Birthday Gift for MacBU

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Andy — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:14:33 GMT

It turned out great, Joe! Nice job :)

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

nadyne — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:32:33 GMT

What an awesome birthday gift, Joe! :D

Way Cool

ArsTechnica reader — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:46:44 GMT

Congratulations, guys! Really nice looking - m4D 3xc3l p1x3l sk1llz !!1one!11!!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Paul Berkowitz — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:53:08 GMT

Very nice, Joe.

So I notice nobody tried coordinating with the SVC team down in Mountain View, CA (the pictures are of the MacBU building up in Redmond, WA). I'd guess that your split personality (MacBU's) might sometimes leave one side or the other "out of the picture". Maybe someone down there will take up the challenge, and come up with their own 10-year memorial? (Nadyne, have a go!)

Wouldn't it be impressive to have something appear in both locales? Or is that something best left to software builds?

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Devon Shaw — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 21:23:58 GMT

HA! Nicely done. Extra props on the dithering... that was a nice touch.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Robert King — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 21:39:44 GMT

That was cool! Looked like some fun.

Good Job!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

ATMB — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 22:06:28 GMT

That's great, guys...

but I still don't understand what excel was needed for...wasn't it all feasible within photoshop?

bye!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Matthias Jakob — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 22:08:26 GMT

Very Cool!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Jon T — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 22:29:15 GMT

I'm normally bashing Microsoft over the agonies imposed on Windows users but you guys make up for it!

Happy Anniversary. And STAY DIFFERENT TOO!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

nadyne — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 22:32:00 GMT

Paul - Some of us down here in SVC are already in talks about what we can do around launch that might top this ...

re: [ATMB] Birthday Gift for MacBU

joeleblanc — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 23:02:52 GMT

"That's great, guys...

but I still don't understand what excel was needed for...wasn't it all feasible within photoshop?"

Couple reasons:

1) Easier to print things out with a grid. Knowing how many pixels are in a column of row is handy when you're putting them up. I could have done a grid by hand in PS, but it wouldn't have been as flexible.

2) Counting. I could quickly get a count of how many notes we needed, even when the design changed.

3) Managing a larger document. Since there were a total of 10 pages, working with excel was easier to get nice printouts for everyone to reference.

I did all of the design in Photoshop ahead of time pixel-by-pixel zoomed in to 1000% with the pencil tool and eyedropped in B/W, the final step was just transfering it to Excel.

It appears that Nadyne is upping the ante for launch time, we're going to have to get creative up here.

Nice Work

Ed Palma — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:01:21 GMT

Now if only they had more shades of stickies so you could do antialiasing...or better yet- transparent stickies!

*Sigh*

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Ondra Soukup — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:14:41 GMT

Trully thinking different. "Wow" that's all I can say :)))

Great work, it looks really cool, maybe the icons could stay in place for longer time ;)

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Daniel — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:20:55 GMT

Nice work.... coming from Redmond. hehe

Congrats on 10 years!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Des — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:45:31 GMT

Congratulations. Long live the Macintosh Business Unit!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

karl — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 01:24:13 GMT

wow. that interview reads *exactly* like something out of douglas coupland. props to him, and to you alpha-nerds at the mac bu

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Liz — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 02:02:04 GMT

Wonderful. Were I not already a married woman, I'd propose to all three of you.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

stu — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 02:34:12 GMT

that is seriously cool

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

gugugu — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 02:48:42 GMT

To those few good men and weman in Microsoft:

Great job!!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

MacSurfer Reader — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 03:03:27 GMT

One more sticky and it would've been truly 1337!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Aaron Priven — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 03:07:25 GMT

Maybe you can top this for Office 2008 by doing the same things with icons that are, you know, actually attractive. No offense, honestly, and I admire your work on the stickynote project, but I've never liked these icons. The Office icons from the earlier Mac versions, and most of the Windows versions, have all looked better to me.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

RM — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 03:23:56 GMT

The Sistine Chapel ceiling has nothing on Microsoft's (Mac BU's) windows :) nicely done! Apple should have done something like this for the 10th anniversary of the return of Steve...

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Tomate — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 05:03:39 GMT

RESPECT! Congrats!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Peter Berglund — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 05:27:45 GMT

Happy birthday, guys! You make great software and you must promise to spin off Mac BU as an independent company the day Microsoft decides to make your lives hard, you are too good for them. The icons are way cool. Keep up the good work, we are all looking forward to Office 2008.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

fall-line — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 05:39:48 GMT

Nice work!

Dugg!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

John Baxter — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 07:50:08 GMT

Wow!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

tom — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 10:16:30 GMT

You guys are totally cool,and HAppy Birthday...

tom

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Rochvoisine — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 11:15:00 GMT

Happy Birthday MBU! Best of wishes for the next ten years!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

YuYang — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 11:17:36 GMT

Very cool!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

iKImba — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 13:32:03 GMT

Congrats!!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

eric.paquin — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 14:51:41 GMT

Happy Birthday MacBU! Well done! That's fantastic! Now I need to think of something as awesome for 10 years of MacBU in Ireland (after all, we've worked with you since the very beginning!) Or wait, for 2008 launch, let's all get together: Redmond, SVC, Japan, China and Ireland and do something truly different! With lasers! Seen from space! (Ok... come back eric, you're dreaming again! need more sleep! zzzzzz!) ;)

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Man Ng — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 17:22:57 GMT

Wow...Congratulations.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Man Ng — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 17:23:28 GMT

Wow...Congratulations.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Fernando L. Escarcega — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:17:49 GMT

My compliments and appreciation. It has been a good partnership for all and I hope it continues. We are all headed in the same direction and come from the same terrain. As a long time Mac user, i appreciate the efforts of the MBU and Microsoft.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Bryan — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:18:17 GMT

Happy birthday y'all! The design looks great and well executed. Now get to work on VBS in the new Office. :)

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

fabio — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 19:27:21 GMT

auguries at only microsoft division that works well!

think differents!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

John — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 19:48:17 GMT

Two questions that show my out-of-touch-ness:

1) What's SVC?

2) Any chance you could give me a tiny bit more detail as to how to turn a lo-res pixel drawing from Photoshop into an Excel spreadsheet? I'm afraid I'm not enough of a power-user of Excel to know where to even start!

Very cool. Happy Birthday!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

kit — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 20:00:20 GMT

heh heh.

if any of you had invested your time in the ansi scene instead of squandering it in warez during your youth, you could've just done that by eye.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Teco — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 20:50:42 GMT

Y que cumpláis muchos mas! Many more years to come people!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

iLori — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:21:17 GMT

Congrats! Very cool work!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Kawika Holbrook — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:42:02 GMT

Keep up the great work and blow us all away with the next Mac version of Office.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Stussy — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:48:40 GMT

Good Job! and Happy Birthday~ ^_^

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Massimo Brini (Italy) — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:48:48 GMT

This is one of the most brilliant ideas I ever seen in marketing.

Little budget, big ideas.

Stay thinking different !!!

M.B., Italy

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

rob — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:52:27 GMT

so close! it really should have taken 1337 stickies, not 1336.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Keithpeter — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 22:09:33 GMT

Thanks for the lesson idea (how to sell Excel to design students....)

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Lorin Rivers — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 22:36:42 GMT

That's so cool!

Everyone I've ever met with the Mac BU has been a real pleasure to work with and a powerful counter-example to the "MS is evil" meme.

Rock On.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Glenn — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 22:37:50 GMT

Brilliantly creative!

And colour dithering as well?! THAT"s the Mac-style attention to detail.

I'll have to have hot cocoa and pizza in your honour! :)

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

nadyne — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 22:44:05 GMT

John - SVC is our Silicon Valley Campus in Mountain View, CA. Roughly half of us are here.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

denis — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:35:37 GMT

Joyeux anniversaire !!!!!!!!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Anthony — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 00:59:22 GMT

Wasn't the SVC office originally known as "MS Bay"? I remember a Microsoft Internet Explorer ad in Macworld. It was placed sometime around the launch of Mac IE 2.0. The ad was more or less seeking Mac software developers to join MS. It was cool to see MS tout their use of (at that time) Codewarrior and other Mac technologies. I was in high school at the time (1995 or so), but I reality liked MacIE 2.1. It felt like this team was really trying to put out best-of-breed apps with corporate support. Damn, the web was so fun back then, and MacBU (or predecessor) made it even better for me. Thanks and congrats!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Engywuck — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 01:05:20 GMT

Windows sucks, but you guys did a good job with Office for Mac! Keep on coding and stay different!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Big Dan — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 02:17:38 GMT

Thanks for helping the Mac on the business side to perform as well as it does.

links for 2007-02-09

wordless blabber — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 03:39:21 GMT

Birthday Gift for MacBU [Mac Mojo] Celebrating 10 years of the only light spot in a dark place (tags: funny microsoft apple osx) PLANET M&M'S Create your own M&M image (tags: m&m funny flash)...

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

DAG — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 06:17:41 GMT

Congrats Guys

Looking forward to trying out the UB version of Office (fingers crossed) later this year.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Robert D. — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 06:43:57 GMT

As always, Microsoft's icons are heavily pixelated, compared to Apple's smooth ones. ;)

But seriously, guys; thanks for ten years of great Mac software. Here's to another ten!

Very Nice Icons!

Steve — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:33:46 GMT

Thanks guys, happy anniversary.

Today's Links

Ray Gun Robot — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 08:28:03 GMT

Times Square at Night. I'm a sucker for city photography. And cities at night with lots of neon… even better.

UUUHHHGGG-rrrr! It helps if you're familiar with Star Wars, but even if not, it's worth a chuckle.

Birthday Gift for MacBU. How the Mac guys

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Lovee — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 08:35:58 GMT

Thank u guys for ur greeeeeeat softwears on mac and also those niiiiiiiiice icons :)

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Bram Pitoyo — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 12:59:43 GMT

Have you guys took it down?

The beak of '1' could use one more sticky notes. That's number 1337 for ya!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Trickler — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 18:18:51 GMT

Woof!

With Excel as their favourite graphics app after 10 years of Mac development, you might hope what the coming 10 years will bring us in Office 2008.

Incredible Post-it Note Art

Wildcat — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 20:22:36 GMT

I don't know what's more impressive -- the planning and execution of this, or the wonderful documentation you've provided for the rest of us curious onlookers and/or future post-it note artists.

Do I see a new fad emerging? This "inphonic post-it note jaguar" was in my inbox as the Yahoo pick of the day just a couple of weeks ago: http://picks.yahoo.com/picks/i/20070119.html

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Carrie Ann — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 22:35:43 GMT

I think the use of 1336 stickies is wonderfully understated. 1337 would've been far too predictable and obvious. This says, "We could've gone there... but we don't need to."

Well played, team MacBU. Well played.

Total rock stars.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Scott Rose — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:52:32 GMT

I truly fail to see why we should be getting so excited over Microsoft, a company that has dropped every single Macintosh product they have **EVER** made for the Mac except for Microsoft Office -- and they are withdrawing Microsoft Office support rapidly on a daily basis. For example, VBA was the first thing to go in the upcoming Microsoft Office 2008. The next thing to go will be the Office suite altogether. Folks, let us not forget that Microsoft always has been and always will be the enemy. They are not our friends!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Yannick — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 00:23:43 GMT

Hi !

How can I be on the beta list of Office 2008 ?

Txs a lot and best regards

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Ghislain (France) — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 13:45:48 GMT

I thank you for your good job. Long life to MacBU.

Ghislain, switched to Mac at 4 years ago.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Keith Martin — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 15:42:59 GMT

Top marks to you all for this inspired bit of low-tech creativity!

Oh, and for all your hard work with that software stuff as well. ;-)

MacUser Magazine's Technical Editor salutes you.

Moof!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Tom Coombs — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 06:46:40 GMT

Good Effort Guys!

Always glad to see a fun prank like that to keep the environment cool!

Keep it up, I cant wait for 2008.

TC.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

David Emery — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:50:45 GMT

The only time I've been to Microsoft in Redmond was for a Distance Learning standards meeting. I fully expected to see evidence of the Evil Empire, and suffered cognitive dissonance when the hallways were full of 'think different' and Macs. Our meeting was in the MacBU building - not what I expected on my visit to Microsoft.

dave

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Richard — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 04:27:43 GMT

Happy Anniversary.

Can't wait for Office '08!!!!!

Happy Birthday!

Aleksandar — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:33:59 GMT

...You guys are truly 'insanely great'!

I really can't wait for Office '08... well, especially Excel – I'm sure it will be one of the finest Mac apps EVER! (sorry, but I'm just addicted to Excel... on a Mac – more than ever)

Kudos!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Dan — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 13:56:50 GMT

Agreed a nice gift, but if you'd spent all that time making sure that Office 2008 had VBA included you might not all be out of a job in a year or so...

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Billy F — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 22:54:04 GMT

You guys are the best. Congrats on 10 years, and for all our sakes, keep up the great work!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Joe — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 23:20:06 GMT

Doens't anyone else notice that the X for Excel is a pixel off?

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Professor Disaster — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 23:47:40 GMT

I have used and loved Word on the Mac since 1985. I even loved version 6. I got my first Mac in August 1984, when all there was for the Mac was the first, RAM-based version of MacWrite, which allowed you to write a document that was all of three pages long. Then came Word 1.0, which was disc-based, and the doc-size limit was a megabyte.

I'll keep buying Office for the Mac as long as they keep putting it out.

And the icon thing was brilliant. Which guy is Joe and which one is Mel? Jessica, I figured out on my own.

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Tyler Newcomb — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:34:44 GMT

Happy Birthday MacBU...I (we) are with you every step of the way..

Tyler

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Carrie Ann — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 05:09:41 GMT

PD: Jessica, Mel, Joe

(The tag on the second to last photo sorta gives it away)

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

trucker743 — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 09:44:13 GMT

It was really a great challenge, and you stepped up to the plate and smacked it out of the park. The Mariners need folks like you!

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

joeleblanc — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 09:40:26 GMT

"Doens't anyone else notice that the X for Excel is a pixel off?'

Yes, we noticed that right away and fixed it. Moving them up one pixel is surprisingly easy, I'll leave it up to you to figure out why and how. :)

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Jeremy Combs — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 06:51:30 GMT

I'm dieing to see more posts. I click on your Blog daily and cry myself to sleep on those lone nights with no updated Mac Mojo entries :(

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

Asam Bashir — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 01:18:19 GMT

http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/03/05/mac.users.test.subjects/

We will remember our fallen of 97....

The Windows Daily #5

Robert McLaws: Windows Vista Edition — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 08:27:00 GMT

In my own personal protest of today's major story , this entry was created on my Windows Mobile phone

re: Birthday Gift for MacBU

vilms — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 13:35:17 GMT

Hey Joe... I was at a UK Microsoft Mac love-in, yesterday. First slide up was the one at the top of the page. Nice work!

Get converted

Mac Mojo — Tue, 15 May 2007 21:14:08 GMT

As previously announced, and as indicated by the lower frequency in blogcasting here, everyone at MacBU

Announcing Art of Office

Mac Mojo — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 02:17:05 GMT

The MacBU is excited to announce a new user-generated community site, Art of Office . Art of Office is

Mac Mojo is Moving

Mac Mojo — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 05:42:53 GMT

We love bringing you the official blog of the Macintosh Business Unit (Mac BU) so you can read and discuss