Access for Macintosh?

[Benhorton_83]

I can't find Microsoft Access for Macintosh anywhere, does it exist?
Am I not looking hard enough?

 

[Ramón G Castañeda]

I can't find Microsoft Access for Macintosh anywhere, does it exist?
Am I not looking hard enough?

No, it doesn't exist unfortunately. :-(

 

[Jeff Grossman]

I can't find Microsoft Access for Macintosh anywhere, does it exist?
Am I not looking hard enough?

No, it does not exist for the Mac. The most popular database program
for the Mac is Filemaker. Go to http://www.filemaker.com for
information.

Jeff

 

[Frank Bruce Cuadra]

Don't know if this will cause the rage of the MS community here but here it
goes...

The closest thing to Access (and even better if you want) is what is left
from good old Claris after the return of Jobs and its star product Filemaker
www.filemaker.com

It is compatible with SQL and there are versions for Windows.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Don't know if this will cause the rage of the MS community here but here it
goes...

The closest thing to Access (and even better if you want) is what is left
from good old Claris after the return of Jobs and its star product Filemaker
www.filemaker.com

It is compatible with SQL and there are versions for Windows.

Won't cause any range here. MacXL has built-in hooks for Filemaker,
after all.

 

[Red Claw]

-----Original Message-----
Windows.

Won't cause any range here. MacXL has built-in hooks for Filemaker,
after all.
.

But there is not easy way to open an Access database file
on Macintosh, change some of the data, and then open the
database back on Windows with MS Access. FileMaker can
import the Access database file using a third-party ODBC
but then your working on a copy of the data. In a shared
environment this is not an acceptable solution.

Microsoft, Macintosh users need MS Access too! I've only
been asking for MS Access for Mac for the last 4 years.

 

[Dave Cortright]

But there is not easy way to open an Access database file
on Macintosh, change some of the data, and then open the
database back on Windows with MS Access.

Sure there is. Use Virtual PC.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Microsoft, Macintosh users need MS Access too! I've only
been asking for MS Access for Mac for the last 4 years.

You need to get 100,000 or so of your closest friends to ask, too. And
have them let MacBU know how much extra they're willing to pay (rounded
to the nearest even hundred $$).

 

[Guest]

-----Original Message-----


You need to get 100,000 or so of your closest friends to ask, too. And
have them let MacBU know how much extra they're willing to pay (rounded
to the nearest even hundred $$).
.

Extra money? Why would it cost more for the same functionality as its
Windows counterpart? Office 2003 Pro for Windows is $499 and comes
with Access, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Office 2004 for
Mac is also $499 but comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage,
and Virtual PC. What am I supposed to do with VPC? If I want to run
MS Access I ned to plunk down another $229? I souldn't have to pay
more money for something that should already be included. MS can
keep VPC and give us MS Access for Mac as part of the MS Office 2004
Pro bundle!

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Extra money? Why would it cost more for the same functionality as its
Windows counterpart? Office 2003 Pro for Windows is $499 and comes
with Access, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Office 2004 for
Mac is also $499 but comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage,
and Virtual PC. What am I supposed to do with VPC? If I want to run
MS Access I ned to plunk down another $229? I souldn't have to pay
more money for something that should already be included. MS can
keep VPC and give us MS Access for Mac as part of the MS Office 2004
Pro bundle!

Don't be ridiculous.

Using that logic, a Mac should cost the same as a Gateway. After all,
they both have CPUs, drives, memory, operating systems, etc.

It would be different if WinOffice ran natively on a Mac, but it
doesn't. Porting Access to Mac would likely take hundreds of man-years.
The programmers at MacBU don't work for free, nor are the rent, power,
computers, servers, etc., etc., free - someone has to pay for that (in
fact, it would likely take the entire MacBU a year or more, working on
nothing else. Access is a massive amount of code, most of which
undoubtedly resembles long thin cooked pasta).

Given that Microsoft is a commercial enterprise, that means that the
ultimate payers have to be the customers. Otherwise MacBU doesn't make a
profit, and the unit gets closed down. Why should Microsoft shareholders
give Mac users a gift by eating the development costs?

So yes, you're going to pay more. It's the price of using a platform
that has 5% of the market (being generous).

 

[Red Claw]

-----Original Message-----
Don't be ridiculous.

Using that logic, a Mac should cost the same as a Gateway. After all,
they both have CPUs, drives, memory, operating systems,

etc.

I'm not talking about a Macintosh computer vs. a PC
Computer. I'm talking about software.

It would be different if WinOffice ran natively on a Mac, but it
doesn't. Porting Access to Mac would likely take hundreds of man-years.
The programmers at MacBU don't work for free, nor are the rent, power,
computers, servers, etc., etc., free - someone has to pay for that (in
fact, it would likely take the entire MacBU a year or more, working on
nothing else. Access is a massive amount of code, most of which
undoubtedly resembles long thin cooked pasta).

Hundreds of man-years? Then how do you explain the other
Office applications; Word, Excel, PowerPoint? I know (at
least for Word v.1 and Excel v.1) that they came out first
for Mac, but the code had to of gone back and forth
between the Windows and Mac platforms so the two sides
would be able to open the others documents without issue
and be relativly close in functionality. I don't see any
reason why MS Access can't be ported to the Macintosh
platform inside of a year.

Given that Microsoft is a commercial enterprise, that means that the
ultimate payers have to be the customers. Otherwise MacBU doesn't make a
profit, and the unit gets closed down. Why should Microsoft shareholders
give Mac users a gift by eating the development costs?

I'm not saying it should be free. I'm saying that it
should cost the same. MS Office Pro for Mac or PC should
contain Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook/Entourage, AND
Access. By leaving VPC off the Mac Office Pro and adding
MS Access to it the price can still remain $499. The same
amount as Office Pro for Windows.

So yes, you're going to pay more. It's the price of using a platform
that has 5% of the market (being generous).
.

Again, I think your talking hardware, not software. An
example:
Adobe Creative Suite Premium 1.1
Combines Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, InDesign CS, Golive
CS, Acrobat 6.0 Professional, and Version Cue
Either Mac or Windows are $1,229.00 each.

MS Office should be the same as I said above.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I'm not talking about a Macintosh computer vs. a PC Computer. I'm
talking about software.

Yes, I know. I was trying (and failing) to illustrate my point that the
economics of a product depended on more than just the name attached.

Hundreds of man-years?

Well, I probably should have said "over a hundred man-years". I'm
assuming that includes everyone from management to testers, developers,
coders, art, marketing, and manufacturing. If you assume 2 million lines
of code at 20 lines per day, that's 50 programmer-years alone, though I
realize that "lines per day" is a poor measurement.

Then how do you explain the other Office applications; Word, Excel,
PowerPoint? I know (at least for Word v.1 and Excel v.1) that they
came out first for Mac, but the code had to of gone back and forth
between the Windows and Mac platforms

There *was* no Windows platform when MacXL and MacWord came out.

so the two sides would be able to open the others documents without
issue and be relativly close in functionality.

Multiplan (which was the eminently forgettable DOS-spreadsheet) and
DOS-Word had a very different look and feel and, IIRC, didn't even share
file compatibility. I doubt there was much synergy there.

Both Word and XL were rewritten from scratch for the Windows 3 platform,
2 - 3 years after they were developed on the Mac.

I don't see any reason why MS Access can't be ported to the
Macintosh platform inside of a year.

The time would obviously depend on how many bodies you threw at it.
However, from previous development experience, I doubt that even the
*beta* period could be less than 6 months. If you think the dev phase
could be done in less than 6 months, I think you're dreaming.

It also depends on where those bodies are coming from. An Office update
(that, while significant in a lot of respects, wasn't starting from
ground zero) took MacBU 30 months. Should work on Office 12 be put on
hold while Access is developed (and fall further behind its Win
counterpart)? If not, how may added bodies do they hire? Would it even
be possible to hire 100 experienced Mac programmers for a projected 6
month job?

I'm not saying it should be free. I'm saying that it should cost the
same.
Why?

MS Office Pro for Mac or PC should contain Word, Excel, PowerPoint,
Outlook/Entourage, AND Access.

What, no Publisher?

I would certainly be interested in that package (though personally I'd
rather have VPC than Powerpoint)...

By leaving VPC off the Mac Office Pro and adding MS Access to it the
price can still remain $499. The same amount as Office Pro for
Windows.

The price for Office Pro for Windows is completely irrelevant, other
than that it establishes a benchmark for what is likely to be acceptable
pricing in the business world. However, I agree with you that a package
that includes Access probably will not sell if its price is higher than
its Win counterpart.

There are three interconnected factors that will determine whether Mac
Access is a good development risk for MS: the # of potential sales, the
added revenue per copy it can expect, and the development costs.

DISCLAIMER: I have *no* idea what the actual numbers are, but here's a
SWAG:

In your scenario, the added revenue is $100 per full copy. Upgrades are
cheaper, and institutional versions are much cheaper, so say the average
expected additional revenue is $50 per copy sold. I have no statistics,
but I'd be surprised if the expected life-cycle sales of a Mac version
of Office was more than about 2 million copies. Assuming that even 10%
of buyers wanted Access (which i think would be high), that leaves a
total increase in revenue of $10M. To use the SWAG above, 50 programmer
years at, say, a loaded $200K per year, eats up the entire expected
additional revenue. Testing is probably 1/3 the cost of programming, to
say nothing of development, art, manufacturing and marketing.

Of course, the costs can be amortized over more than one development
cycle, but since MS hasn't committed to more than 1 more version of
MacOffice, and given the uncertainty of the market, I'd suspect the
allowable period would be at most two development cycles, and perhaps
only one.

VBA tends to be more important in Access than in Word, and perhaps XL,
so compatibility issues might force an upgrade to VBA6 in order to make
Access marketable - add a whole lot of additional cost. And if Access is
to be Applescript-able, add an additional developer or two.

That doesn't include, of course, the opportunity cost - what additional
revenue they might forgo by not developing other, more profitable
ventures (such as Office 12, presumably).

And, most importantly, it doesn't include any profit.

Only MS knows what the actual numbers are, so I won't defend any of the
particular numbers, but it would surprise me if a business case could be
made for proceeding with Access.

Again, I think your talking hardware, not software. An
example:
Adobe Creative Suite Premium 1.1
Combines Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, InDesign CS, Golive
CS, Acrobat 6.0 Professional, and Version Cue
Either Mac or Windows are $1,229.00 each.

Not at all a good analogy. The market for Adobe CS has a *very*
different demographic than Office. In any case, the primary applications
have existed for several versions now, so there are no massive startup
development costs as there would be for Access. That makes the marketing
decision to charge the same price much easier.

MS Office should be the same as I said above.

Other than some sense of "social equity", I haven't seen you present any
reasons why this "should" be the case.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Red Claw,

I'm not quite as pessimistic as McGimpsey about working with MS Access on
the Mac. While I don't expect porting of Access, I think it is significant
that you can have direct manipulation of Access database tables via ODBC as
something that is significant.

This article offers tips on how to configure ODBC on the Mac
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/excel2004/using.aspx?pid=usingexcel20
04&type=howto&article=/mac/LIBRARY/how_to_articles/office2004/xl_ODBC.xml>

ODBC gives you all of the SQL commands that Access has.

Office 2004 supports RealBasic. I'm going to go out on a limb here and
suggest that it might be possible to build some kind of report tool and
forms tool using RealBasic. You could also build these tools right from
Excel using Visual Basic. There's a rudimentary form built into Excel. This
macro displays the form for use with a data table.
Sub Macro1()
ActiveSheet.ShowDataForm
End Sub

While I understand that this is a far cry from 100% compatibility, at least
we're not without some tools. For some people this is enough. For others it
is not.

Office for Windows is currently being re-written to work with Longhorn.
Whether the re-write will somehow make it possible for MacBU to be able to
port Access is way too soon to tell. XML is a technology that could allow
for it to happen in some fashion. Because Office for Windows is being
re-written I would not expect MacBU to even think about porting Access in
its current version to the Mac because it is an end of generation product
and its replacement does not yet exist.

-Jim
--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are not Microsoft Employees
MVP info
-Jim

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I'm not quite as pessimistic as McGimpsey about working with MS Access on
the Mac. While I don't expect porting of Access, I think it is significant
that you can have direct manipulation of Access database tables via ODBC as
something that is significant.

I'm sorry that I gave the impression I was pessimistic about working
with MS Access. I'm only pessimistic about the porting of Access.

Between SQL, XML and ODBC, I also see direct or indirect manipulation
being the path to follow, rather than porting a middling db app.

 

[Peter Walker]

Great response ! Very well considered, and agree totally.

 

[Barry Wainwright]

I'm not saying it should be free. I'm saying that it
should cost the same.

Only if the same number of people buy it.

Development costs have to be shared out amongst all the buyers - fewer
buyers mean a higher share each.

That's the way it is. The fact you don't like it doesn't make it any less of
a fact.