Common misconceptions from a former misconceiver
My name is Joe LeBlanc, I work on the Excel test team in Redmond. I've previously worked for both Apple and RealNetworks. Glad to be able to blog and see so many Mac users reading about what we're doing! I started at Microsoft in January of this year. Like most people reading this blog, I was an outsider before then. I had my own ideas about how things must happen around the MacBU, what kind of people worked there, their plans, etc. Many of my misconceptions were torn down within the first few weeks.
The MacBU is just one product cycle away from being disbanded, laid off, or re-purposed.You guys must be nervous about your jobs, huh?
This is a reasonable question. I asked the same thing during my interviews. How sure was everyone about their job security? Did you worry every time a product shipped that it would be the last time you sat in front of a Mac? Everyone I’ve talked to, including some people that have been with Microsoft for over 15 years and working in the MacBU since its inception had absolutely no fear of their job going away.
The MacBU is just Microsoft’s way of avoiding some kind of legal problems or appeasing Apple.
I’d heard this explanation before from plenty of Mac users. I thought that maybe the folks working on Mac Office were just some kind of sacrificial lamb offered up by management to appease the Legal Gods. The reality is that the MacBU a very successful part of Microsoft when taken on our own. I don’t know all of the intricacies of the Microsoft/Apple relationship, but I get no feeling from my day-to-day work that they are dictating our direction with our products or vice-versa.
The MacBU just ports WinOffice code all day, they don’t actually do anything original themselves.
I was also guilty of this thinking before I started. After being here for a short time it’s become obvious to me that this couldn’t be further from the truth. In my mind, the MacBU exists specifically to avoid the problems that having a PC-focused development group write Mac software causes. We have a great group of program managers who come up with new features specifically for the Mac product. While a lot of our time is spent working with the WinOffice group in order to maintain cross-platform compatibility, we don’t just wait for them to spec something and then implement It ourselves. If anything, the presence of WinOffice forces us to think of new and interesting features to set ourselves apart. We can’t rest on our laurels and expect people to buy our product when they have increasingly practical ways of using WinOffice on their Apple hardware through dual-booting, emulation/virtualization, etc.
By dropping VPC, IE and WMP, it’s obvious the MacBU is shrinking. Further proof that they’re going away!
Any decisions regarding IE pre-date me by a few years, so I can’t really talk authoritatively about that. Windows Media Player was developed outside of our team, and any changes in that product don’t really reflect our growth. We are growing (There are ten job openings on Microsoft.com/jobs right now). Anyone who was working on VPC is still working in the MacBU on other projects (trust me, we’re busy!) I would personally love to see us branch out to other products, whether it be existing solutions (we all hear the usual suspects: Visio, Access, etc.) or something completely new. I think we have one of the strongest, most efficient development organizations in the company, I have no doubt that we have the expertise to take on a new challenge if/when the product planning folks decide to.
I might sound like a broken record here, but the MacBU really honestly is a group of dedicated, brilliant Mac users who are focused on making quality software for the platform. If you had talked to me 9 months ago before I started, I would have been as skeptical as many of you probably are. Hopefully hearing it from someone who was on the outside recently will give that message a little more weight.
Comments
- Anonymous
August 31, 2006
Great post. I've always thought that the Mac version of Office was far better than the Win version. There are so many subtle touches that set it apart...better transistions in PowerPoint, easier searching and filtering of messages in Entourage, and of course, the tool palettes. It definitely gets better with each iteration and I simply can't wait for the Universal version. Hopefully, some of the aforementioned features you came up with at MacBU will eventually make it into the Win version. - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
If this is really the case, then why haven't you guys fixed any of the 50 bugs we have reported in both Entourage and Microsoft Word over the last 3 years? These bugs still persist, and we have reported them multiple times!
If this is really the case, then why does the Entourage STILL not communicate with tasks and to-do items on an Exchange Server?
If this is really the case, why does Microsoft not make ANY program for the Mac except for Microsoft Office?
I bet that when this 5 year agreement is over, we will see the end of MacBU.
In the meantime, how about fixing bugs before adding new features? - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
Time will tell, Joe, whether an Intel version of Office for Mac makes you a "vital organization" or just an an enclave in a Windows world formed to sell Office. There is no successor to I.E. 5.0, no Microsoft software other than Office I can use on a Mac. I'd be interested in Trips and Streets; and I.E. compatible browser for I.E. sites, etc. So...? Help me out here, Joe. - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
Hi folks
I really like this blog, it's a very good idea, I guess.
Perhaps you are right, perhaps all of this thaughts about the MacBU are false, are misconceptions.
But you know where they come from: Office started (well, at least a bit) on the Mac, nowadays the PC version is so far ahead:
On the mac, we got four apps (Entourage, Excel, PowerPoint and Word, of course), it used to be more (VPC, Frontpage,...)
On PC there are TWELVE Apps:
Access, Excel, FrontPage, InfoPath, Live Meeting, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, Publisher, Visio, Word (according to office.microsoft.com, add VPC for PC, which is free, additionally)
Few think, that Microsoft is going to abandon the MacBU, but a lot of Mac Users have the feeling, that Microsoft has abandoned the Mac Platform itself already, while maintaining a small .
I hope, I'm wrong, but it still hurts a bit....and it must hurt you. - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
To Joe leblanc. Seeing as you are on the Excel team.
On the next version of Excel can you give us a way to EASILY enter an email address or URL and NOT make it a link. Sometimes we just want to enter text into a cell and not skip off to web site when we try to edit it. Maybe having entering email or URLs be preference that could be changed from link to not a link. This little quirk is very frustrating.
One more thing. Click on a cell or range of cells, and lock/protect them with a single menu item.
Have a great day - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
re: Posters requiring Visio right now, you owe it to yourself to check out OmniGraffle Pro -- It reads and writes .vdx (Visio XML) files. Compatibility is excellent -- I've had MS Visio users, upon receiving a .vdx file from me, congratulate me on my Visio skills, unaware that they've just opened an OmniGraffle file. Only downside is you still need a PC/Visio to re-save .vsd files, as .vdx files, unless you can convince your PC/Visio colleagues to save as .vdx format from within Visio. - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
Scott - The previous formal commitment that we had with Apple expired in 2002. After that commitment expired, we released Office:Mac 2004, several updates to that, a couple of versions of Messenger:Mac, and Remote Desktop Connection, and all of those were done without the umbrella of a formal commitment. From my perspective, the formal commitment is only there to help alleviate our user's concerns about our future. We're still delivering our software, with or without a formal commitment. - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
@Perry Clease:
* After entering URL or email hit undo one time, or
* Prepend URL or email with a single quote, or
* Disable "replace internet and network paths with hyperlinks" in autocorrect options
In Windows Excel all three options work, dunno about Mac version - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
I couldn't agree more with the person above about the state of affairs of MSN Messenger on the Mac. This program is a disaster on the Mac; it is lightyears behind its PC counterpart.
If the MacBU is really the world's 2nd largest Mac developer, how come we're truly not seeing anything positive coming out of the MacBU?
I don't know one person who uses the new Project Center in Entourage 2004, and that's the ONLY new feature that we've seen in that product in many years. - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
I think Office is great, and so are you guys by association. But there is one thing that is just inexplicably bad....MSN MESSENGER (err, Microsoft Messenger...err, Windows Live Messenger?)
I mean I imagine this has to be something you use all day to communicate with the rest of your colleagues at Microsoft. It's not that it's buggy or anything...it's just that if the feature set were any more primitive it would be Grecco-Roman Messenger.
I realize that there is next to zero incentive to develop a program that is given away for free, and to supplement a competitor's OS no less...but you know, I'd pay money for a Microsoft messenger that was on par with its free Win32 counterpart. - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
Scott:
Project Center is a useful productivity tool. I use it every day.
MSN Messenger is a chat program. The Mac already has far superior alternatives for nearly everything it does, and I don't even have it installed on my machine.
Seems to me the MacBU has its priorities aligned properly-- at least from the perspective of some users. - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
Quote: <i>I don't know one person who uses the new Project Center in Entourage 2004, and that's the ONLY new feature that we've seen in that product in many years.</i>
I'm a student and I use the Project Centre quite frequently. It's a pretty amazing tool to help with centralizing all project related files. Just because you don't know anyone who uses it, doesn't mean its worthless!
You should read Eric Schweib's post on the Mac MSN problem. He does have some good points, I can't wait for audio/video on the mac with winks/nudges/personal messages either but i'm trying to be patient :), hopefully the new MSN 6 will have something to talk about.
I hope you guys can increase the support for MS technologies with your products. Flip4mac is decent but it still doesn't cut it. My university uses Windows media for their webcasts and flip4mac still can't properly play the .asx file. Being locked out of Windows Media DRM is not a good thing either.
cheers!
Shahram - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
"@Perry Clease:
* After entering URL or email hit undo one time, or
* Prepend URL or email with a single quote, or
* Disable "replace internet and network paths with hyperlinks" in autocorrect options
In Windows Excel all three options work, dunno about Mac version"
Thanks. I still would like to see preference toggle for it. Kind of moot, because I have switched over to FileMaker for any kind of data base that I previously did in Excel. If I want to email or visit a URL I can always copy and paste it into an address field of Mail or Safari - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
"(...) the MacBU really honestly is a group of dedicated, brilliant Mac users who are focused on making quality software for the platform." Quality software for the platform? I saw a lot of pictures of your environment, and i alsways ask myself, how do they test their software. In single user mode, it works just like the suite for Windows. It crashes sometimes, bothering me with other litte bugs (like beeing forced tu used the syllable division from version 10.0.0 and stuff). But using Office on an network environment (using OD with home directories on a server) is something i'm sure about you did not test ever. If you would have tested it, you would have seen, thats a daily pain in the a** working with it. Did you know, that while opening a Word-Document the Word Application ask the Server for several of hundreds of times for the file attributes? Gues what this does within an network environment, or a sharepoint that's connetced throug a dail in connection... - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
August 31, 2006
I'd love to see a more feature-complete version of Microsoft Live Messenger on the mac, with iSight support and all the other cool features that Windows users have (Yahoo integration)
Who in the MacBU is responsible for making the decision to catch up? Do they have a blog? Is there something we can do as end-users to let him/her know that we want this?
There are alternatives, but I dislike having to switch tools to do video, back again to jut IM, switch to another to do voice .. - Anonymous
September 01, 2006
Messenger (for Mac) is a sad pathetic joke of a program. While version 6 has now been announced, Microsoft have NOT mentioned it will add Video and Voice capabilities. Since such features are THE NUMBER ONE request by tens of thousands of users you would think Microsoft would be shouting from the roof tops if it was going to include it, therefore it will not [please prove me wrong].
Such wilful ignoring of vast numbers of users merely shows Microsoft in an ever worse light, and at best utterly incompetent. Currently Microsoft appear to be devoting more effort to inventing yet more new names for their Messenger application than actually updating it - MSN Messenger / Microsoft Messenger / Windows Messenger / Windows Live Messenger / [Insert this weeks new name here].
WMP for Mac before it was killed off did have some [miniscule] support for Windows DRM on the Mac, Flip4Mac has none and they are putting the blame on Microsoft (see http://www.flip4mac.com/faqs_wmv.htm#6 ). If Microsoft do not provide a way to let Mac users access Windows DRM, then their chances of Zune being a success are severely reduced.
The only entirely new Mac software product from Microsoft in practically living memory is the Microsoft RDC client for Mac, everything else has either been merely upgrades or been discontinued.
Even Microsoft's upgrades have been poor value. As discussed above Messenger is still a text only antique, and Office for Mac still does not support right to left languages (e.g. Arabic and Hebrew), this is despite the fact that Mac OS X itself does and has for years and years.
Considering Microsoft STILL continues to boast that they are the biggest Mac development team outside Apple itself, this pathetically small output from the Mac BU is staggering.
I am hoping that Microsoft being forced to significantly rewrite Office in order to move it to XCode will achieve a) at long last the removal of some truly ancient bugs, b) dramatically improved stability when dealing with complex Word files originated on a PC, c) dramatically improved stability when handling imported graphics in PowerPoint, d) support [at last] for right to left languages, e) dramatically improved performance (there have been times in the past that PowerPC Macs have been MUCH faster than the PCs of the day, and yet Excel still performed like a dog on the Mac, conspiracy theorists even said at the time that Microsoft was deliberately inserting delay loops in to the code as it was so bad, I am slightly more charitable and merely believe the quality of the code was and is awful beyond belief). These hoped for improvements (hey someone has to be an optimist) might then be enough to compensate for the loss of VBA support, otherwise not only will NeoOffice 2.0 soon be released but there will also be an official native OpenOffice soon (not requiring X-Windows). Both of these will be FREE, its time for Microsoft to put up or shut up. - Anonymous
September 01, 2006
How about Access? That's the one thing that's keepin us from wider adoption of Macs. - Anonymous
September 01, 2006
Things sure have changed since the dark days of Office v4.21 and the last 2 versions of Office Mac have been outstanding. With regard to WMP, I respect MS's decision to leave the solution to those who have a better handle on it (Flip4Mac), so seeing some of these products fall by the wayside isn't all doom and gloom. - Anonymous
September 01, 2006
Dear Joe LeBlanc, Mac OS X needs a serious alternative to Quicken. Quicken for Mac is Terrible. Is there any chance you guys will be able to write Microsoft Money for OS X? I would love to see that happen! I'd be your first customer! Please do whatever you can to make this happen! Thanks, Zach - Anonymous
September 01, 2006
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
September 01, 2006
So many Mac apps are lightyears behind their Windows counterparts. It's really starting to bug me. Take Quicken for example. One again we see that the Windows version is lightyears ahead of the Mac version. I'm gonna get a new Intel Mac just so I can run Windows for all these things. I can't handle it anymore. It's sad because I love a lot of things about OS X. I just can't handle it's deficiencies anymore! - Anonymous
September 01, 2006
What you say makes sense. I was thinking now that VPC is finished, that maybe, just maybe we'd get better Entourage/Exchange compatiblity. There should not be ONE SINGLE THING done at the MacBU until Entourage works completely and correctly.
And is MUCH easier to set up. At least where I work, the proxy server messes with Entourage until we put all the bypass stuff in the network settings we need.
Until recently, I was the only Entourage user in my department. Now we're going all Mac in the next couple of years. And the people who have started using Entourage like it to a certain degree. But, where is the Out of office assisstant? We have to use Outlook Web Access to set it! And we can't use Safari to do it!
All in all, if you really want Office to help push Macs into the workplace, more than any other feature, bug fix or consideration of any kind, you MUST give us COMPLETE Exchange compatibility. And make it easy to set up! (i.e. auto detect settings accurately). - Anonymous
September 01, 2006
PingBack from http://blog.screencastsonline.com/scoblog/?p=99 - Anonymous
September 02, 2006
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
September 02, 2006
I undertand that MacBU is a "business" unit of MS, but it seems that you guys take the "business" part seriously.
Does everything at MacBU have to be a business app? It would really be great to see you guys work on some entertainment titles. - Anonymous
September 04, 2006
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
September 07, 2006
Office products don't talk to the wider world? Where is info path, good XML for all of the products, ODBC connectivity, will the 2007 version finally catch up with the windows version for all of these important protocols or should we look to Open Office to supply these features?
I have been using Office/ Excel / Word since version 1.0a and bit by bit the product is losing functionality it is time it caught up and now!! - Anonymous
September 15, 2006
Guys... All kidding aside. You need IE7 for the mac, Windows Media Player for the Mac and VPC for the mac back again.
I'm one of those cross-platform people, and honestly - it drives me insane when I go to say... MSNBC Videos and am told that I need IE6 and WM9.
I love my PC and my Mac - and dropping these products just marginalises me. I makes you guys look bad.
Sure I have Safari, I have Quicktime with the suggested WM codecs, and I can get Parallels when the time comes for me to abandon my G5 and my copy of Virtual PC, but it's not the same experience.
I'm a big Outlook Web Access user - and when I compare what it looks like in Firefox and Safari to IE6/7- I just want to scream.
C'on! Find the genius who decided that things should be dropped - and fire his a**. - Anonymous
June 18, 2009
PingBack from http://patioumbrellasource.info/story.php?id=479