Mac Mojo : Product Management

Office Delay? Ya Don't Say.

sherjo — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 03:27:00 GMT

No, seriously, you don't say (or shouldn't), because it isn't true. Over the last few days, some Mac sites have been reporting that the Universal Binary version of Office for Mac (officially unnamed, but currently code-named Office 12) has been delayed, but there is no delay or deviation from our development schedule. We're hitting our milestones, checking in our features, and making the move to Intel as planned. We've totally moved from Code Warrior to Xcode, so we've crested that hill. We usually ship 6 - 8 months after the availability of Office for Windows so we can do compatibility testing. This has been our shipping cycle for ages, and we're right on track. In fact, for Office 12, we've not even officially announced a launch date (but when we do, we should do it here first).

Mac Office Resource Links

Brianjo — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 09:25:00 GMT

Ever have one of those really busy weeks where you can't even remember what you did at the end of the week? I'm having one of those. Not complaining though, we've got a lot of interesting stuff we're doing at work, unfortunately not too much I can talk about at this point.

All that said, one of the cool jobs that I have at Microsoft is talking to customers directly about how Mac Office is working in their companies. Before I talk to them, I usually ask for a list of questions they might have so I can get the answers together for them before hand and hopefully save them some time.

So where do I get my information? Sure, I can track down a developer or a PM and get an answer, but ideally I want them focused on building the next great version of Office. So what I try to do is track the information down myself. Where do I look? That's where this weeks links come in. I have a bunch of places I go for information, but if I had to pick 5, I usually go to these first:

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Resource Kit version 2 This document usualy has the information I'm looking for. It was even updated this summer. From the description: The Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Resource Kit version 2 provides procedure and reference information for administrators and support professionals who deploy, administer, and support Office 2004 for Mac in networked environments. This Resource Kit provides guidance for using Office 2004 for Mac with Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Live Communications Server, Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server, and related products.
The Entourage Help Page A lot of great Entourage information: The Entourage Help Page is provided as a resource to help Entourage: Mac users. FAQs come from the Entourage Newgroup and the Entourage Talk list.
MacWindows.com The web site for Macintosh-Windows integration. Some of the best information available about using your Macs in Windows networks.
Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Solutions Center Tons of great information from Microsoft Support. Browse it and put a link in your favorties.
Mactopia Resources Actuall, all of Mactopia is a great resource, but if I'm going to go looking for something I'm not sure about, I usually find it linked from this page.

Of course, I'm just scratching the surface of what's out there. What's your favorite Mac Office resource? Let's keep a list. Have a great week!

Messenger: haves and hA/Ve nots

Mary Starman — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:33:00 GMT

By now, some of you have heard the news. Today we launched Messenger for Mac 6.0, our first Universal application! It includes some exciting things, like federation with Yahoo, the ability to show “what I’m listening to” on my iTunes and a spell checker (yea!) as well as features that have been long standing requests like support for animated and custom emoticons. However, I know a number of you are bound to ask: “Where is A/V in Messenger for Mac!?!”

I said in my first blog entry that I’d try to shed light on how feature decisions get made, give you some examples, and address why A/V isn’t in this release.

The short version: we are working on it.

Right now, Windows Live Messenger (WLM) and Live Communications Server (LCS), are not quite in sync on their audio and video technologies. But, they are on a path to join up and move to a shared protocol in upcoming releases. Rather than write two sets of code only to have to throw one away in the coming months, we’re writing that common protocol for the Mac, and as we all converge we’ll have A/V in Messenger for Mac*.

For those of you who want to know more about the background of the quest for Messenger A/V, read on.

As we do our product planning, there are a bunch of sometimes conflicting things that we need to consider. Things like:

The mission of the MacBU – how does the proposed work support our mission of creating the most compatible productivity software for our customers
Microsoft corporate strategies and where and how we support them
Customer research that gives us data to helps us prioritize where we focus
The technology situation – what opportunities and limitations do we face in trying to do particular types of features

Here are two quick examples of how these have applied to Messenger for Mac. Then we’ll get on to the A/V specifics.

Supporting the MacBU mission – great productivity software

One example is the work we did to have your Messenger buddies in the track changes balloons in Word if they’re logged in to Messenger. It’s easier (aka you can be more productive) to be able to click on the icon and start a chat so that you can clarify the changes or input someone made on your document rather than having to send an email and wait for a response, or put your own comments in and send it for review and wait for an answer, or worse yet, make changes in the document only to find out when you re-send it for review that you completely misunderstood the feedback. (Admit it – we’ve all done that at least a time or two!)

Supporting Microsoft strategies

The work we did to support LCS is another example. More and more companies are concerned about how work information gets sent via IM. Their concerns could be about security during file transfer, or the desire to be able to centrally log and audit what’s being sent. Some just want one easy way to manage both internal and external IM-ing in one application, which LCS provides. For their Mac users, having Messenger provide LCS functionality makes it easy for them to address these concerns.

Getting down to A/V

When it comes to adding A/V to Messenger, the biggest hurdle we face is technology integration. Working against us are the facts that WLM and LCS aren’t completely synced on the audio and video technologies in their RTC stacks (the protocols for audio and video transmission), the fact that we have to do significant work to the RTC stacks in order to have them work on the Mac OS, and the reality that the time it would take to write two versions of the stacks makes it nearly impossible to keep up with the WLM and LCS release cycles. It’s a bit like trying to create a new cell phone that uses analog technology knowing that by the time you’re ready, the service provides will be switching to digital networks. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. (OK, I haven’t hit on the perfect analogy, but you get the idea.)

The good news is that since WLM and LCS are now on track to sync up their protocols, we think we have enough time before they get there to write it for the Mac OS. The upside to not trying to shoehorn A/V into 6.0 is that we could get some really good features, like Yahoo federation, spelling, our first universal binary, and custom and animated emoticon support. And at the same time, we don’t spend a year or more writing protocols that we have to rip out and re-write. Of course there are always trade-offs, which in this case include releasing Messenger 6.0 without A/V support, and the possibility that when we do get to A/V, we may see it on the LCS side slightly before we see it on the WLM side. (I know, I know, some of you don’t like that order. Hopefully all three team’s schedules will align at the same time but that isn’t a certainty.)

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Our dev team has made good progress on the audio and video protocol work already, and at this point we feel confident that we’ll be able to stay in sync with the LCS and WLM transitions. And then, yes then, we’ll happily announce a version of Messenger for Mac, with A/V support!

*The mouse type I have to include since we’re talking about features that haven’t shipped yet:

Features and timing are a MacBU estimation based on information provided by other Microsoft teams. This information relates to pre-release software product, which may be substantially modified before its first commercial release. Accordingly, the information may not accurately describe or reflect the software product or timing when first commercially released. This post is provided for informational purposes only, and Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to this post or the information contained in it. And there you have it.

Timidly going where I’ve never gone before…

Mary Starman — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 19:32:00 GMT

Have you read Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s book “naked conversations”? In the first chapter, they talk about the two sides of communication in companies today: the bloggers and the folks whose job it is to reduce risk and control the corporate message. I admit that after spending most of my career being one of the “corporate message cops” it is more than a bit intimidating to join the ranks of our MacBU team bloggers. But here goes!

By way of introduction, I’m Mary Starman, and I am the group product manager for the MacBU. I’ve recently celebrated by 10th anniversary at Microsoft, and have worked in several fascinating but somewhat unusual teams. I have worked on everything from our ActiMates toys (remember Barney, Arthur and D.W, and the TeleTubbies toys?) to our hardware line (mice, keyboards, the SideWinder game devices) to an early incarnation of the of Pocket PC. I even worked on our SmartPhone technology back when it was still just a code name. Then along the way I found myself in another “unusual” group – the MacBU.

Working in the MacBU is interesting for a product manager at Microsoft. While I do have to help our management team run a smart business (after all, even at Microsoft, every business has to be responsibly run) there is also the freedom to be a little different from the rest of the company. We get to be a little more fun in our packaging and branding, the way we talk about our products, etc. And we get to take advantage of interesting stuff Apple does with their hardware and their OS. But I think the biggest surprise for me was the first time I was at focus groups with Office for Mac customers. They were so passionate about their computers, their applications - - let’s be honest, we just didn’t see that kind of passion when we did focus groups about keyboards or mice. Every time I meet with our larger corporate customers, I get excited again about the possibilities and the people we are developing our software for. And seeing the responses to our blog so far, the passion continues.

After signing on to be part of the team of MacBU bloggers, I admit I had some doubts. A lot of the work that I do doesn’t seem all that glamorous when you’re slogging through forecasting or trying to help shape the tiny details of a new feature. But in reading the comments you all have been posting, I realized that I’ve been involved in a lot of the decisions that you’re curious about. Questions like “why don’t you do (fill in your favorite app)”? So, questions noted, and in my upcoming posts I’ll try to explain more about our decision process, what goes in to choosing to do an app (or not do one) etc.

I’m looking forward to this blog and the opportunity to give you my perspective on this great team we call MacBU.