Microsoft Mac Business Unit - Open Source Or Die?
If you follow the world of software at all, you’d be hard-pressed to have missed the news that Microsoft is dropping Virutal PC on the Mac, and dropping support for VBA in the Mac version of Office. What’s particularly interesting, at least in the case of VBA, is that this isn’t a financial decision - budget isn’t the issue at all. Rather, it’s that Microsoft is simply unable to hire a team that can do a good job of making VBA work on the Mac.
It’s actually quite big of them to come clean and admit they’re not up to what is a pretty difficult programming challenge. As Steve Jobs said the other day - $5B in annual R&D clearly isn’t everything. In the face of this lack of ability to deliver complex software, perhaps the Mac Business Unit should consider turning over their software to the open source community, to see if they can do a better job?
The problem is - while support for VBA macros is difficult, it’s also important. I find it hard to believe that many users of the Mac version of Office will think it’s good news that they’re losing the ability to interoperate with so many MS Office for Windows documents. This is compared to people in the Mac BU who think it’s a good thing they’re dropping VBA, and that those customers who disagree are simply engaged in “rabid chatter”. I being harsh here, I know, and to be honest, I totally understand the frustrations involved in maintaining a horrible code base. However, the truth is - if you can’t interoperate with documents produced on Windows, why would you bother paying for MS Mac Office at all? I hate to break it to the developers in the Mac BU, but I honestly can’t see many people buying Office because it’s now developed using Xcode - that really is not “a positive”! I understand that it’s great from a developer perspective, but users don’t really care about that. I would assert that a massive reason people pay for Mac Office is because it delivers best-in-class interoperability with the Windows version.
So, why don’t you need to pay for Mac Office anymore? It’s because there is now a pretty good (and continually improving) open source alternative available for the Mac. It doesn’t have VBA macro support either. However, at the same time that Microsoft is dropping VBA, support for VBA is actually being added to OpenOffice and NeoOffice. It’s not hard to see where the momentum is.
It’s starting to look like time is running out for the Mac version Office (or Office:Mac as they call it), just like it already has for Virtual PC. And with the demise of Virtual PC, which follows on from the demise of Mac versions of Internet Explorer and Media Player, what now will be the value of the “we’re here to stay” cries from the Microsoft Mac Business Unit? Will anyone believe them, I wonder?
Asam Bashir wrote:
Apple is certainly not counting on them and I can imagine further developments to Pages 2.0 with addition of a sophisticated spreadsheet alternative.
Mac OS X has far more sophisticated methods for work flow with Apple scripts and Automator functions built in to the OS - VBA is not going to be missed by most apart from MS certified techies….
Posted 11 Aug 2006 at 5:53 pm ¶
simon wrote:
I think VBA is going to be missed by more than MS certified techies. In fact, it’s maybe almost the opposite of that - VBA is mainly used by non-techies. It’s often used by people in companies to solve problems that need to be solved, but where the IT department doesn’t have the resources to get involved. There are a lot of such problems.
It’s true the Mac OS X has great scripting capabilities. However, many companies with Mac OS on the desktop need to be able to send and receive documents (with VBA Macros) to companies that have Windows on the desktop. Thus, the need to interoperate is key. The question is: what percentage of companies that use Office:Mac need produce and consume documents for/from the Windows world?
I suspect that percentage is much higher than many people think. I’m constantly surprised by just how many companies use VBA, and more than that, actually have mission-critical processes that rely on it.
Posted 11 Aug 2006 at 7:27 pm ¶