MacBU posts

Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection Client is a free utility which allows you to connect to Windows computers running Windows from computers running Mac OS X (versions 10.4.9 or later).

For those of us who help manage Windows computers, it's a handy tool to have around, much like Screen Sharing (or Apple Remote Desktop) for connecting from one Mac to another. Fortunately I don't have to use it all that often, but last night when I tried it for the first time in a while, it crashed. I relaunched it, and it crashed again. Since I'm a slow learner, I tried it one last time. Yup, crashed a third time.

Assuming this wasn't some Halloween prank, I wondered if maybe I had an outdated version of the app, since I hadn't used it since Snow Leopard came out. I took a quick look around and found that version 2.0.1 had been released in mid-August. I downloaded the new version, ran the installer (I'm not sure why it needs an installer for what seems like a self-contained application, but it does) and the app launched as expected.

The release notes don't say much about what is new in this version, and I didn't notice any new features (other than not crashing on Snow Leopard, which is a significant plus). If you ever need to connect to computers running Windows, this 7.8MB download is a good addition to your toolbox.

Not all versions of Microsoft Windows support Remote Desktop Connections. For example, Windows XP "Professional" does, but the "Home" does not. Also, even for those versions of Windows which do support it, it is not enabled by default. If your version does not support it, you will need to find a VNC application which has a Windows 'server' and a Mac 'client'.

[If you prefer an open-source alternative to the Microsoft client, check out the versatile and free CoRD. --Ed.]

Ah, summertime; the kids are out of school, the pace drops back from 'overdrive' to 'merely hectic,' and you finally have the opportunity to tackle the giant looming crisis that is your personal state of disorganization. Perhaps I'm projecting a little bit. Anyway, if you're looking for a bit of guidance on how your Mac can help you get organized -- and, of course, if you are a Microsoft Office 2008 owner -- the Mac BU has something for you.

Organization expert Peter Walsh (possessor of a charming Australian accent, and author of the slightly-less-charmingly titled Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat) is the host of a video tips presentation over at the Mactopia site. Walsh runs through a couple of suggestions for reducing the chaos in the three key areas of Family, Finance & Health, mostly on the straightforward side (keep a family calendar in Entourage, track your website logins in a secured Excel spreadsheet). Walsh encourages us to envision the end state of the life we want instead of the many steps that may be required to arrive there.

Unfortunately, the delivery mechanism for these helpful tips is a bit less than helpful. The presentation requires the Silverlight plugin, which lots of folks avoid on principle. You can neither download nor rewind the segments; it would seem that for anything intended to help you reduce chaos and clutter, providing the tips in podcastable and mobile-friendly formats would be a nice gesture towards the overscheduled.

On top of that, the tips seem a bit forced into Office's capabilities rather than organically built. While there are more optimal Mac or iPhone single-purpose apps for these tasks (or even multitaskers like Bento), it's true that Office is installed on a lot of Macs and a lot of Mac users could probably leverage it to achieve some organizational goals.

With all that in mind, if you feel like you could use a light organizational boost and you enjoy making spreadsheets of your car maintenance appointments, check it out.

Update: One thing I meant to mention but forgot: Entourage is a bit of an odd choice for a familial calendar, as it doesn't offer native sharing outside of an Exchange environment (an unlikely setup for parents & kids). Adding BusySync makes it much more flexible, but you're just as well off using iCal in that situation.

[h/t The Loop]

The Macintosh Business Unit of Microsoft, that company we love to hate, has announced that a new General Manager has taken over the group. Craig Eisler, the former Mac BU big cheese, has moved onwards and upwards into the bowels of the Redmond-based software giant in a position with the Entertainment & Devices division.

His new replacement is Eric Wilfrid, a 14-year veteran of the company who has been with the Mac BU since it was organized in 1997. Wilfred started with Microsoft in 1994, working on the Mac version of PowerPoint. He was also involved in all five releases of Office for Mac, the Mac versions of Internet Explorer and MSN, and Virtual PC.

Wilfred announced the change in a post to the Mac BU blog today. I don't know about you, but I'm hoping that Wilfred takes the Macintosh development team in a new direction -- preferably away from Steve Ballmer's recent comments about Mac users not getting "the full version" of Office.

If you had one thing to tell Mr. Wilfred as he takes over the helm of the Mac BU, what would it be? Leave us a comment!

If you do any work in Office you've probably been waiting for the latest update for a couple of years now. Especially if you're on an Intel machine or have struggled with Entourage's funky interface (or is that just me?). Last week Microsoft released Office 2008 for the Mac, and it's a doozy of an update. Being a universal binary is really the least of the changes. This is a complete overhaul, with a ton of UI changes and workflow improvements. Amanda Lefebvre takes us on a whirlwind tour of some new features, and explains the difference between the three different editions of Office.

Many of you have already gotten the email inviting you to dig deep into your pockets, so let me relay the news to them that hasn't: you can now pre-order Microsoft Office 2008 from Apple and Amazon, with delivery scheduled on January 15th.

If you were hoping to install Office 2008 in the first few moments after its official release... well, my suggestion is to wait a few days for the issues to shake out. Otherwise, better have a second machine around to get work done.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

I just recently got through questioning the future of Office for the Mac and the MacBU and now the guys have Microsoft has introduced an interesting new website called "Art of Office." It's a kind of portal designed to allow Office users to share documents demonstrating various cools ideas and and techniques for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. They have a daily showcase of "most useful" and "most artistic" documents which users are invited to upload plus an Artists section. So if you're a real Office jockey, or just looking for some neat ideas, Art of Office is probably worth a look.

[via MacNN]

David Weiss is an employee at Microsoft's MacBU, and while he has makes it clear that he doesn't speak for Microsoft or the MacBU, his recent post about iWork '08 is interesting from a couple of directions. He starts with a little self-congratulatory back-patting for Microsoft's embracing an "open" XML file format and talks a little bit about the challenges involved with "starting from scratch" in writing an office application. Most telling, however, is his conclusion. He writes that the "core value of Office on the Mac" is simple: compatibility. What's interesting about this is about what he doesn't say. He doesn't say that the "core value" of Office is getting your work done efficiently, or producing nice documents, spreadsheets or presentations. Basically what we need the MacBU for is to keep us compatible with Windows. And as I've started to play with iWork '08 I think he's more or less correct. Office for Mac is just about compatibility with Windows, not about giving Mac users the best user experience in document creation. And with Office for Mac dropping support for Windows-compatible macros, it increasingly looks like the MacBU isn't even doing that particularly well.

At this point, and assuming they make their January ship date, we're not going to see an Intel native Office for Mac until two full years after the first Intel Macs were released (two and a half years since the transition was announced). With Numbers, Apple has taken a decisive step. While it's not going to replace Excel for big-time number crunchers, it's absolutely good enough for casual users like myself. Keynote was already well ahead of PowerPoint in terms of beautiful presentations and the new Pages is a significant improvement as well, particularly for straight word-processing. Considering all this, it's getting hard to see what purpose there is in having Office unless you have to deal with cross-platform issues on a constant basis (especially since iWork '08 is already more compatible with Windows Office 2007 formats than Office for Mac 2004 is). I don't think Microsoft Office is going to die anytime soon; it's too entrenched in business for that to happen. But with iWork moving ahead the way it is, I don't really see any reason for non-business Mac users to fork over hundreds of dollars to Microsoft for a sub-standard user experience. I had initially assumed I'd automatically upgrade to Office for Mac 2008 whenever it ships; now I'm quite doubtful. These look like dark days for the MacBU to me. What do you think?

Craig Eisler, General Manager of the MacBU and proud Canadian, contacted TUAW with some news about Microsoft's much anticipated Universal release of Office, Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac. Craig let us know that Microsoft has pushed back the release of Office 2008 for the Mac to make sure that the suite is up to snuff.

Office 2008 for the Mac will be released for manufacture in December of this year for a US release of mid-January 2008 (just in time for Macworld 2008).

Clearly updating a large suite like Office is always a major undertaking, and focusing on getting it right is great, however, January 2008 is 5 months away from now. I asked if there would, by any chance, a public beta in the coming months. Sadly, there will not be one. It would seem if you want to get your fix of Office 2008 you'll have to check out this gallery of screenshots Microsoft provided to us during Macworld 2007.

Microsoft promised us some goodies this week, and they just delivered on that promise. The long awaited (at least by me) Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2.0 (Beta) is now available for download. This is a beta, but in my limited testing it is much, much faster (as one might expect). New in this Beta, which expires on March 31, 2008 are:

• Universal Binary (hurrah!)
• Works with Vista, and used the new Remote Desktop protocol
• Multiple session support (this is a big deal, though I can't actually figure out how to connect to more than one machine at a time)
• Better printer support, better UI

Overall, this looks to be a solid update to Microsoft's free Windows Remote Desktop Mac client.

It appears the Microsoft Mac Business Unit is alive after all as they popped up with an announcement of coming attractions for "the week of July 30th." They'll finally be offering a Universal Binary of the Remote Desktop Client which allows you to control Windows computers from your Mac (thereby hopefully addressing some of Scott's concerns). In addition they're promising beta 2 of the much lamented Office 2007 file format converters with "a significant Word refresh and the addition of PowerPoint (.pptx)."

In fact, the new General Manager of the MacBU Craig Eisler recently introduced himself and called for more "dialog" with customers. At least it's nice to know that things do seem to be progressing up there in the long wait for a Universal version of Office.

Thanks, Space Taker.

I know it is traditional for Mac users to dislike Microsoft, but I think that's silly. Outside of Apple, Microsoft is the largest Mac developer and they do make some cool software (can you imagine a world without Office? I can't. And judging from what I saw at Macworld 2007, Office for the Mac 2008 is going to rock). I bring all of this up because there is a new sheriff in the MacBU (that's the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft) town. Gone is Roz Ho, former General Manager of the MacBU. She has been replaced by Craig Eisler, though don't worry about Roz, she is still at Microsoft and we at TUAW wish her all the best.

Check out Craig's first post on Mac Mojo and this post on his personal blog in which he lists ten things he loved from Apple.

Welcome, Craig, and when you get a chance could you make sure that Microsoft released a Universal Binary of Remote Desktop? That would make this blogger a very happy fellow.

[via News.com]

Microsoft Mac developer David Weiss points to the Macintosh Business Unit's upcoming Global MVP Summit 2007, which will be bringing MVPs to Redmond for some Wii gaming and Mac Office feedback. Apparently, MVPs ("Most Valuable Professionals") are non-Microsoft employees that participate in Microsoft's "technical communities" who, in virtue of being super helpful to other users, have been selected to receive this honor(?). These MVPs (who must sign NDAs) then gain access to betas of upcoming Microsoft products and are able to offer suggestions and feedback to the MacBU as well as moderate forums and even man the Microsoft booth at Macworld. MVPs also maintain a variety of helpful information sites like this one for Mac Word and this one for Entourage. There is even information on becoming a MVP, so if you've ever had a burning desire to become a MacBU lackey here's your chance! (I kid, I kid!)

[Via David Weiss]

Loyal reader Nik Fletcher sent us a heads-up on the Microsoft MacBU's 10th anniversary party decorations: gigantic Office icons made with powerful Excel mojo and over one thousand Post-it Notes, covering windows in the entryway to their building. I suppose they didn't have quite that many Mac Mini boxes on hand...

Happy birthday, MacBU. Here's to the crazy ones.

Thanks Nik!

After being punked on the Office 2004 11.3.1 update, I'm guessing there won't be a mad dash to grab the Office 2004 11.3.2 update, but just in case you have a change of heart -- the Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.2 Update claims to offer "several improvements for PowerPoint and Entourage" and is recommended for all Office 2004 users. But it doesn't appear to address any of the security issues that 11.3.1 was supposed to address before 11.3.1 was disappeared.

Specific Improvements from the Read Me:

PowerPoint 2004
Stability is improved -- This update fixes an issue that causes PowerPoint to quit unexpectedly when you open a presentation.

Entourage 2004
Contact names that contain special characters are handled correctly -- This update fixes an issue that causes meeting requests to display incorrectly when sent to contacts with names that contain single quotation marks ('), double quotation marks ("), and parentheses.

Public folder messages are not duplicated -- This update fixes an issue that causes duplicate messages to appear in public folders.

Compatibility with Mirapoint Message Server is improved -- This update fixes an issue that causes Entourage to quit unexpectedly when accessing mail folders on a Mirapoint Message Server.

If you decide to proceed, make sure you're at Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.0 Update already, because 11.3.2 is not a "combo" updater. And since Office Updates change the version number on some Office apps, but not all Office apps, the best way confirm what version you actually have is to check the version number of the Microsoft Component Plugin file in the Microsoft Office 2004 folder, which is always updated even if other apps aren't.

According to a post on Mac Mojo, the Mac BU's blog, Microsoft is committed to getting out a free file format converter so that Mac users can open Office 2007 Open XML formatted files with Office 2004 (Laurie posted about the problem earlier today). This converter is expected to be released late March/early April and will be free.

The next version of Office for the Mac will support the Open XML Format as its native format, and that is expected to ship 6 to 8 months from now.

Until then you can either use a hack, or ask your Windows using friends to save the documents they want to share with you as the older Word/Excel/PowerPoint 97-2003 Document (.doc, .xls, .ppt).