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Every once in a while, you read something that just boggles the mind. Because you're reading the words, but it's like the Chewbacca defense. It does not make sense. Oh sure, your eyes read the words, and you understand the language and you comprehend the meaning of each word. But if you try to put it together, you end up thinking:

WTFNONSENSEHEADGOSPLODYPOP!

I read an article today by Tom Yager, normally a rather sane individual that makes me think he yanked both pills out of Morpheus' hand and is now quite confused. Here, read it yourself: Microsoft death sentence for Mac Office?

I have no idea why anyone with a functional logic center would write such claptrap, but since he did, and Infoworld published it, let's just take a look at all the problems with it, and hoo boy, there's a ton.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Microsoft, MS OpenXML, TEH STOOPUD

The entire thrust of the article is Microsoft signing a five year agreement means they're going to put all their stuff in maintenance mode and never do another new product for the Mac again. I know Microsoft, this is what they mean when they do this. Tom, from the entire sane computing community to you:

Huh?

Let's see, the last Microsoft-Apple Five Year Plan ran from 1997 to 2002.

In that time we went from Office 4.2 (Read: Word 6 Debacle) to:

Office 98

Office 2001, which introduced the first and to date, only completely original product that the Mac BU has come out with, Entourage.

Office v.X, the Mac OS X - native version of Office

Outlook Express 4

Outlook Express 5

Internet Explorer 4 (I could be off on this one)

Internet Explorer 5, the best web browser MS has ever produced. (IE 7 may beat it, but it won't count until it's out of beta)

Remote Desktop Connection, free, and a kick-butt little application.

So let's look at the great section of Tom's Article:

I know Microsoft. When the company "commits to support the product for a minimum of five years" means that the product will no longer be supported five years after this announcement. Existing users can live with that; their software is stable. But eventually the code will go into maintenance mode, and with the Mac BU, products like Virtual PC, Internet Explorer and Remote Desktop Connector.

Wow, so three major versions of Office and assorted service pack, including a completely new product the Mac BU created, two major versions of Outlook Express, two major versions of Internet Explorer, and Remote Desktop Connection, and Tom calls this maintenance mode. He may know Microsoft, but he sure as hell doesn't know the Mac BU for beans. As far as maintenance mode, well, I'll paraphrase The Princess Bride, and say that I do not think that phrase means what you think it does.

That's not maintenance mode, that's active development. That's very active development when you consider that the Mac BU is smaller than just the Outlook team, and they've always had an open head count.

Now, what's happened since 2002?

Office 2004, Service Release 2 for Office 2004, a major upgrade for Entourage's Exchange support, and Virtual PC 7. So outside of any agreement, you have another full version of Office, a major update to Office, and a full version of Virtual PC. If that's maintenance mode, then I want the Mac BU to put my car in that kind of maintenance mode. I'd have a Ferrari by June! Note, they didn't put IE 5 Mac in maintenance mode. They put a bullet in it. Maintenance mode and killing a product dead are in fact, quite different.

Roz Ho, has, publicly, stated that the next version of Office is under active development, and that it will be a universal binary. She's said this at two keynotes, and once to me in person during Macworld. (By the way, to all the folks who don't think too much about her based on her keynote appearances, and yes, she's just not good at those, don't confuse being not so good at a Stevenote with not being smart. She's real damned smart, real damned articulate, and she's on top of things more than y'all may think.) Keep in mind that were Microsoft to do this with no intention of doing Office 12 for the Mac, they'd be in deep doodoo. That's categorically and explicitly illegal for a publicly traded company to do. That's not nebulous like figuring out anti-trust stuff. That's black and white, as in the colors you wear in prison. Roz doesn't strike me as even close to stupid, and doing that would be real stupid.

Furthermore, I've seen enough of a very early build of Word to say, at the programmer's request, that yes, I've seen the next version of Word running, and it's using the MS Open XML formats. Note that this is post agreement. That's some pretty active maintenance mode.

The lead Word dev, Rick Schaut stated point blank that they're working on Office 12, and that it will use the MS Open XML formats. Here, read the post yourself on his blog. I've met Rick. Fun guy, we talked a lot of guitar. His credibility on Word is, at the very least, much higher than Yager's right now. Okay, that's not saying much, right now Eddie Haskell has more credibility on this than Yager.

Then there's this sentence: It's Microsoft's right, but until someone finds a solution, Office is forced to run on Rosetta, an instruction translater that gives office users real pain.

Okay Tom, how much experience do you have working day in and day out with Office 2004 on an Intel - based Mac? What? Not much, if any at all? Then how the hell do you know enough to say this? You don't, do you? No. For that matter, every non-universal binary has to run in Rosetta, including all of Apple's Pro applications, and every Adobe Mac application. Hmm, maybe Tom should look into that.

Look, when Microsoft screws it, I'll happily call them on it. WiMP Mac was a great example. It was fecal matter, and I hope the PM that approved that pile of crap got a good ass-kicking over it.

But the crap Yager's saying? It's at best trollery and Dvorakism, and at worst, wankery in pursuit of hit counts from the MacMacs.

If he's going to start writing tripe of that nature, I recommend transferring from Infoworld to The Weekly World News. It's a better place for silliness like this.

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