfect. It sets type like nobody's business, but it has no facilities for handling things like cross-references or automatic index generation. What I really need is FrameMaker, only with less suck.

  • quality high but other problems (Score:4, Insightful)

    by feldsteins ( 313201 ) <scott.scottfeldstein@net> on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @01:57PM (#4113547) Homepage

    I actually find Microsoft Macintosh software to be of fairly decent quality. The real problem lies elsewhere.

    Specifically, MS leaves out certain functionality for "strategic" reasons that essentially leave the Mac platform lacking in certain specific areas. Outlook, anyone? Java-enabled Web browsing anyone? There are other examples as well. What you end up with is well written software with what I call "strategic holes" in it.

    I seriously hope that Microsoft delivers a more highly compatible web browser and an OS X Outlook client soon. Judging from the past, however, there's no reason to suspect that they will except the vague "watch us for six months" comment.
    • Java-enabled Web browsing anyone?

      Mac IE has Java support. There's a whole preference section for it.

      I've found Mac IE to be a very compatible web browser.

      • It has had java support for ages but hasn't worked all that well. Some would say that this is Apple's fault, others would say otherwise.. in any case you're right about one thing - it's a bad example.
      • IE for Mac OS has only marginal Java support. Essentially, all it does is reserve a rectangle in the browser window then call Apple's MRJ Java interpreter to fill it.

        In particular, what it does not support is LiveConnect; a way to exchange data between the Java interpreter, the browser, and the web site. There is no way for the browser to tell what is going on inside the Java rectangle, and no way for the Java applet inside to know anything about the browser. This is why, for example, web pages with Java applets must have a link or something saying "Don't see anything in this page? Click here!"; the applet can't tell if the browser loaded it, and the browser can't tell if the applet is working.
    • "Specifically, MS leaves out certain functionality for "strategic" reasons that essentially leave the Mac platform lacking in certain specific areas. Outlook, anyone? Java-enabled Web browsing anyone? There are other examples as well. What you end up with is well written software with what I call "strategic holes" in it."

      I am so not being dense. Okay, maybe I am.

      But what kind of business strategy would lead a company to intentionally leave holes in software? I'm no businessman and I'm no economist, but to me, that just doesn't make sense. Doesn't mean Microsoft doesn't intentionally leave holes in...say...Outlook (see my post above,) but at first glance and without more supporting information, it simply doesn't make good business sense.

      For me and for my company, I'd love like all heck to see decent custom forms support in the Mac version of OL. And while I haven't heard any other specific complaints from the Mac users in our shop, I'm sure there are other holes they'd like filled.

      Again, maybe I'm being dense or shortsighted, but filling this particular "hole" in Outlook would do little to nothing to our purchase of PCs and Microsoft products. In other words, we wouldn't (and really *couldn't*) switch the entire plant over to Macs just because the Macs could now utilize custom forms in OL. We have an entire data collection, order entry and billing system that's Windows-based, for one thing.

      Why would a software company leave "strategic" holes in an application?


      • But what kind of business strategy would lead a company to intentionally leave holes in software?

        What we're talking about is deliberate incompatibility. Whether it's the omission of features or the addition of ones that break compatiblity, it's all the same. Case in point - Microsoft wanted nothing more than for Java to fail. They figured if the Web browser became a "platform" unto itself it could jeapardize the Windows monopoly. So they impliment Java...only they kinda break it. Deliberately. See where I'm going with this?

        And actually in that scenario they added features that would break compatibility with standard java. When asked why they said "because that's what our customers want." In reality what they were doing was the "extend" part of the embrace, extend and extinguish strategy.

        One might ask "what sense does it make for a company to make products that deliberately have problems?" Unfortunately there are indeed answers to that question that make good "bottom line" business sense. Even more unfortunately, it retards the progress of the entire industry.
    • Specifically, MS leaves out certain functionality for 'strategic' reasons that essentially leave the Mac platform lacking in certain specific areas.

      How is it 'strategic' leaving out Unicode support in Office X (Entourage excluded)? Anyone developing for Mac OS X had better leave that old MacRoman crap behind as quickly as possible.

      Fine, there might be a few secretaries around that would need something bloated like Office X to write their ASCII letters, but they would be much better off with Wintel boxen anyway, as those are designed for that very purpose.

      For the rest of us, Microsoft has not one single piece of software to offer that hasn't one or several vastly superior competitors. Microsoft isn't needed on the Mac platform. Everytime people say that Apple depends on the presence of Microsoft, I am stunned. How do they assert this statement? It is obvisously false.

      Microsoft Macintosh software is not of 'fairly decent quality'. It is crap. Open up Office X and see how it will 'Optimize Font Menu Performance' for a few minutes (proprietary API that is not needed). It is very slow, very bloated, and very un-mac (OS X)-like.

      Likewise, open up IE and see how it will overwrite your general internet prefs with garbage, change the home page and a lot of other intrusions. PoS.

    • Yeah, another example is that Microsoft has made sure that MS-Word can only do mailmerge from Filemaker if both are using MS-Windows. This is an ODBC issue so the onus is on MS to get it fixed.

      But since it's not in their short term bottom line extend the monopoly best interest, fat chance of it happening. Sort of like their hard coded sabotaged LDAP query in MS-Outlook.

      I use TextEdit when I can, because MS-Word is too slow (IMHO) even on a G4. I wish I could run Word5 without having to go into "Classic" mode. If the source code were out for the older versions, then they could be ported to OS X or KDE and make import filters for the newer formats. MS-Word sort of hit apogee at MS-Word 2.0 for Windows and MS-Word 5 for Macintosh.

  • Dear MacBU, if you read this (and I know you do), please fix that stupid MSN Messenger 3 for OS X. It's slow as hell. Sometimes I have to wait ~30 seconds before thinking of writing an answer to a correspondant.

    Note: I know iChat & co. work better and are made especially for Mac but my contacts are using MESSenger. And I won't change of friends because of the OS/IM they use.
    • Have you tried Fire [epicware.com]?
      • Yup... that and Proteus.

        But I can't say I'm a big fan of them. It's so... too much: too much prefs, too much options, too many things on the screen.

        I like slick and efficient IM, as iChat (of course) and Messenger (on a PC).

        Since Fire is open source (and maybe Proteus, I haven't checked), it would be really cool if someone took the code, removed other IM's support and made it a visual clone of Messenger.
        • You're right about Proteus and Fire having a bit too much junk. Just thought I'd suggest an alternative.

          Too bad you're a MSN Messenger user... all my contacts use AOL Instant Messenger, so I get to use Adium [adiumx.com]... very, very slick and efficient.

  • Why don't you just get a REAL operating system... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...instead of waiting years for software like Microsoft Works to come out for the Mac?

    Oh wait, Mac users still won't get to experience the joy that is Microsoft Works. Sorry, I misinterpreted the headline.

    Well if Mr. Gates doesn't want to share this treasure of home productivity with Mac users, I don't blame him.

    • Back in the late 90s I was an engineer on MS Works at Microsoft.

      The reason MS Works doesn't come out for the Mac is because Apple Works kicked its butt.

      Microsoft tried and tried to compete against Apple in this segment, but was completely unable to.

      So, they stopped selling MS Works for the Mac. Not that I'm surprised, after that experience, now I *know* why MS products suck.

      As with anything, though, people choose to see this as a failing of the Mac and not Microsoft.

      But on a level playing field, Microsoft lost. (which actually happens regularly if you know the industry.)

  • Too used to a monopoly? (Score:5, Informative)

    by mactari ( 220786 ) <rufwork@gma i l . com> on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @03:14PM (#4114169) Homepage
    In spite of his constant hawking of his "OS X Missing Manual" in his articles, Tim O'Reilly brings up an important point on the subject:

    [Apple sold about 800,000 Macs last quarter, so Microsoft's whining that they've only sold 300,000 copies of Office X this year seems only to show how spoiled they've gotten. ("We're only getting 20% penetration. These bozos must be doing something wrong!")]

    Think of it this way: Microsoft's share in the Mac word processing niche is larger than Apple's share in the personal computing market by a factor of three to four, and this is with Apple giving away AppleWorks on all of its consumer models. And Office ain't cheap ($435 new, $260 to upgrade)!

    Admittedly, however, if you listened to Steve Jobs at the last MacWorld Expo, you'd've heard that even *new* Mac buyers are using OS 9 as their boot-up OS nearly 40% (iirc) of the time. An OS X only product is going to feel a pinch in the transition period.

    Regardless, Microsoft is doing well on Mac. Their browser's on the desktop, their Office suite has been updated or purchased anew by 15% of OS X users and older versions sit on many more machines. I haven't understood the whole Office vs. OpenOffice threats recently -- Apple needs Microsoft to keep people switching and Microsoft needs Apple if only to provide the semblence of a commercial rival. Not bad for a division that's tucked in with "the consumer division [not the Office division] that makes mice, trackballs, WebTV, and the Xbox".

  • Nuts, I nearly bought Offive v.X for Entourage and the Palm Sync (academic, so I wouldn't be spending $500 on sync software). But then it came out that it was blowing pdbs up to fill your memory (or some such).

    That's a pretty fatal blow, for the moment, and since 10.2 is going to have iSync...

    Of course, I'm an exception: I use LaTeX and noweb [harvard.edu] to write papers, and AppleWorks' spreadsheet is enough for my non-scientific use.

    But the truth is, I need working functionality a lot more than I need another whiz-bang feature; I don't use Office for the same reason I don't troll for new software on freshmeat; I don't feel safe putting my data in their hands.

    • All credit to Microsoft, the removed the conduit from the web site as soon as this bug came to light, and informed users of the problem while it was under investigation.

      It was bug fixed and re-releaseled this month at http://www.microsoft.com/mac/ [microsoft.com].

      Microsoft's mac software department is pretty on the ball (though I wish Internet Explorer on OS was better threaded and had a few of the annoying display bugs fixed).

      • From http://www.microsoft.com/mac/DOWNLOAD/OFFICEX/palm sync.asp [microsoft.com]:

        Microsoft Handheld Synchronization for Entourage X is temporarily unavailable as we investigate some technical issues that have been reported to us by customers. These issues include problems associated with the memory size of records and conflicts with DateBook.

        There's no information under "News and Updates" about a re-release either...

        • Yes I went to install it on a another PowerBook yesterday afternoon and couldn't find it!

          *Confused*

          Hmm, all it says now is "Coming late August".

          Weird. It's possible I was wrong but I was sure it was back (it was even mentioned on a couple of web sites last week).

  • The MacBU is an Oasis (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Spencerian ( 465343 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @04:31PM (#4114774) Homepage Journal
    It's pretty amusing what the MacBU does and where they reside. But then, Microsoft has never been against the Macintosh--in fact, Microsoft created Word and Excel for use on Macintosh first, long before Windows was developed.

    They do great work. Since Office 98, the MacBU has restored my opinion of Microsoft's support of the OS. While the products do suffer from the typical bloat common in MS software, they don't get in the way as nastily as in their Windows counterparts.

    Further, Mac Microsoft products rarely suffer from the relentless ActiveX, VB, macro, and Win32 viruses, trojans, and other malware because the applications provide very limited or no support for these items.

    The only real flaw in the MacBU (and this isn't probably in their control) is pricing. They would sell more Office units with a lower price, guaranteed.
    • Further, Mac Microsoft products rarely suffer from the relentless ActiveX, VB, macro, and Win32 viruses, trojans, and other malware because the applications provide very limited or no support for these items.

      Well, I suppose that's one way of putting a positive light on what I view to be one of the points lacking in office for OSX... the macro development VB for applications implimentation, development environment (if you could call it that) is awful on the mac, especially when compared to the PC counterpart.

      -inco

  • The -only- reason I keep Word on my system is "grammar check". Other than that, it's features aren't something that isn't offered by other W. Processing apps. Now, what I would like to see (or hear of) is a Mac OS X grammar service. For all of OS X apps, anywhere. At least Cocoa apps. That would kick. Just like the spelling service helps a lot! Sorry, that probably is off topic, but I've been looking a -long- time for an OS X grammar service. Hrm.
    • The -only- reason I keep Word on my system is "grammar check". Other than that, it's features aren't something that isn't offered by other W. Processing apps.

      This is a good indicator to stay away from Word's grammar check: it's is a contraction of a verb meaning it is or it has; use the possessive its instead. Also, the verb isn't should agree with features aren't. A word processor worth the $500 price tag ought to suggest: "Other than that, its features aren't something not offered by other W. Processing apps."

      I am Mighty Zontar, Grammar Bastard.


  • One of the reasons I switched to Mac was to get /away/ from the Microsoft world. (Yes, all my Macs
    dualboot Linux too :) )

    Bad enough they got IE in OSX, don't enourage them to add more.

    Apple has a good thing going at the moment, don't let Microsoft break that too.

    - MugginsM

  • I don't know why they didn't just call it Terminal Services Client for the Macintosh, since that's pretty much what it is.

    They are pushing it hard as a means to use Outlook on the Mac, since development on a native Outlook client for OS X has not even begun, AFAIK.

    I tried it out the other night, and on my 500MHz iBook over an AirPort connection, it feels significantly faster than it does on my XP Pro Duron 850MHz box over a 100Mbps wired Ethernet connection. It can also take over the full screen, which I can't seem to get it to do on my XP box with the the actual client application (though I can get it fullscreen if I go in through the web front end).

    It's a much nicer solution than my previous one, running the 16-bit Terminal Services Client in Win3.11 within Virtual PC.

    Still, a native Outlook would be much better. Hop to it, MacBU!

    ~Philly
  • Hmmm

    Microsoft:

    Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac OS X
    Relased: 7/17/2002

    Apple:

    Remote Desktop
    Released: 3/14/2002

    Methinks Microsoft needs to change their product name.

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