open question and answer thread
I haven't done one of these in awhile, and it's a quiet week, so ...
If you've got a question for me, go on and ask it. If I've got an answer, I'll share it. If I don't have an answer (either I don't know or can't say), then I'll tell you that too. Questions about MacBU, our applications, Mac development at Microsoft, what it's like to work here, my job, and anything like that are fair game. Short answers will probably go in the comments, long answers are most likely to show up as a new post.
Comments
Anonymous
November 23, 2009
I use Entourage to connect to our 2003 Exchange server via the webserver. What do I need to do to get it to see Free/Busy?Anonymous
November 23, 2009
The comment has been removedAnonymous
November 23, 2009
Will Outlook 2010 for Mac have a plug-in architecture beyond AppleScript?Anonymous
November 23, 2009
Why does Excel 2008 insist on opening up full screen, even if you resize to how you'd like it before closing it down? On a 30" screen, this behavior is quite annoying.Anonymous
November 23, 2009
Would you say that the MacBU is focused on delivering a "Mac-like" Office experience? Even though I believe iWork '09 is far behind MS Office 2008 in terms of functionality, I think it would be difficult to deny that iWork offers a more usable interface than that of Office. Do you agree, and if so, what is being done about it? What are the main challenges with working on a new version of Office? Rewriting legacy code? Integrating changes made by the Win Office team? Having a limited number of engineers to implement changes? Are the leaders/engineers who put the final stamp on design decisions longtime Mac users? Or maybe they are new-to-MacBU employees from within Microsoft? Or maybe design decisions are decided mostly by user survey feedback? I am referring to things like the ripple effect when hovering over the document view-switching buttons, or the Document Elements bar. Perhaps you could explain how these enhance the interface...Anonymous
November 23, 2009
MSN-related-news? In the blog you guys said in 2009 we would have a Messenger:Mac 8 beta with voice/audio support. What happened?Anonymous
November 23, 2009
When you tab to different buttons in Office:Mac 2008 dialog boxes, why to the highlights go right to left, where every other application goes left to right?Anonymous
November 25, 2009
My question is on the same lines as 2 of the others. Its about Messenger for Mac. You replied to my post before saying that it is on track for this year, thank you for you reply. My question is, will it have more features than just Video, since we waited THIS long. People seem to be aggravated that MfM is taking so long and there is so few features (like offline msgs). People appear to switch to aMSN and Adium just for features that is not available in MfM. One (of many) threads about it in your forums is: http://www.officeformac.com/ms/ProductForums/MacMessenger/1313/0 Even Wikipedia shows some signs of aggravation:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Messenger_for_Mac Also, if Microsoft is not too interested in making Messenger for Mac, would there be plans of just giving iChat the responsibility of maintaining it? Thanks! and Happy Thanksgivings!!Anonymous
November 25, 2009
Visual Studio vs. XCode Also, the transition from CodeWarrior to Xcode would be an interesting story to hear.Anonymous
November 25, 2009
Let's answer a few questions here, since they're short ... For Messenger, I can't yet share any details about features that might be in it, other than the already-announced support for webcams. The very second that I can talk about it (because I really do understand that there's lots of folks that want more details about it, and really really want the beta), I will. :) Patrick - Sorry, I can't yet talk about features for Outlook:Mac other than what we've already announced. Again, once I get clearance to talk more about it, I will. I am giving a talk at Macworld about using Macs in an Exchange environment, and I'm hoping to be able to share at least a little bit more there about Outlook:Mac. Michael - I'm completely unqualified to talk about Visual Studio, since I've never used it. I'm not sure how many people around we've got who could talk about that in any detail, since most of our developers are Mac guys who probably haven't done a lot with Visual Studio. I might be able to cobble together something about the CodeWarrior transition, although I wasn't hugely involved with that so I'm not sure how far I'll get. I'll throw the idea over the fence to one of our devs who was much more involved with it than I was and see if he's got the time to write something cogent about it. :)Anonymous
November 25, 2009
Michael - Oh, speaking of the CodeWarrior transition, here's a relevant t-shirt: http://shop.cafepress.com/excodewarrior There's plenty of folks around our hallways who have those shirts. :) JL - iChat and Messenger use different protocols, so it's not that we could just throw the code to someone else. There's all sorts of legal stuff involved that I honestly know absolutely nothing about, and I'm perfectly okay with keeping it that way. Ken - Can you give me an example? I couldn't come up with one.Anonymous
November 25, 2009
Hello, When opening my inbox from an Exchange 2007 SP1 server with Entourage 12.2.3 I get a dialog saying "Unable to establish a secure connection to example.com because the correct root certificate is not installed." (Obviously not actually example.com.) Is there a way to disable auto-discovery for this domain? I assume the problem is the SSL certificate used by the web server at https://example.com, but I don't have control over that server. Everything works fine if I click OK until the next time Entourage starts up. Thanks, David B.Anonymous
November 26, 2009
I'm about to buy a Macbook as my main computer. But I also use Access a lot, especially the mail-merge function (Word/Access). I've read your comments in MacRumors about the likelihood of Microsoft creating Access for Macintosh. What do you recommend instead?Anonymous
November 28, 2009
How do you get into testing Microsoft-Mac software, I have beta tested many Windows programs and was even in the "Butterfly" program.Anonymous
November 28, 2009
Re: Access on Mac, you can use an ODBC driver to import your Access data into either MS Excel or FileMaker. One such ODBC driver is described at www.actualtechnologies.com/product_access.php Jonathan Monroe / Actual Technologies