Microsoft Bringing VBA Back for Mac: related news

Microsoft's Good and Bad News

While Apple is clearly slowly eating into Microsoft’s dominance of the corporate desktop Microsoft isn’t smarting too much for many reasons. One reason is that Microsoft is the biggest developer of Mac software outside of Apple itself, and as it happens, Microsoft’s Mac business is booming. Word came today from Redmond’s Mac Business Unit today is that Office for Mac is selling faster than any previous version of Office for the Mac in the in the last 19 years. Of course Microsoft won’t say exactly how many units it has sold. As a percentage of revenue it’s not large enough that Microsoft would be required to break it out of its usual results, though I for one certainly wish it would. Also noted is that today is the day that Office for Mac’s first service pack, SP1, is being released.

Microsoft Bringing VBA Back for Mac

Microsoft has announced a service pack for Office 2008 for Mac and said it is bringing back Visual Basic for Applications for the next release of the Mac office suite.

VBA Will Return To Mac Office

An anonymous reader sends a pointer to Erik Schwiebert's blog — he's the design lead of Microsoft's Mac Business Unit — where he announces that Visual Basic will be returning to Mac Office. Not in Office 2008, which started shipping earlier this year. We discussed the announced death of VBA in Mac Office 17 months back. Schwiebert says that the interval to the next version of Mac Office will be shorter than 4 years but isn't able to offer any more detail. The blog post calls for feedback on what features of VBA and Windows interoperability are most important to people.

Back to Basic: Microsoft Promises Visual Basic for Mac Office Suite

office4mac2008.jpgThe Microsoft Mac Business Unit has released Service Pack 1 for Office for Mac 2008 users. The update brings a slew of bug fixes, small changes and performance enhancements, but the real news is the accompanying announcement that the next revision of Office for Mac will bring back support for the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) scripting language.

Some Developers Leaving Google For Microsoft

recoiledsnake writes "We have heard about lots of talented developers jumping ship from Microsoft to Google, but is the trend beginning to turn? Dare Obasanjo (a Microsoft employee) writes about a few high-profile people picking Microsoft over Google — either making the jump directly, or choosing Microsoft after receiving offers at both. Sergey Solyanik is back to Microsoft and he primarily gripes about the culture and lack of career development at Google. He writes, 'Everything is pretty much run by [engineering] — PMs and testers are conspicuously absent from the process. Google as an organization is not geared — culturally — to delivering enterprise class reliability to its user applications.' Danny Thorpe, who was the key architect of Google Gears, is back at Microsoft for his second stint working on developer technologies rel

Microsoft to bring back Visual Basic in Office for Mac

Microsoft on Tuesday announced it would restore support for Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to Microsoft Office for Mac, a direct result of complaints from users about the removal of the suite's cross-platform automation functionality.

Google Gets Serious About Open Source Mac Projects

mjasay sends us a link to a CNet story, which begins: "In the '20 percent time' that Google employees have to work on projects of personal interest, it turns out that an increasing number are spending time writing open-source projects for their Macs. Google has long had a fondness for the Mac, with upwards of 6,000 of its 20,000 current employees opting to use the Mac over Windows. It is in the 20 percent employee development time, however, where this statistic becomes interesting. At Google, development time translates into products. The more Mac-friendly employees, the more Mac-related development. The more Mac-related development, the more Google-sponsored Mac-based open-source code. As Google's Mac Developer Playground demonstrates, some of this code is quite interesting.

"Back To My Mac" Catches a Thief

robipilot writes "Mac stolen, Mac comes online, owner connects using 'Back to My Mac,' owner takes picture of culprit, and voila, criminal caught. OK, it wasn't quite that simple, but here's an interesting story of using some built-in technology on the Mac to recover a stolen laptop."

Microsoft Downplaying Recent DNS Vulnerability

Microsoft Watch writes "Microsoft downplays a recent DNS vulnerability in all Microsoft operating systems (XP, Vista, 2000, and 2003), claims Amit Klein, the security researcher who published the original vulnerability description (PDF) earlier this month. According to Klein, the description in Microsoft's Secure Windows Initiative blog entry is misleading, contains disinformation about the DNS transaction ID algorithm, and downplays the severity of the issue. Klein refutes Microsoft's claim that there is no way to reproduce the next transaction ID, given a series of observed transaction IDs. He shows that this is possible in his paper, which Microsoft had before publishing the SWI post, as well as on the series of data provided in the SWI blog itself.

Microsoft Eyes iPhone Development

Microsoft says its looking at Apple, Inc.'s software development kit for the iPhone, partly to make sure users of its Microsoft Office for Mac users won't have problems. Microsoft is one of the largest software makers for the Mac. Other Microsoft units, including its new TellMe purchase, are also looking at Apple's SDK for the iPhone.

Microsoft to bring back Visual Basic in Office for Mac

In response to user complaints, Microsoft will restore VBA to Office for Mac in order to enable cross platform compatibility

Ed Bott: Microsoft releases Virtual PC 2007 SP1

Tags: Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Virtual PC, Microsoft Corp., VM, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Vista (Longhorn), Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Operating Systems, Software, Ed Bott

Microsoft 'Shared Source' Attempts to Hijack FOSS

aacc1313 writes "An article that details how Open Source is being hijacked by Microsoft and the sort via 'Shared Source' licenses and how Open Source licenses have become so much more confusing. From the article, "The confusion stems from the fact that Microsoft's 'shared source' program includes three proprietary licenses as well, whose names are similar in some ways to the open-source licenses. Thus, while the Microsoft Reciprocal License has been approved by OSI, the Microsoft Limited Reciprocal License (Ms-LRL) is not, because it allows users to modify and redistribute the software only on the Windows platform" and "The 'shared source' program was and is Microsoft's way of fighting the open source world, allowing customers to inspect Microsoft source code without giving those customers the right to modify or redistribute the code.

Bringing down software margins with the cloud and open source

Microsoft expects to lose margin as "cloud" competitors start to eat away at its core businesses. Kudos to Microsoft for calling out the obvious. But Microsoft still has a lot to learn if it thinks it can charge more under its own cloud model because "the customer will pay Microsoft a larger fee, since Microsoft also runs and maintains all the hardware," as Nick Carr notes:

Google, Yahoo, and the Elephant In the Room

CWmike writes "Linda Rosencrance reports that despite assurances from Google and Yahoo that their online advertising deal doesn't need regulatory approval, the two companies should not be too quick to dismiss Microsoft's influence on Capitol Hill. Andrew Frank, an analyst at Gartner, said both Yahoo and Google will benefit from the deal, but he also said Microsoft will do everything in its power to bring the arrangement to a screeching halt. 'Expect Microsoft to challenge it and come back aggressively with some search plans of its own,' he said. Rob Enderle, of the Enderle Group, said Microsoft is a formidable opponent and knows how to play politics. 'Without Microsoft, this probably would stand up to regulatory scrutiny,' Enderle said. 'But Microsoft has increased its presence on Capitol Hill significantly .

restore support for Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)

Microsoft will return VBA to the next full upgrade to the Mac version of Office, the company said. While Office 2008, which was sharply criticized for omitting VBA, will receive bug-fix updates (such as Service Pack 1, also announced Tuesday), it will not be updated to add VBA support.

Microsoft launches Live Search cashback program - update

(RTTNews) - Software giant Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) said Wednesday that it will offer ad-funded cash rebates to customers who find and purchase products through a new program called Microsoft Live Search cashback. This is one of the latest efforts of Microsoft to increase its market share in searching, which is dominated by Google (GOOG). Microsoft has roped in companies such as eBay Inc. (EBAY), Barnes & Noble.com (BKS), Overstock.com Inc. (OSTK), and Sears Holdings Corp. (SHLD) as partners in the new program. The Live Search cashback portfolio includes more than 10 million products from more than 700 merchants, including more than 13 of the top 40 U.S. retailers. Microsoft also said it has delivered a new Live Search travel destination, Live Search Farecast in order to find the best travel deals on the Web.

Microsoft Acknowledges Open Source As a Bigger Threat Than Google

ruphus13 takes us to ZDNet for an analysis of comments by Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, about how open source is "much more potentially disruptive" to Microsoft's business strategy than Google. Ozzie also spoke about the future of Microsoft's search technology, which will develop with or without Yahoo. There is a related interview at OStatic with several Microsoft employees about how they view and interact with the open source community. The head of Microsoft's global open source and Linux team is quoted saying: "The other thing I think is missing is implementation of a basic principle of economic fairness. Thousands of developers have put very hard work into building software used by millions of people and companies, yet only a fraction of these developers are rewarded financially.

Microsoft Acknowledges NBC's Wish is Its Command

theodp writes "Responding to questions about why some users of Windows Vista Media Center were prevented from recording the NBC Universal TV shows 'American Gladiator' and 'Medium,' Microsoft has acknowledged that Windows Media Centers will block users from recording TV shows at the request of a broadcaster. 'Microsoft included technologies in Windows based on rules set forth by the (Federal Communications Commission),' wrote a Microsoft spokeswoman, apparently referring to an FCC proposal that the courts struck down in 2005. 'Microsoft has put the requirements of broadcasters above what consumers want,' said the EFF's Danny O'Brien. 'They've imposed restrictions way beyond what the law requires. Customers need to know who Microsoft is listening to and how that affects their equipment.

MS Office 2008 for Mac: The scandal continues

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Microsoft VBA, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Office 2004, MacTech, Ticktin, Scripting Languages, Microsoft Office, Desktops, Software/Web Development

Windows developers fed up with Microsoft song & dance?

Tags: Developer, Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Office, Window, ISV, Microsoft VBA, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Corp., Engineer, Scripting Languages

Running Mac OS X on standard PCs

ZDOne writes "ZDNet's reviews team have been tinkering with the various ways of running OS X on standard PCs. They found that with the right hardware components, a standard PC running Mac OS X Leopard is, at first sight, no different from a genuine Apple Mac. Special CPU extensions such as Intel VT-x provide support for software solutions like Parallels Desktop for Mac. Even Adobe Photoshop, which queries a Mac to verify its authenticity, runs fine on a standard PC thanks to EFI emulation. However the article points out that it's a pretty technical proposition at the end of the day and beyond all but the most powerful power users. And then there is the legal question. Don't even think about trying to put OS X on your PC without first purchasing a legitimate copy of Mac OS Leopard.

Yahoo! Announces Microsoft Talks Have Concluded

Yahoo! (YHOO) today announced that discussions with Microsoft (MSFT) regarding a potential transaction—whether for an acquisition of all of Yahoo or a partial acquisition—have concluded. The conclusion of discussions follows numerous meetings and conversations with Microsoft regarding a number of transaction alternatives, including a meeting between Yahoo and Microsoft on June 8 in which Chairman Roy Bostock and other independent board members from Yahoo participated. At that meeting, Microsoft representatives stated unequivocally that Microsoft is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo, even at the price range it had previously suggested.

Microsoft Open XML Converter Arrives for Mac

Microsoft has released Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 1.0, a file translator that allows users to open, edit, and convert Open XML files created in Office 2008 for Mac or Office 2007 for Windows for use in earlier versions of the suite, including Office 2004 11.4 and Office v. X 10.1.9 or later.

Microsoft Open XML Converter Arrives for Mac

Microsoft has released Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 1.0, a file translator that allows users to open, edit, and convert Open XML files created in Office 2008 for Mac or Office 2007 for Windows for use in earlier versions of the suite, including Office 2004 11.4 and Office v. X 10.1.9 or later.

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