There is plenty to say about yesterday’s keynote, and I’ll be saying most of what I think on tomorrow’s edition of Your Mac Life. However, today I wanted to make some points about Microsoft’s recent announcements.
Virtual PC for Mac is going away, and the next version of Office will be reduced in functionality. I understand why Virtual PC is being discontinued: Boot Camp, Parallels, and now VMware offer excellent ways to run Windows on a Mac, and Microsoft is going to be late to the game. It’s a money loser for them, and they’re not interested. That’s fine. But I also think some part of it is competition. It seems that as soon as Microsoft encounters competing products on the Mac platform, they withdraw. Consider the following:
Internet Explorer used to be the default browser for the Mac. When competition in the form of Safari showed up, Microsoft dumped IE faster than a ton of bricks.
Windows Media Player for Mac had always been a pile. When a third party created a halfway decent QuickTime plugin to play Windows Media files, Microsoft announced that WMP for Mac would no longer be developed because they never liked doing it anyway.
Virtual PC used to be the only way to run Windows on a PowerPC Mac. When Apple put Intel chips inside their machines, Parallels and VMware came along to offer competing ways to run Windows on top of Mac OS. Microsoft declared Virtual PC for Mac too hard to do, and killed the project. (It doesn’t seem too hard for Parallels and VMware…)
Considering the points stated here and the line that runs through them, what do you think will happen to Office as Apple’s iWork suite matures? Is the lack of VB scripting in the next Office version an indication that Office for Mac is fading out, or is it a plot to prevent adoption of Office and the Macs it runs on in the workplace? I dunno. At this point, removing VB scripting seems very much like Microsoft pouting and taking their ball home. Is there a technical reason I’m not aware of?
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August 8th, 2006 at 4:04 pm
I suspect that this isn’t the case for Office.
Office is considered by many to be the default for word processing, and spreadsheets. It’s too strong a brand that gets too much income, even on the Mac, to drop or let wither.
I.E. wasn’t revenue generating. It was surprising that MS even made the Mac version at all.
Virtual PC served to help sell more copies of Windows. With Bootcamp and Parallels, there exist a couple of products that help sell Windows to Mac users. (Though one wonders why they blew the money on buying up Virtual PC in the first place?)
August 8th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
I thought I read that they are dropping VB scripting for more/better AppleScript and Automator support.
August 9th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
Good point, Shawn. We’ll be talking about this on the show tonight.
nhmacusr, I hadn’t read anything about AppleScript and Automator support. Do you have a link? That would interesting if true.
August 9th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Hey Aaron,
It was in Peter’s article on Monday.
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/08/07/msuniversal/index.php
Second hand at best, but I don’t think he would have written it unless he asked.
August 10th, 2006 at 9:17 am
An interesting write up from a developer in the MacBU.
http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-goodbye-to-visual-basic/
It will be interesting to see how extensive the added AppleScript support gets.
August 11th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
Actually Microsoft bought Virtual PC not for its ability to run Windows on a Mac but for its ability to run Windows on Windows.
Microsoft saw resistance from people upgrading their servers because there is server software out there that ran on NT and NT only. So after buying up Connectix the slapped the ability to run multiple server OSes into their servers to give people the “advantages” of the new servers while maintaining the ability to run their old applications.
Sadly, Microsoft couldn’t develop the technology themselves so they needed to buy it up.