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No Virtual PC for Intel-based Macs 296

Posted by Zonk from the too-hard dept.
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. "
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No Virtual PC for Intel-based Macs More

No Virtual PC for Intel-based Macs

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  • VPC isn't the only virtualization solution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NormalVisual ( 565491 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @08:43AM (#15865076)
    Fortunately, Parallels is still available for the Mac and later this year VMware will be as well. I don't think MS will be missed at this party.
    • Regardless, I did not anticipate that the move to Intel would actually cause less compatibility in some ways.

      • Re:Less software? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by diersing ( 679767 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @09:06AM (#15865227)
        I wouldn't have anticipated someone saying cross-platform compability is a top priority while dumping a cross-platform compability tool for reasons of it being too hard.

        • Re:Less software? (Score:2, Insightful)

          by IAmTheDave ( 746256 )

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

          This is such bullshit, it makes my head hurt - considering the following:

          1. Virtual PC runs on Windows

          Wait - that's the only one. It already runs on an Intel platform. The codebase already exists. Starting from scratch is a load of crock that's an easy excuse for slowly closing down any support for OSX, considering that MS is loosing market share EVERYWHERE.

          Yeah, they're stil

          • Re:Less software? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @10:10AM (#15865665)
            Yes, VPC runs on Windows, but how similiar is the Windows and OSX codebase? Not very.
            • Well, Parallels and VMWare are pulling it off, right? And you have to assume they're reusing plenty of code from their Windows and Linux products. Presumably, most of the hard work is in the actual virtualization engine, not the presentation UI.
              • 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 compa

          • Re:Less software? (Score:3, Insightful)

            by gb506 ( 738638 )
            The real reason they've dumped it is because anyone can buy Parallels now for 80 bucks, and vmware is getting into the ring.

            • Re:Less software? (Score:3, Interesting)

              by supremebob ( 574732 )
              Not to mention that the primary reason that most people bought Virtual PC to begin with was to run Windows applications on their Mac. Now that the new Intel Macs can dual-boot Windows, being able to run Windows through emulation isn't quite as necessary or important as it was before.

      • Re:Less software? (Score:3, Informative)

        by jellomizer ( 103300 ) *
        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 playi

        • But I would think Virtual PC and Scripts in their Office Documents would be a big seller.

          VPC yes, but VBA is not as popular as you might think. I used to work in a very large all-Mac organization - over 1000 employees, all of 'em on Macs. In two years+ there, I never saw a single VBA macro. Plenty of AppleScript, but no VBA. Obviously that's just one anecdote, but if it *is* representative then dropping VBA support for MacOffice is actually a pretty good decision - why pour development $$ into something y

          • Strategic (Score:4, Informative)

            by meepzorb ( 61992 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @03:42PM (#15868973)
            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.
      • Remember, Microsoft bought the company that actually wrote Virtual PC from scratch.
        All they've done is put their sticker on it and now they actually have to tinker with it to make it 'work' and they don't have the skill to do it.

    • Re:VPC isn't the only virtualization solution (Score:5, Funny)

      by varmittang ( 849469 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @08:54AM (#15865131)
      Yep, hell froze over and MS decided not to continue to make a piece of software.

      In other news, Paris Hilton is not having sex for a year! Oh my, I just saw a pig fly. I'm going back inside now.
    • I don't think they'll miss the party either. I bet they make more money selling you Windows and Office for Windows than they do on VPC or Office for Mac, taking into account development expenses for both and quantity sold. They might as well let some other company make the virtualization products and still sell you both Windows products.
  • Lets see, who is going to be using Open Office now?
    • What I want to see (an I'm sure I'm not alone) is iWork made into a full office suite. I've used it, and it simply works better than anything else on the mac, sans spreadsheet.
      • I've played around with Pages and while I think it's a nice application, I don't really think it's for me. Pages seems like it's better suited for people who work a lot with layouts, such as somebody who works at a magazine or some other publishing house. If they made it or had the option of using as a more general word processor, then I'd probably switch from Word. ..and before somebody tells me to try OpenOffice.org or NeoOffice, I'll just say that I love OO.o on Windows and Linux, but NeoOffice seems rea

  • Competition? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alucinor ( 849600 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @08:47AM (#15865088) Journal
    Maybe Microsoft didn't like the "Hasta la vista, Vista" banners at the Mac show yesterday? Or especially "Redmond has a cat, too. A copycat." Perhaps they feel like they're being threatened?
    • Perhaps they feel like they're being threatened?

      oh yea, the 90' tall behemoth is scared of the 5' tall guy with the club. (those numbers represent the rough desktop % usage).


      look, I think apple is doing some awesome stuff, but dont think for a minute that MS is frightened from a couple of things apple is doing. yes, they'll copy them. and to 75% of the users in the world - when MS introduces feature X as a new feature (the one that apple has had for 4 years), all those people will be awe struck cause
    • Maybe Microsoft didn't like the "Hasta la vista, Vista" banners at the Mac show yesterday? Or especially "Redmond has a cat, too. A copycat." Perhaps they feel like they're being threatened?

      No, they probably wite all that crud off as being what it is, advertising jargon aimed at the portion of WWDC atendees who are faithful acolytes. I'm a Mac user myself but OS.X+Mac is just my preferred combination of computer and OS, it's not my religion and to tell the truth I find both those slogans and the whole "I'm

  • Removal of VB macro's (Score:4, Funny)

    by r2q2 ( 50527 ) <zitterbewegungNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @08:47AM (#15865089) Homepage
    That has to be one of the BEST features ever that Microsoft could do for macintosh.
    • That has to be one of the BEST features ever that Microsoft could do for macintosh.

      I've actually written some macros to do some pretty elaborate things (read: connect to a mainframe via FTP, pull today's list of transactions, move it to an Excel file, sort them by various categories, and then give the totals for each category). And, no, I didn't have access to the mainframe itself, so native Unix tools were not an option. And the project had to be done approximately yesterday, look nice, and be usable b

    • Re:Removal of VB macro's (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MightyYar ( 622222 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @10:42AM (#15865940)

      Actually, the removal of VBA will pretty much kill Excel for me... VBA is Excel's killer feature - without it, there really is no compelling reason to use Excel (for me). Frankly, a spreadsheet is pretty amateurish without a scripting language, and the only reason I was using Excel was because the scripting language was cross-platform. People will grouse about having to install Open Office, but my scripts are important enough that they will anyway.

      The only problem is that I don't know the Open Office scripting language, and there are few resources to help me learn it.

  • Brilliant! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Magada ( 741361 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @08:50AM (#15865107) Journal
    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.
    • Only great if you think Apple being crushed is a good thing. Sadly, Microsoft are probably going to crush the life out of Apple over the next few years.
      • Perhaps, but it seems to me that Microsoft could make a lot of money from Apple selling licenses to people who want to run Windows apps on their Mac, and it's still going to be a while before Vista makes it to market.

        My wife loves her Mac, but it'd be great if I could get XP running on it so she's not always bugging me to print Word/Excel docs for her that OpenOffice can't handle.
        • Why not print them from the Mac? Textedit (free with the OS) and Office for Mac will print them.

        • Re:Brilliant! (Score:5, Interesting)

          by elrous0 ( 869638 ) * on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @09:26AM (#15865361)
          The problem is that Apple seems to be schizophrenic in their relationship with Windows. On one hand, they smugly deride Windows at every opportunity ("Hasta la vista" and the like). On the other hand, they release stuff like bootcamp (a tacit admission that their platform is sorely lacking in ports of games and other software).

          As long as this weird love-hate relationship continues, MS is never going to be able to fully embrace them, or feel comfortable supporting them in any way that might give them an edge over Dell and other PC manufacturers.

          MS's worst nightmare is Apple gaining a corner on the PC market the same way they've cornered the MP3 player market (and using their position to bully MS and others in the PC market the same way they've bullied them with the iPod and iTunes). MS wants to be the one DOING the bullying, not the one BEING bullied.

          -Eric

          And for you nitpicking bastards, yes I am aware that schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder are completely different diseases from a clinical standpoint, but not in common usage.

          • Re:Brilliant! (Score:4, Insightful)

            by mrxak ( 727974 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @09:50AM (#15865525)
            BootCamp is intended for switchers who aren't quite ready to jump into Mac OS X. It seems to be working for them too, since Apple's sales have skyrocketed lately. The fact that people are using it to play games is a side-effect, and not necessarily a bad one.
      • What? With the Zune? With their URGE music service? Apple is an MP3 player company with a strong distribution platform (iTunes). Their PC division is not their ace, so Microsoft can mess with it, but as long as Apple has the iPod (and continues to crush any other "iPod-killer") they will reamin healthy. It will take more than a few years to crush them, even with a huge warchest like Microsoft has.

        I also think that if apple did some quality control on these open office programs, or teamed up with google/writ

      • Re:Brilliant! (Score:2, Interesting)

        by 91degrees ( 207121 )
        Apple do have a number of advantages over MS and their MS's previous competitors.

        Apple control both the hardware and the software. MS can't bully the box manufacturers into not supporting MacOS. They don't have nearly enough sway with the people who make the components to do anything against Apple. MS can't conveniently stop supporting intel, for example.

        And Apple has one major feature that MS can't possibly achieve. Not being Microsoft.

  • Now they've got Apple by the corones.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by OlivierB ( 709839 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @08:52AM (#15865115)
    Sure you can read and write compatible files with Ms Office. You can even run the "old" office under Rosetta with Support for VBA.
    But going forward, Office 2004 for Mac will no longer be availble and no IT manager in his right mind will go with an office suite that doesn't support scripting.

    VBA is slow enough as it is, nevermind under Rosetta emulation. Now if there is no more support for VBA, companies will shy away from Mac even more.
    Apple better get their "Tables" (aka their Excel equivalent to Pages) working asap. And it better be fully compatible with VBA too.
    • companies will shy away from Mac even more

      Or, companies will get a virtualization package, a copy of Windows, and the Windows version of Office just like they would for any other PC. It's a pricier solution but allows more flexibility.

    • Cross over (Score:4, Informative)

      by Delirium Tremens ( 214596 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @09:09AM (#15865237) Journal
      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.
    • Corones? I'm not sure threating to take away Apple's crappy water-beer is a really strong tactic.
    • Office/Mac and Office/XP just don't interoperate.

      I try, I really try, to use my Mac laptop with files from work. 90% goes, 10% doesn't. The 10% that doesn't fly makes it useless to trust it.

      I get powerpoints where metafile graphics that should work, almost do; I get Word docs where 3 out of 4 tables that our project manager embeds from MS Project are readable, the last one is not; it's hopeless.

      They break it on purpose, I think. They always have, they always will.
    • Apple better get their "Tables" (aka their Excel equivalent to Pages) working asap. And it better be fully compatible with VBA too.

      Why VBA? Why not Apple Script? Heck... MS Entourage 2004 does a great job with integrating with Apple scripts.

      As it was, VBA for Office 2004 had some serious problems and limitations. Cost that works fine on a PC does not work on a Mac a great deal of the times. My coworker found that by writing VBA that only has commands and functions for Excel 7 appears to be a workaround.
    • But going forward, Office 2004 for Mac will no longer be availble and no IT manager in his right mind will go with an office suite that doesn't support scripting.

      No staffer within one of my departments has ever, to my knowledge, used the scripting capabilities within MS Office. That's over ~15 years that I've been doing this, and have worked at some fairly large places.

      It's really not something that's used too often. Most people type a document, write a spreadsheet with a few formulas to add a few columns,
    • But going forward, Office 2004 for Mac will no longer be availble and no IT manager in his right mind will go with an office suite that doesn't support scripting.

      Many companies don't care, since very few employees will know that the scripting ability even *exists*. Also, OpenOffice (and NeoOffice, which runs natively on Macs) supports scripting - in multiple languages including Java.

      -b.

    • Corones? Cojones? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 )
      Do you mean "cojones", which means "balls." Or do you really mean "corones" - as in crowns, kroners, some old form of money?

      -b.

    • Re:Now they've got Apple by the corones.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dr_LHA ( 30754 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @11:00AM (#15866113) Homepage
      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.

  • Timing? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Suffering Bastard ( 194752 ) * on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @08:52AM (#15865118)
    I wonder how significant this is, being timed with WWDC. Maybe MS heard about all the "Hasta La Vista, Vista" jokes and now they're firing back. (Balmer thought it a better idea than Gates's "Hasta La....Apple.....APPLE!!" comeback quip)

  • Correction (Score:4, Funny)

    by peipas ( 809350 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @08:59AM (#15865167)
    The amount of time it would take to bring Virtual PC to Intel would be roughly equivalent to creating [a Microsoft] product from scratch...

    Or, in other words, 6+ years. I don't blame them!
    • i am sorry.. but really this is som bull shit.

      they have
      VPC mips Mac
      VPC intel XP

      if they can't get a VPC intel mac version without starting from scratch - they are fucking idiots.. wait..

      yea.. i don't blame them

  • ... Microsoft acquired VirtualPC from a third party (Connectix? I can't remember.) They also have an Intel virtualization [microsoft.com] which could be used as a foundation for a Mac OS X Intel version. The statement that moving the Mac version to Intel would be a rewrite is undoubtedly true, but Microsoft could probably enter the market if they wanted. The issue is undoubtedly one of competition and egos. And between parallels and bootcamp an offering from MS here isn't necessary.

  • Could it be more obvious this is a slap? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jerk City Troll ( 661616 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @09:06AM (#15865222) Homepage

    Of course, who needs VirtualPC: yes, it certainly “works,” but it is a clumsy product in everything from installation to managing environments. It sucks and if it were not for the fact that it is emulating and x86 virtual machine on Power, I would guess its developers had no idea what they were doing. Apart from that, dropping the VisualBasic scripting support is certainly anticompetitive. There are no technical reasons whatsoever and basically spells out “we dislike that you are competing with us, so we are going to eliminate your chances of entering the corporate market.” (I hope I do not have to spell out why this is an anticompetitive practice in comparison to recent actions by Apple.) If this doesn't prove that Microsoft are complete failures when it comes to technology, I don't know what will. Instead of responding to Apple with real progress (and, hey, maybe even releasing a product), they are behaving like petulant little babies and taking their toys home (maybe throw a chair or two).

  • Do what now? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @09:12AM (#15865257) Homepage Journal
    That must be a typo. Never fear, I shall fix it for them..
    "As attempting to completely bork cross-platform compatibility remains a top priority at Microsoft.."

  • Hold the conspiracy theories... (Score:5, Informative)

    by itsdapead ( 734413 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @09:16AM (#15865296)

    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.

    • What some of the pundits seem to be forgetting is that what VirtualPC does is technically very different to what Parallels and VMWare do

      And what you seem to forget is that VirtualPC for Windows does exactly what VMWare and Parallels do.

  • newspeak (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eivind ( 15695 ) <eivindorama@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @09:18AM (#15865308) Homepage
    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.

    This must be some new and novel definition of "compatible" of which I was previously unaware.

    MS-Office --- the office-suite that is not even compatible to the same version of itself .

    Hilarious.

  • Office compatibility is going away. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @09:19AM (#15865310)
    I can see why Microsoft doesn't want to support Virtual PC. Now that Apple's on Intel hardware, it's easy enough to just build a Windows partition and boot to it when you want to use stuff like PC games, Virtual PC, etc. Remember, people need to buy software to make it worth the while of a commercial software vendor!

    The desupporting of VB macros should be a bigger concern. Anyone who's worked in a large corporate environment knows that the vast majority of data crunching is not done in fancy analytical tools. Despite what SAS, Oracle and everyone tells you, many key business processes boil down to VB macros in Excel spreadsheets. Business units have spent years doing an end-run around the IT department because they either perceive the analytical tools to be too much of a pain to use, or the IT department is too bloated and slow to help them. That's the number one reason why millions of social security numbers wind up on stolen laptops. Data is pulled from the main systems into spreadsheets and analyzed offline. It's incredibly easy to write macros in VB, even for people who can't program.

    Microsoft killing VB macro support for Mac Office takes a big chunk out of the cross-platform compatibility pillar. I can see a lot of other vendors using this Intel platform excuse too. My favorite example is Quicken. The Mac version is years behind the Windows one...I'm sure they're just wairing for the chance to drop it.
  • It's as if thousands of voices cried out in horror and were suddenly silenced when they realized there was no reason to use Virtual PC when there are already much better solutions available for the Mac anyway.

  • Office... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by plazman30 ( 531348 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @09:23AM (#15865332) Homepage
    And what is the justification to remove VBA support from MS Office for Mac? It's not like the code doesn't exist? I think part of the issue may be getting a Universal Binary. Do you believe there won't be a third party plugin of some kind to support this, or Apple won't add support for this to Pages?

    I guarantee you by version 4.0, Pages will be a perfect drop-in replacement for MS Word, which is what Apple probably wants. MS Office makes Microsoft a LOT of money. And Apple fanatics will be more than happy to buy an Apple office suite over MS Office.

    When iWork gets as good as MS Office, it's time to port it to Windows. It won't be a nail in Microsoft's coffin, but it will surely piss them off.

    Now all we need is Yellow Box for Windows finished and released and GnuStep to support most of the OS X APIs, and people can program in Cocoa and port to other environments with a simple recompile...

    I'd like to see Safari for Windows. That would REALLY PISS Microsoft off.

  • Cross-Platform Compatibility? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gleng ( 537516 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @09:25AM (#15865356)
    "As cross-platform compatibility remains a top priority at Microsoft"

    Great. Now I have to spend the next 20 minutes scraping coffee and lung material off of my keyboard and monitor.

    • You have to translate this. When they mean cross paltform, they mean between Windows and Mac, not Windows and Linux or FreebSD. And further, it'll be cross platform as long as it doesn't threaten their monopoly.
  • It's not like Windows won't already run on Intel-based Macs, it's not like Linux won't already install, etc. Microsoft really has no reason to make VPC for Intel-based Macs.
  • I don't think I've ever used VB scripting for anything. What is it for? I thought it was just for writing macro viruses. What do you guys use it for?

  • So? (Score:2)

    by omeg ( 907329 )
    Note that, apart from the alternatives that have already been mentioned, there's also an excellent open source implementation [kju-app.org] of x86 (and more) emulation; QEMU (link leads to a frontend, original can be found here [bellard.free.fr]).
  • Well, apparently, MS is pulling out of the Mac world. The sad thing about VirtualPC is that they handed some big cash over and instead of keeping it alive, they just killed it. It's just another company they silently bought and killed. I though that VPC was going to get killed anyway, MS didn't do any improvements to the Connectix version for a long time.

    Finally they are killing Office too, time to get going for other options then. VBS is not a big deal, nobody uses it anyway (cross platform anyway) and it'

  • This is a bad thing? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by greysky ( 136732 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @09:54AM (#15865545)
    Now all that Apple has to do is to get the VBA scripting in their office suite up to par, but more secure (ie: not as vulnerable to viri and other attacks), and it's just another feather in Apple's cap as to why their platform is more secure. Just imagine a year from now after the first really nasty macro virus for the new version of office is released into the wild and, lo and behold, it doesn't affect Mac users. This isn't a problem for Apple, but rather a huge opportunity.
  • It would probably suck anyway. With Parallels, VMWare coming, and BootCamp, MS still sells box copies of Windows (well, to "honest" people anyway). MS wins either way and now they don't have to waste their time programming a product that's already dead. Now those guys can go help those poor Vista bastards catch up.

    Very funny that they (MS) made the announcement the same time VMWare made theirs.

  • This is a feature, yes? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jyoull ( 512280 ) <jim&media,mit,edu> on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @10:02AM (#15865603)
    "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."

    This sounds like a huge benefit! Maybe it'll encourage a few more people to switch, to improve the security of their Office environment. I'm not an Apple fanboy, but kudos to Microsoft for this security unhancement. Perhaps if this goes well, they'll similarly unhance the Windows version of Office.

  • Macro language in Office for OSX? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MMC Monster ( 602931 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @10:02AM (#15865607)
    Does that mean that the next version of MSOffice for OSX won't have a macro language?

  • VirtualPC = Emulation (Score:4, Informative)

    by Snap E Tom ( 128447 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @10:03AM (#15865611)
    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]

  • substantial re-write? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jafac ( 1449 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @10:12AM (#15865680) Homepage
    Bullshit.

    There's already a VPC for x86/windows. They're full of crap and vastly overstate what will be needed. Unless Connectix has so deeply coupled the cpu-emulator, and the VM manager, that they can't be decoupled.
    And it's been over a year since Jobs announced the Intel switch - MS has had all this time to check the situation out, I am somewhat suprised to be hearing this kind of announcement out of Microsoft now.

    This sounds like a strategic move. Particularly as it's coupled with the MS Office Mac announcement. They're hitting the Mac/Office userbase where it hurts. Document compatability. They're making sure that Macs never make it into the business space where MS Office/Windows dominates overwhelmingly. (also why they don't provide a full-on Outlook client).

    It was never meant to be.
    Unless Apple gets their shit together and codes up a comparable, and compatible product.

  • Geez, what a shock..

    MS buys Mac game developer, and kills the mac version for their own game console.

    MS commits to continue IE devlopment for the mac, and then kills is when faced with a better competing product (Safari)

    MS buys a long time Mac devloper, and then kills the product when faced with competition.

    How much longer before MS decides to "re-focus on its core market" and kills Office due to competition.

    The pattern is really quite obivous.
  • No need to worry about macro portability. Just create your documents in OpenOffice.org and have them everywhere.

    Just hope OOo macros will make it into a future version of ODF.

  • *Yawn*. This just follows their pattern. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Richard Steiner ( 1585 ) <rsteiner@visi.com> on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @01:27PM (#15867808) Homepage Journal
    One of the first things they did after they purchased Virtual PC from Connectix was to kill the OS/2-native version of Virtual PC. The Mac version was the next logical step.

    So, what other platforms are left that Virtual PC will run on? Oh... Windows. That's a surprise...

  • Re-Write! (Score:3, Funny)

    by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:18PM (#15869285)
    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.


    And if there is one thing Micorsoft doesn't do, it's rewrite software from scratch.

  • not needed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by m874t232 ( 973431 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @06:02PM (#15870053)
    Between Parallels and VMWare, there is really no need for Virtual PC. And I suspect Xen and various forms of user mode Linux are going to become available for OS X at some point, too.

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