The Xena Blog

While we don't need Mac products where I currently work, we have needed them at other companies. In some cases we were working on solutions that involve Microsoft Office. We've had to test the cross-platform nature of Office documents and make sure what we're doing works on both platforms. We've written code for both platforms that works with Microsoft office.

OK, but can I get specific scenarios and business cases, along the lines of "we're developing XZY application, that does ABC cross-platform thing and required us to test on Macs for such-and-so reason".

cause there should be more mac users.
;)

Lets just make some observations.

The Mac,with it's unix underpinnings is a perfect canditate for a place that has other unix.The Mac is also,due to the structure of the OS, far more secure and less susceptable to viruses,adaware, spyware,trojans and so on. That means far less work for IT services with updates to the individual client boxes. Time being money,that amounts to lower costs.

Apple hardware is made better and designed to work with the OS.The average life of PC hardware is something like 2.6y while the Macs usually have a longer lifespan often approaching 5y.Again,lower costs in the long run.

Macs are so very easy to network in a mixed environment too which also is a benefit.They use pretty much standard components save for the MB so there shouldn't be a problem with replacement of RAM, CD-R,DVD,DCD-RAM, as well firewire or usb peripherals.

As for software,there might be a problem if there are vertical apps specific to an industry or custom solutions. That said, the major apps are there, Office,SQL,Sybase,Lotus Notes and so on.

For many in small business and the enterprise, the Mac would make a good client for the above reasons. Would that happen without some "Champion" in that organization? I'd bet not because so much of the IT world is steeped in it's misconceptions of what a Mac is, based on their knowledge from 1993 or maybe earlier. Many have not even used Macs and yet they [somehow] manage to know what it can and cannot do.That is more the prolbem.


For many in the the support world who do know, no one ever got fired for recommending Wintel and why would they recommend something that is A.Different perception wise and B.stands a chance to reduce maintenance costs where if there is a mass adoption of the platform there might be a reduction in IT staff and budgets.

I think that's pretty much why Macs should be used in Business and why they aren't more than they are even in the face of all the money lost in dealing with the lack of security in the Microsoft world.

Humm...as a PM Of a cross-platform product I was struck the question itself. I don't see how it's not MS that actually has the business justification as a company to recoup its investment in the MBS. I mean isn't it, in the end, in MS's best interest to promote all it;s products and let the market find new and innovative ways of using them? Who is to say that the addition of Office 2004 wouldn't mean that late night some engineer wouldn't take a look and think "I could...". To ask your developer community for "business justification" to look at ALL your available products and hopefully develop for them, to me, seems weird! I mean what are the COGS here? Big deal! If it means greater support for MS products great! If it means nothing...great! Sorry, maybe it's just me but who cares just do it and let the market figure it out after looking at it. I mean come on? Asking to build a business case in advance of running some tests and numbers? I don't know....maybe it's just me!

After Jim's post, I need to add the following disclaimer: I don't care how good Macs are. Don't care, I'm covering my ears, La La La I can't hear you. Sorry, I'm platform-agnostic in this. If Microsoft had a Linux version of VPC I'd be asking the same question.

As to Jeffster's comment, I understand what you're saying, but there's all sorts of stuff we don't include for dev and test in the MSDN Subscription. Some products aren't included because they're OEM specific or too audience-specific, others aren't included for other reasons. So, we need to focus on what content we include and if I can present reasonable requests from our subscribers as to why something should be included, then I'll try to make that case.

As a final disclaimer, I'm not the acquisistions manager, I'm the Subscriber Downloads manager (amongst other things). So, this is not an official MSDN initiative, I'm just trying to figure out if I can bring the topic up again with some solid customer scenarios behind it.

I understand the problem you have to manage on the MSDN front, as it's a massive volume of data to manage, and it needs to fulfill a need in the developer community in order to justify it's inclusion. On my front, I see a definite need for some of the core products. Specifically Office since I have run across more than a few scenarios that needed to support a few Macs and despite the excellent work of the two office teams, we do run into some incompatibilities. Virtual PC would be nice, but not essential.

Andy I hear what you're saying. I think the guys over in MBS should be pushing this. If I were the PM for VPC and did all this work on compatibility and making sure XP technologies worked as advertised, I want my stuff out there! In fact from a MS business case the goal of getting ISVs to get VPC in their test plans would be a coup of major proportions. I can see a lot of support $$$ wasted and customer frustration high, not to mention engineering work, to keep fixing VPC because XYZ application fails. Often because the vendor is using some funky unsupported API or worse NOT using an API at all. If MS could get more vendors to test against VPC and could help them correct the XX% of issues that are vendor related, everyone would win and everyone would save $$$$ and we'd all have happy customers! Oh...AND you would have cleaner running XP applications overall as a result! Time to look up the VPC product manager! ;-)

Really the only Microsoft Mac products in question are Office and VPC?

How about this scenario: Entourage is an Exchange-capable client - all the Exchange platform and dev tools are available on MSDN now. Why leave out this peice of the puzzle? There are definitely companies with mixed environments out there - why not provide a way to develop and test for that entire stack? Isn't this akin to putting all the Office Windows components up on MSDN, but leaving out PowerPoint?

Thanks for the ideas above - mainly these confirm the major scenarios for using Mac products in the MSDN Subscription:

1. Messaging applications and deployments requiring Entourage integration

2. Apps written that need to be cross-platform tested against Office products

Now, a word for all of our happy enthusiasts coming to my blog from the from the Macworld site:

I am a Microsoft PM, and happen to like Microsoft products. I'm not going to publish any rants about Micro$oft Windoze being Satan's personal operating system that we force people to buy using secret monopoly powers granted to us by Mephistopheles and Colonel Sanders. Seriously, people need to relax a bit.

Some applications that used Mac's that are cross platform. Office, Photoshop, medical imaging software, point of sale software, music creation software, video editing software. Puplishing software, customer relations software scientific research software, for example seti gene folding, analisys of data at NASA, software to guide sattilites at NASA, software to make planes more aerodynamic at NASA

I appreciate that this isn't Mac, but it's a product that isn't on MSDN and would be useful if it was:

Windows XP Starter Edition.

Had an app fail on Windows XP starter edition - appears the customer bought a cheap laptop when on holiday.

We had to borrow their reinstallation CD to test on (and then deleted it afterwards). Can we have Win XP SE on MSDN, please?

umm Rotor?

People trying to write XP (cross platform) .net applications. Did I mention Rotor? Oh by the way have you heard of Mono?

And there is also Rotor.

Granted this is more acedemic that business, but Microsoft does have investments in making stuff work on Mac and as I read tea leaves those investments are only going to grow. (xbox2 will run on a powerpc, rotor runs on a powerpc, whidbey has this System.Platform.Unix enum that everett doesn't have)


So while it seems academic today, it looks like the way of the future.