Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Reader nhmacusr has provided a link to a blog which is apparently written by a member of the Microsoft Mac Business Unit who has posted an entry explaining why VB scripting will not be included in the next version of Office for Mac. It turns out there is a technical reason I wasn’t aware of. The Cliff’s Notes version is, writing VB for Mac Intel and Mac PowerPC would require a tremendous amount of work, for technical reasons, and would delay the Office product by two years, and in the end, the functionality would be equivalent to what Office provides today, which would be out of step with Windows Office. The Mac BU would rather work on making Office more Mac-like and implementing requested features than busting their hump for two years, while everyone impatiently waits, to provide something that is already outdated.

The article does say that AppleScript features will be expanded in the next version of Office, and that VB and AppleScript are very similar, and translating from one to the other is not difficult. Stay tuned.

The blog entry also says that deciding to exclude VB from Office was a painful decision that was not done hastily or without thought, and they realize it could hurt a large number of customers. There’s no active plot to kill Office for Mac, and the conspiracy crowd need not get worked up. But I can understand why they did. Considering Microsoft’s (not necessarily the Mac BU) history of questionable (to be charitable) business practices, and the fact that the lack of VB scripting will hurt Macs in the workplace (intentional or not), if only as a matter of perception, it’s easy to infer the worst. Microsoft has put themselves in the position to be hastily and sometimes unfairly judged by their past actions.

Macworld’s call for papers due date is at the end of this week. For those of you not familiar with it, the call for papers is Macworld’s request for topic submissions for conferences that happen at Macworld Expo. Persons chosen to present their topic become Conference Faculty. Last year around this time, I submitted a paper about remotely and securely controlling Macs from remote networks and other platforms, and my paper was approved to become a conference session, and I was made a faculty member. This year, I’m not sure what I’ll do.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been to a number of Macworlds now and they’ve all been fun and informative. I’ve met some people I wouldn’t otherwise meet, and I’ve had a great time at the social events that happen after the show floor closes. This year, however, I don’t know if I’ll go.

Here’s the rub: What’s it in for me? Flying to SF and staying in a hotel for a week costs me about $1500, and everything else is an expense on top of that. I don’t have a sponsor or an employer paying my way to the conference. And while, as I said, I’ve enjoyed Macworlds in the past, I’ve been there and done that. For my investment of time and money, what do I have to show for it? Some recognition, sure. Some contacts, yes. Some stories and experiences, you betcha. But nothing that has changed my life in any measurable way. All of the Mac-related things that have impacted my life have been separate of Macworld Expo.

Deep down, I still want to go for the fun of it, and there’s a little paranoid voice in the back of my mind asking what opportunities I’ll miss. But I have other things to do with $1500 and a week of vacation. I’m a homeowner with a special someone, two dogs, and a kitchen that desperately needs remodeled. I’ve gotta prioritize, the logical part of my brain says.

My friend Shawn King gave me a very good idea for a Macworld conference, and I thought of one or two of my own, and someone asked if I’d be interested in making a presentation with them. As of now, I don’t have a plan to participate in any of those. I simply can’t justify it.

I could change my mind by the end of the week. I dunno. I’m not asking for anyone to attempt to talk me into one decision or the other, I just wanted to preemptively answer the inevitable question, why aren’t you going to Macworld this year?

Remember Apple’s Web Clip feature, to be included in Leopard, as previewed in the keynote this past Monday? It’s a simple mask that you shape around an area on a web page to create a custom widget. That same functionality is available to Mac users at this very moment in the form of Dash Clipping. Go get it!

Maybe this was one of those features that Steve should have kept “top secret” to prevent it from being stolen.

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?

Yours truly will be a guest on this week’s edition of Your Mac Life. Tune in Wednesday at 8:30 PM Eastern to hear me, Shawn, J, Lesa, Sly, and a cast of thousands talk about WWDC and the announcements coming from San Francisco this week. Hilarity will ensue, as it always does, and you’ll get a unique perspective of all the news that’s fit to talk about.