No Virtual PC for Intel-based Macs

Techie writes "Microsoft has decided not to move forward with a version of Virtual PC for the Intel-based Macintosh. The amount of time it would take to bring Virtual PC to Intel would be roughly equivalent to creating the product from scratch, Scott Erickson, director of product management and marketing for Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit, told eWEEK. The article says Microsoft will also be discontinuing support of Visual Basic scripting in the next version of Office for Mac." From the article: "As cross-platform compatibility remains a top priority at Microsoft, Erickson says that as the company develops the next version of Office for Mac, the files will continue to be compatible across platforms, including with the 2007 Microsoft Office System for Windows. VB macros within files will not be accessible and users will not be able to view or modify them. However, the files themselves can be edited without affecting or changing the macros. "

Brilliant!

[Magada]

MS is actively fighting Apple, for the first time in many years. They're scared enough to notice, now that Apple is moving in on *their* pet platform. Great and good things are afoot.

Cross over

[Delirium Tremens]

Then you can simply install a MacOs-compliant version of Wine [codeweavers.com] and run Windows builds of MS Office natively. Office 2000 is Gold status with CrossOver. And if VBA support in Office 2000 is not enough for you, I hear that CodeWeaver will announce improved support for Office 2003 soon.

Hold the conspiracy theories...

[itsdapead]

What some of the pundits (on Macrumours and elsewhere) seem to be forgetting is that what VirtualPC does (runs x86 code on a PowerPC by emulating the x86 processor in software) is technically very different to what Parallels and VMWare do (allow x86 code to run "natively" within a virtual sandbox) - even if the end result (Windows running in a window on your Mac) is similar. A simple port of VPC to Mactel would have its ass handed to it by Parallels and VMWare. So when MS say:

The amount of time it would take to bring Virtual PC to Intel would be roughly equivalent to creating the product from scratch

...they probably have a point.

Re:Less software?

[jellomizer]

Sure Apple can poke fun at Microsoft. But I would think Virtual PC and Scripts in their Office Documents would be a big seller. First with Virtual PC you can get the Virtualization software and a legal copy of the OS in one package. Vs. Using others where the Mac user may want to use a less legal copy, as well as stripping office down. If Microsoft presses to hard on Apple. All apple needs to do is disable some code and their OS can compete with them in the OS Space with all systems. Apple has been playing nice with Microsoft even with the Intel transistion, that made sure that OS X will only run on Apple Hardware. As for Virtual PC, I think most people can take it or leave it, there are other alternives out there. But disabling VB scripting I feel it is a greater threat to office compatibility. Unless Microsoft turns it off in their next gen Win Office too.

VirtualPC = Emulation

[Snap E Tom]

People are confusing emulation and virtualization.

VirtualPC is an x86 *emulator.* Why would you need to emulate Intel on an Intel chip? What Macs need is virtualization, and that's what they're getting with Parallel and VMWare.

As far as VB goes, it never worked well on the Mac version of Office for a while.

http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/07/news-of-the -day/ [schwieb.com]

Re:Microsoft? Cross-platform compatibility?

[guy-in-corner]

(Though releasing NT straight at v3.0 instead of v1.0 was really close...)

It was released [wikipedia.org] at v3.1 (not v3.0), because the Novell Netware cross-licensing terms only extended to "Windows 3.1". Once WfWg (Win16 v3.11) came out, Netware support kinda became a non-issue, so the next version was v3.5.

Re:Now they've got Apple by the corones..

[nukular]

Well in my company we use VBA fairly regularly... Lets say we need to make maybe 30 or more slightly similar charts in Excel....(not uncommon here) we can write VBA that spits out these charts for us automatically..including text placement and the like.... When we bill hundreds an hour this saves our client a lot of money. We also have used VBA to do calculations for last in, first out trading of various securities. Its a pain manually and we get the added bonuse of having the data appear nicely in various spreadsheets. Granted I work in a windows-specific office, (I use a powerbook AND a windows desktop), but telling me I'll be crippled going forward makes me want to stick a glass-coated boot up the butt of some redmond executive committee...

Re:Now they've got Apple by the corones..

[Dr_LHA]

Where are those damn mod points where you need them?

Office 2007/8/whatever will support scripting, but it will be done using Applescript rather than VBA.

Also VBA is being depreciated by Microsoft in the Windows versions of Office in favor of .NET scripting. Its quite possible that the new Mac Office will support this scripting as well, making the "next gen" scripting compatible across both platforms.

The real reason behind this move, rather than MS being evil and "slapping" Apple, is that the VBA compiler doesn't work on Intel Macs, and as VBA is getting replaced anyway, MS made the decision to dump it completely rather than putting a huge effort into porting a part of the system that will go away in the next few years.

Its annoying to those who rely on VBA, sure. But if you want to support legacy apps, you can continue to use the legacy version of Office.

Re:Less software?

[Richard_at_work]

It entirely depends how the codebase is constructed, considering that the VPC codebase has only recently become Microsofts and that there were TWO (2) different VPC products in the first place anyway (VPC with emulation for OSX and VPC with virtualisation for Windows), who knows WHAT the state of the internals are like on each, its probable that the two werent maintained in a compatable way - there would be a world of difference in the virtualisation engine for the different platforms. With two other companies already entering the arena, one with a saleable product at the moment and one fairly far down the path to having one, does it work out financially viable for MS to make the time and money investment?

Strategic

[meepzorb]

VBA and VB in general, however, are widely used in Enterprise markets for rapid app development and custom one-shot pieces of software (for good or ill--- that's another discussion). VBA in Office is a common way to build custom apps on top of Word or Excel. As it stands now, these custom apps (more common than you'd think) work on either platform.

Cutting off VBA support in Office-X will take this cross-platform functionality away, and (they hope) make Macs less attractive to enterprise customers. "What do you mean I can't run my custom Accounting program on a Mac anymore?"

Technical issues have nothing to do with these decisions. This is just Microsoft circling the wagons in to protect against Apple making any further inroads into what they see as "their" business market.

With the switch to Intel, and multiple ways to run Windows programs on a Mac, the business leverage of the Windows mono-culture is on the decline.

All MS have left is Office now, with its millions of entrenched users, and they intend to fight like hell to protect that last piece of turf.

Re:newspeak

[Eivind]

No. It very obviously isn't.

So, with a sensible document-format, all you need to exchange documents is any compliant software on either end.

With MS-Office, on the other hand, it's not enough that all participants have some MS-Office compliant software. It's not enough that they buy Microsoft Office, the very same office-suite. It's not even enough that they buy "MS-Office 2007", no, that's not enough to ensure compatibility.

It needs to be: "MS-Office 2007, running on MS-Windows, variant for 32bit Windows"

A naive user would expect software that saves in a format that the software itself refers to as (for example) "Microsoft Office Excel Workbook" to be openable by any software that is "Microsoft office Excel"

A sophisticated user would know this is a lie, and that in reality they mean "Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Workbook"

Instead of improving, this shows that in the future, that must be read as: "Microsoft Office Excel 2007, for x86, running MS-Windows, Workbook"

Anything less, and support is at best incomplete. Ridicolous. Completely ridicolous.