Hi John:
{Chortle} I love your post
The sad reality of major software development (and Microsoft Office is
something like 30 million lines of code "major") is that the development
cycles last a lot longer than the release cycles.
Large sections of Word 2004's code were written for the PC prior to 1989.
Word 2004 went into design about four years -- and into coding about two
years -- before it hit the shop shelves: at which time only Apple had much
idea what would be in OS 10.3 (and several of the things that were promised,
and that Word hoped to take advantage of, did not eventuate in the shipped
product).
Microsoft has an advantage on Windows: it has a "better" idea what will be
in the operating system when Word hits the market
But please don't
imagine that they always know exactly what will be in Windows: food-fights
have been alleged to break out in the Microsoft canteen over last-minute
additions or deletions from either product!)
In this case, we're talking about a change that is so major it hits almost
every line of code in the application. Reversing the text direction is a
very big deal in a GUI application that does text typesetting
The Mac and Windows Office products are on a similar scale: the Windows
version contains a few more applications that we don't get. But the staff
working on them is dramatically different. There's maybe a thousand
architects, developers, testers and managers working on Windows Office.
Maybe 30 on the Mac Office version.
Features that they can steal from the Windows code base and port
substantially unchanged to the Mac environment are pretty much a certainty.
Stuff that Apple Mac OS X will do for us "automatically" has a good chance
of being approved. Features that have to be designed, coded, tested, and
packaged from scratch for Mac OS have a "lower" probability of inclusion
Now, my company is not quite on the same scale as Microsoft. You're talking
to it. All of it
But I can appreciate Microsoft's dilemma here. I
would like a new house, a new car, world peace, and an end to world hunger.
I'm afraid I can't give you a firm delivery date for the house. The car is
going to have to "wait". World peace and hunger are only in the "planning"
stages
Like Microsoft, my company's delivery cycles are very sensitive to nasty
commercial realities such as "sales". Nothing frees up a development budget
like "profits"
Right at the moment, beating up on Microsoft might be working against all of
our interests... Ask yourself the question "Why would Microsoft produce a
version of Office for the Macintosh?"
Microsoft has this little product named Office for the PC. Each release
sells around 30 million copies... And the copy protection mechanism
built-in to them ensures that Microsoft gets paid for the vast majority of
them. On the Mac, we buy maybe 130,000 copies of each release of MS Office.
And our copy protection is not worth a damn.
So what compelling arguments could YOU give the Microsoft Corporation board
of directors that would persuade them to invest in Microsoft Office for the
Mac? You're asking them to spend maybe half as much money to make the Mac
version as they spend to make the PC version. For maybe 0.4 per cent of the
sales! Recall that when making software, Copy Number 1 costs you multiple
millions of dollars. The second and subsequent copies cost around ten bucks
each
The board might ask you what would happen if they "didn't" invest in Mac
Office? And your answer would be?
Think carefully: Now that Macs are on Intel, every new Mac will run Windows
natively. If they didn't make Mac Office, Microsoft would get to sell a few
hundred thousand copies of Windows Office that they would otherwise not
sell. And a copy of Windows to run each of them. Double the profit. And
they wouldn't have to spend a cent to do this: they've already made those
products and they're on the shop shelves.
Seriously: If you had your pension invested in MSFT stock, what would YOU
want the Board to do?
Be nice, and we will certainly get a new version of Microsoft Office for the
Mac. It may not support right-to-left languages. If it doesn't, I can tell
you a bunch of Mac Addicts I know, who just happen to work for Microsoft,
are going to be really really unhappy. They really want to do it this time.
But they have to make a business case for the time and money to do that
with.
We could help there...
Cheers
The news from Microsoft as to whether Office 12 (aka. Office 2007 for Mac)
will finally add 'right-to-left' text support for languages like Hebrew and
Arabic has been...
...a deafening silence.
While Microsoft did have some justification at the time of releasing Office
v.X for blaming a lack of functionality in Mac OS X as preventing them doing
this, they had no such excuse for Office 2004, AND WHAT POSSIBLE EXCUSE
COULD THEY HAVE NOW for not doing it in Office 2007?
Literally _DOZENS_ of other programs for Mac OS X can do right-to-left text
entry.
Note: Apple fixed their end way back when they launched Mac OS X 10.3
(Panther) on October 24th 2003. Office 2004 was released on May 11th 2004
(which is why they had no justification for not fixing it even back then).
³Never in the field of software development, has so little been produced by
so many for so long...²
--Apologies to Sir Winston Churchill [and brickbats to Microsoft]
When Word Mac was designed Macintosh OS X did not support right-to-left
justification. Word was designed to call the operating system's layout
engine (which is the "correct" thing to do). That's exactly the same as
Word for Windows. To be "correct" you do not go creating your own displays,
you call the rendering engine provided by the operating system. Mac Word
does that.
Sorry about that: Maybe next version....
Cheers
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <
[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410
