Microsoft's rocky road to Mac Office 97
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According to court documents, the founder of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit fought a hard battle to keep Mac Office 97 alive.
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Apple should be pushing its Mac OS X software aggressively into corporations running Windows, says a Microsoft solution provider in Massachusetts, but others claim that Apple might be missing
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Windows 3.0 finally gives Microsoft an operating system that's accessible; Apple smells a rat.
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It has been the "macro" language for Microsoft Word since Office 97, even while Microsoft has moves Office developers toward .NET. But now members of the Visual Studio team are saying Visual Basic for Apps isn't going anywhere.
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Microsoft's battling Apple's revamped iWork dektop-application suite and its own upcoming Office 2008 (due in 2009) with a deep-discount strategy... and if the statistics are accurate, that strategy is working.
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Contrary to what Microsoft calls "alarmist news stories," the company is continuing to work towards providing Open XML format converters within the Mac version of Office, although their release is not expected until Spring 2007.
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TechWeb - Microsoft ships Virtual PC for Mac, version 7.
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Is the desktop dead?  Microsoft can't even make its updates sexy anymore.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft's Mac Business Unit has begun revealing features of its forthcoming Office 2008 for Mac. Two blog items on the company'sÂ Mac Mojo blogÂ reveal the suite will offer Exchange support within Entourage 2008 and a raft of features for enterprise users will be built into Office 2008. The company confirmed it is continuing to invest in Entourage Exchange support, promising Office 2008 will feature significantly improved reliability and stability in addition to customer requested functionality. "We are committed to delivering a world class Exchange client that delivers on enterprise customer needs in Office 2008 and beyond," said Mac Mojo. Entourage 2008 will feature a new Out of Office (OOF) Assistant which allows Entourage users in Exchange environments to configure their Exchange account to send a custom auto-reply message to senders of incoming email. The company will continue to release a series of enterprise focused blog postings to illustrate the enterprise-focused functionality planned for Office 2008 for Mac. The company said that Sept. 18 will mark the first in a series of bi-weekly installments providing customers details on Office 2008 feature updates and suite improvements. Macworld.uk.co is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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The controversial Service Pack 3 was never distributed to Microsoft Office end users through Automatic Updates, Microsoft told BetaNews. So if you're a Lotus Notes or Corel Quattro user who wants to undo its impact, you can.
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New version of Office for Mac isn't set to ship until January, but software maker is trying to entice Apple users now with a free upgrade to Special Media Edition later.
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Adobe Systems Inc's  Photoshop,  Illustrator and other Creative Suite 3 programs have not been  fully tested with the latest version of Apple Inc's   operating system due out next month, which could lead to  incompatibility issues.
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Adobe's Creative Suite 3 programs are not fully tested with 'Leopard.'
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In the workplace, Microsoft Office is as inevitable as drawn-out meetings and bad coffee. But Microsoft's combination of Word, Excel and PowerPoint is not the only way to write, crunch numbers or prepare slideshows. And for home users, it isn't even the best way anymore.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft may be having trouble selling Windows Vista in retail, but its Office line is going like gangbusters, according to market research firm NPD Group. Part of the reason: People who switch from PCs to Macs. Office 2007 on Windows is selling at roughly double the rate its predecessor, Office 2003, did in its first months after release, NPD analyst Chris Swenson said Wednesday. "Any way you cut it, the first six months, or a similar January-through-July period, or the first week or even the first month [of sales], no matter how you slice it, Office 2007 is selling much better than Office 2003 did," said Swenson. And even though Office 2004 for Mac is far from new, Swenson said, it's also contributing to Microsoft's suite success. "Mac Office represents about 20 percent of all Office sales in U.S. retail. At first, that seemed really surprising, but if I'm switching to Mac, there are a few key [software] products I'm going to buy, and Office is one of them." In other words, even though they're leaving the PC behind and abandoning Windows, newly-minted Mac owners are still shoveling money at Microsoft, Swenson said. "Microsoft's still making the Office sale," he said. Swenson's data comes from NPD's monthly reports of software sold at major U.S. retailers such as Best Buy and CompUSA as well as data from the more than 180 Apple retail stores and a few online sellers, including Amazon.com and Buy.com. Mac switchers aside, Microsoft's unheralded success selling Office -- Swenson noted that it typically gets buried by the bad news about Vista's retail performance -- stems from smart pricing. "The most important thing is the pricing of Home and Student 2007," he said, talking about the $149 package that lets customers install the software on up to three PCs. "Eighty percent of all copies sold at retail are this edition," said Swenson. "When Microsoft came out with version 2.0 of [this package], it started seeing increases not only in unit volume, but also in dollars." Swenson was referring to the licensing changes Microsoft made to the student-priced edition in 2003 that bumped up the number of allowed installs in the same household from one to three. Second on Swenson's list of reasons for Office 2007's success is something Microsoft has little control over. "Part of it is clearly installed base," he said. "There are roughly 100 million more PCs now than there were in 2001, so even if the same percentage of users buy Office, sales go up." But if Office 2007 is outselling its forerunner, why did the company just roll out a $59.95 promotional price to students? "I think they want to drive demand for [Office 2007] Ultimate," said Swenson. "It's just not doing as well as Ultimate on Vista." The Microsoft promotion, which runs through April 30, 2008, is available immediately to enrolled students in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. who have a matching educational institution e-mail address. Next week, the program will expand to France, Italy, and Spain. Office Ultimate 2007, which lists for $679.95, includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, OneNote, Groove, and InfoPath. Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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The Microsoft slogan "Where do you want to go today?" takes on a whole new meaning with a Mac running Windows XP.
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Microsoft's Mac Business Unit worked to make Exchange -- the e-mail client included in Office 2008 for the Mac -- more stable and reliable, not a clone of Windows' Outlook, according to Microsoft developers.