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Microsoft Businesses Apple

Microsoft At Macworld 61

Posted by timothy from the join-'em dept.
Rolan writes "Microsoft announced several Mac software updates at Macworld. Updates include MSN Messenger 5.0 and Improved Outlook imports (PST File import). The article also says Microsoft has also been working with Apple to ensure that Apple's Spotlight search technology works well with Office documents."
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Microsoft At Macworld More

Microsoft At Macworld

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  • any reactions from the M$ booth to the... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jxyama ( 821091 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @07:22PM (#11328821)
    steve's glitch during the keynote..? (i mean, gates got a lot of crap for his glitch at CES...)

    introduction of iWork? or the lack of a spreadsheet app in it?

    introduction of $500 headless Mac?

    • I'd say the lack of a spreadsheet app is bone thrown to Microsoft to placate them that iWork is not an enterprise office suite. And the $500 iMac is a great enterprise-level machine, meaning more sales of Microsoft Office X to those customers who want as smooth of a transition from Wintel to Macs.

      • Re:any reactions from the M$ booth to the... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @08:31PM (#11329637) Homepage
        I agree. iWork looks nice, but it looks to be something between Wordpad (VERY basic word processor) and Publisher (not a wordprocessor, but does all sorts of flyers and brocures and such).

        I doesn't look like it will replace Office for most people. You either need the power of Word for wordprocessing (in which case you get Word/Office), or you don't need much more than Wordpad (in which case, you probably won't buy Office, it's expensive for that).

        I may be wrong, but that's my impressions. Besides, Office is aimed (to a large degree) at businesses. And businesses would also want Excel and Powerpoint and other such things that are in Office. I don't think it should worry MS too much.

        The $500 Mac I would worry about more. It is an easy way to get your feet wet in the wonderful world of Macs. Sure, MS can sell Office to Mac users, but if so many people start to see how nice the Mac is (overall, no viruses/spyware, etc) then MS should get worried. People will demand Windows gets that much better (good for people, bad for MS), or they will switch to Mac (good for Macs, bad for MS). THAT is the thing to be worried about (as I see it).

        • And businesses would also want Excel and Powerpoint and other such things that are in Office.

          A minor point, perhaps, but iWork ships with Keynote as well as Pages, and Keynote is a PowerPoint replacement.

        • While Pages may not affect businesses so much, it may affect regular consumer sales as most people don't need as powerful of a word processing program as Word is....let alone one as expensive as it.

          $79 for iWorks compared to $400 for 2004 standard edition...I dunno about others, but I know I'd sure give iWorks a good look depending on my needs.

          • While Pages may not affect businesses so much, it may affect regular consumer sales as most people don't need as powerful of a word processing program as Word is....let alone one as expensive as it.

            Microsoft knows that, which is why they sell Microsoft Works 8 for USD 49.95 [microsoft.com].

            They also offer Works Suite 2005 [microsoft.com], with Word 2002 from Office XP instead of the Works word processor, and some additional programs, but without any other Office programs, for USD 99.95.

            Perhaps they don't see the Mac market as one for w

            • I cant say much about iWorks in terms of compatibility but Works sucks. Anytime someone makes sometehing in works. Word Doesn't open it, Works doesn't open word files? Did they fix that or is Works a way to force a person going to word because haning in a works files is saying "Hey Look at ME I am cheap and tech unsavy"
        • Pages looks more like a replacement for InDesign when looking at the demo. In fact it should have been called iDesign.

          Ciao

          • If you want to compare Pages to some DTP/layout software, it should be that old app that took your snippets and rearranged them until you liked the result. Can't remember which one it was: MultiAd Creator oder Ready Set Go? I am not even sure if it worked with System 7.
        • I've never seen Microsoft Publisher, so I can't comment on comparisons of that product to Pages. But Pages is, quite literally, Keynote for paper.

          If you've ever used Keynote, you'll know that it's basically a very simple but slick graphics program with some stuff added to make it good for interactive presentations. The "play slide show" mode with presenter graphics on the second monitor, for instance.

          Pages is basically the same core application, only with some stuff added to make it good for producing mul

      • Re:any reactions from the M$ booth to the... (Score:5, Funny)

        by node 3 ( 115640 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @08:47PM (#11329816)
        I'd say the lack of a spreadsheet app is bone thrown to Microsoft to placate them that iWork is not an enterprise office suite.

        I really doubt that. Bill has already proven that if you throw him a bone, he'll beat you over the head with it, break it in two and stab you with the pointy end while choking you with the smaller piece, metaphorically speaking.

        In other words, one should be careful what bones you toss to someone with Bill's business acumen (and utter ruthlessness). Steve probably knows this better than anyone else on the planet.
      • Actually I suspect that the reason there isn't a spreadsheet app included is because Apple just hasn't developed one that is currently ready to ship out the door.

        We'll probably see one eventually (maybe next year at this time), if for no other reason than that they want to replace most of the functionality of AppleWorks.
        • Why not look at the more logical reason, namely that Apple is reluctant to eat into FileMaker's sales? After all, it's in a bind when it comes to swallowing FileMaker whole, since it still is pretty popular in the Windows world. They may not be able to get away with calling it Apple iFile yet.

          My personal wish would be for the next generation of FileMaker to be the enterprise's iTunes: a package that looks great on Windows, integrates better with PHP and mySQL than Access, etc. and then suggest that it work
    • any reactions from the M$ booth to steve's glitch during the keynote..?

      Yeah, probably something like, "Wow! How did you recover so quickly? Bill would like to integrate that into his keynotes."

      Six years later...

      Bill: Well, Conan, here's our upcoming Longhorn...

      Conan: Looks like you're having a little trouble there.

      Bill: But wait! Thanks to our new innovation in keynote demo technology, I'm able to swap a few cables here, and insert my DRM keychain into this slot, and after it authenticates with the Pa

      • Re:any reactions from the M$ booth to the... (Score:4, Funny)

        by SunFan ( 845761 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @02:05AM (#11332164)
        I'm able to swap a few cables here, and insert my DRM keychain into this slot, and after it authenticates with the Palladium servers...

        Yes, but the Palladium server at Bill's office runs version 2.5.8.6.31 and the one at the demo runs 2.5.8.6.32. It detects the dicrepancy and automatically gives him a jalapeno enema for attempting to thwart the federally mandated protection schemes. The authorities are contacted and he is given 5 years in prison for his heinous crime on society.

  • Needs no additonal comment. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rueger ( 210566 ) * on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @07:22PM (#11328826) Homepage
    "Erickson said that Microsoft has been working closely with Apple to ensure compatibility with technologies that will be released in the next version of the operating system, expected sometime in the first half of 2005. Of particular note is Spotlight, Apple's advanced search technology.

    Spotlight will index and search Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, but unfortunately it will not work with Microsoft's email and information manager, Entourage.    "

    • Spotlight will index and search Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, but unfortunately it will not work with Microsoft's email and information manager, Entourage.

      Which makes total sense when you think about it. All Microsoft email apps use a large Database file to store email (think mbox but proprietary). All Microsoft email applications on the Mac have used that type of format (going back to Outlook Express 4 at least).

      Do you really think Microsoft would totally re-engineer their current database st
      • Actually, you kind of have that backwards. You don't rewrite your file format to be Spotlight-savvy. Instead, you provide a Spotlight plug-in called an "importer." An "importer" is a little object file that implements exactly one function: GetMetadataForFile. GetMetadataForFile takes a data structure of attributes, a content-type value and a path to a file on the disk as arguments. You write the function in such a way that you extract the metadata from the file and put it into the attributes data structure,
        • Ok, granted. But don't you think Apple redid their entire Mail setup to make it work faster (e.g. better). How fast can you write a function to extract any data from an Entourage database?

          I've seen them get as large as 2 GB (at which point Entourage corrupts the database, but you didn't really need that mail did you?) so it is hard to imagine you could write an efficient function that would find what you are looking for quickly.

          Does Entourage have a good search function already? I can't remember.
  • Well this was posted here an hour ago and only a couple of comments. Looks like no one cares. Seems like Apple has stolen the spotlight from Gates and Company.

  • Still no A/V support in Messenger? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @08:46PM (#11329810) Homepage
    I don't see any mention of audio or video calls having been added to Messenger. I really want this - I have a number of Messenger contacts, and at the moment no way to use video with them.

    Cheers,
    Ian

  • It is often stated that Apple needs Micro$oft, especially Awfice. But that is not true, and probably never was true. Micro$oft is not needed in any way for the Apple to thrive.

    That said, Micro$oft could of course contribute to making the Mac experience better, just like any contributor of software. People tell me that M$N Me$$enger is actually rather good. This update therefore deserves as much attention as any of the other updates regularly found on Macupdate or Version Tracker - that is, it does not dese
    • The first question a Windows user asks me when I bring my powerbook to work is "how do you read word files?"

      Followed by acute disbelief when I tell them I have Office installed.
      • Shouldn't you be telling them you installed iWork (or NeoOffice/J) instead because Apple will sell you a good computer for the price of MSOffice?
    • Therefore, nobody cares about this topic on Slashdot.

      Or, more likely, most people don't know this article is here, since by default it's buried in the Apple section and not present on the front page - unless you specifically search the Apple-related articles, or you changed the defaults to push all Apple-related articles on to the front page (most people don't), you won't see this, and hence you won't know it even exists.

      Of course, once you realize that, the opportunity to rant via creative misspellings

      • Of course, once you realize that, the opportunity to rant via creative misspellings about how nobody cares about Microsoft on OSX is lost, so perhaps you should just ignore this post and carry on as you were.

        Whenever I see "Micro$oft" I always think of this [penny-arcade.com]

  • I'd like to see an update to the mac version of their media player. The current one is too slow and clunky.

  • Sick of Microsoft's Lack of Dedication to Mac (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bedouin ( 248624 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2005 @10:05PM (#11330478)
    With all the hype Office gets for the Mac, it has serious issues. As far as speed is concerned, it performs no where nearly as well as its Windows counterpart. Scrolling through large documents in Word is a horrific experience, and that's assuming it doesn't mysteriously crash while editing a table or equation. While unicode support was added in 2004, it still cannot properly support right-to-left languages. When it comes to Mac, Microsoft cuts corners wherever possible, just to get the product out the door. Not to say they don't do the same with their Windows products, but at least to a lesser degree.

    Applications that bring MS absolutely no financial incentive are only maintained for the sake of propagating their proprietary formats. It was likely that a person would rethink publishing content in WMV if he knew Mac users have absolutely no way of playing it back; now, individuals will be a bit less reluctant to take the full plunge into WMV, oftentimes unaware that the Mac user's experience (especially with streaming, imbedded media) is horrific.

    MSN Messenger has not really seen a major change in ages, and is far behind its Windows counterpart. I realize things like audio/video conferencing are difficult to implement, but something as simple as pictures could have been done in a minor revision.

    I haven't used the latest version of VPC, so I won't comment on its overall quality. However I suspect that if it were still in the hands of Connectix a G5 capable version would have arrived much sooner, and it likely would not have been delayed numerous times simply because of SP2. Let's hope Darwine will save the day.

    After replacing Powerpoint with Keynote I fully welcome Pages. As clicheish as it may sound, Microsoft's applications emit an aura of conformity and stagnation, while Apple's seem to feel a bit more flexible and fun, something that's important when writing anything other than a business letter.
    • First of all, from the other stories I have read, MS does Mac for the money. I have head it said that if Word on Mac stops making money, MS will abandon it. I also understand that the MS development group for Mac are really a dedicated group to the Mac.

      That said, there are a lot of things I do not like about Office, especially Entourage. It's printing capability as a PIM is very limited for my tastes. It also lacks the ability to sync w/ Mail and ICal. Yes I know about the shareware scripts but that adds $
    • I don't know about Word - I am not too impressed with it's performance, stability and especially ability to read documents created with different version/OS/installed fonts on Windows.

      But Windows Media Player is definitely more pleasant to use on Mac than on its native platform. It just launches and does its job. No loading unwanted ads, no washing top of the window with a mouse to get the menu to pop up, no confusing tabs.

      I suspect Microsoft has a secret fascination with Mac. They made their own OS mess

      • But Windows Media Player is definitely more pleasant to use on Mac than on its native platform. It just launches and does its job.

        I wish I could agree with you on that one. If the sole job of WMP was to open and play Windows Media files you download, then yes, it would be fine. Unfortunately I would mainly use it for streaming video. And in that regard it is simply horrible. I really wish they'd make that aspect of it usable before the baseball season starts. No matter how fast the connection, I always

        • I'm guessing taht you have already tired VLC? It plays lots of stuff but not the sily DRMed WMPs (I thought there was a drm stripping tool, but I guess not). If you haven't, I recomend giving it a shot, I prefer it over WMP whenever I can use it. (Good chance it won't work with MLB stuff though)
    • Fuck that noise.

      I'm sick of Microsoft's lack of dedication to UNIX. Dropping Xenix, killing the IE port... bastards are worse than Adobe's support for IRIX.

      The only reason there's still a market for Office on the mac is the hundreds of millions of FUCKING LEMMINGS who are all OH NOEZ I NEED TEH WERD and can't even squeeze their sphincter without making a power point presentation out of it.

      You want microsoft products, get a goddamned PC. It's cheaper.
    • Give NeoOffice/J [planamesa.com] a shot and let the rest of us know how responsive it is compared to Office X.

      I find it (after a bit of a lengthy launch) to be a far larger threat to Office than iWork is likely to ever be.

      If iWork had a spreadsheet component, and all components have excellent Applescript support (as I'm sure they do), then I might consider buying it. But I would continue to use NeoOffice as my interface to the Microsoft world.

  • From Mactopia.com (NOT Macworld, I know): "Find out how Internet Explorer 5 for Mac can show you the Internet in new, exciting ways."

    Wow, IE 5, I've been waiting to see what the Internet would look like fresh technology like that. Will it match my brand new blueberry iBook?
    • Wow, IE 5, I've been waiting to see what the Internet would look like fresh technology like that. Will it match my brand new blueberry iBook?

      Yes, that's one of the exciting new features - choose from 9 different colors, including blueberry and tangerine.
  • Home users will get used to actually paying for their "Word".
    MS will be forced to offer a cheaper introduction package, but since Apple's installer base will most likely grow slightly they could in the end see their profit grow.

    iWork isn't a replacement for Office, not in a long shot. This said, it's probably enough for me, and a lot of other home users - the crowd that may run Office but sure hasn't paid for it...

    Heck, even my over 70 years old father in law got his Office "free of charge" from a fellow
  • I wish Apple would just throw some developers at porting OpenOffice natively to OSX and ship it with every computer. If that happened, every MS user I know could run a Mac no questions asked. I don't understand why Apple would throw their programming weight behind GarageBand and iWork. Both are great products, but if they could package and distribute a native OSX OpenOffice with every computer, then they could market their hardware to PC users to switch. AbiWord fills this gap a little, but it is only the w
    • It is the one fsking feature I was hoping for in 'pages' Apple should of included Open office document support for both spotlight, and Pages. Even if you can't save them at least be able to import them.

      Open Office for OS X was waiting for a rewrite to 2.0 2.0 is about to be released, and Open Office for OS X is another year away.

  • Exchange Support in Entourage (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Vandil X ( 636030 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:25AM (#11333832)
    I'm disappointed that Entourage still lacks the Exchange support needed to fully eliminate the need for Outlook 2001.

    All the Macs in my workplace have to keep Classic just to run Outlook. When you have a shop full of non-OS9 G4s and G5s, it's a disgrace. And while Mail.app can work with Exchange servers, it can't touch the Global Address Book and other important things.

    Maybe someday...
  • I could really care less which word processor I'm using as long as the file compatibilty is there. I spend most of my Office time in Access and Excel, in that order.

    How long have they had to port it now?

  • Within the past year, I've added a PowerBook and dual G5 PowerMac to my Windows notebook-and-desktop suite, but I'm still using Outlook 2K for Windows as my email client and PIM (therefore still running the Windows systems)....because there's been no clean way to get all of my email, contact, calendar and tasklist data into Entourage. The import tool seems to be what'll do the trick; my research indicates that the PST formats used by Outlook for Windows and Outlook for Mac 2001 are identical. And I'll still

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