After Tim and Chad discussed improvements to Mac Office 2004, during PodCast 45, I happened to receive the following email exchange between my friend Kurt and a Tech Support representative of Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit. Tim’s remarks led me to believe all is well and rosy now between Microsoft and Apple, but such is not the case, as you will read.
Kurt is a networking expert and a computer consultant with decades of experience. His comments constitute an editorial-via-email to remind all of us that Microsoft still is the Big Gorilla of the office environment, for better or worse. When Apple says ‘Jump,’ Microsoft says ‘Which part of you would you like me to land on?’
Many of us need to use MS Office, and we do so knowing we have friends in the Mac Business Unit. But as Kurt explains, the case is never really closed for people who have concerns about Microsoft’s dedication to our favorite operating system.
* * * * *
Kurt wrote:
John,
Thought you might be interested in this. It turns out that the combination of:
Client on Tiger with Word 2004
and
Server = OS X Server 10.3 (and possibly 10.4)
doesn’t work because files opened from the server cannot be saved without Word crashing. No workaround, no fix imminent. Here’s the last technical response from the support guy.
Below is the non-technical email I sent them at the conclusion of the case. Farther below is the last part of the technical thread.
Kurt
* * * * *
From: Kurt
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 8:59 PM
To: MS Tech Support
Subject: RE: Closing email for case # SRX———
Dear Microsoft Technical Support,
This is in response to your letter as well as to your boss’s letter which requested feedback.
I wanted to comment on my perceived patience. The best thing about this experience is that you were very honest and forthcoming with me and that you were knowledgeable. I enjoyed the experience of working with you as well. It was the situation I might have been impatient with, not you.
As a younger man, I would have been much less patient, but after doing this for 25 years, I realize that everything has bugs and some of them are big. Even though, as I reflect back over MS’s long and complicated history with Apple and its products, I must say that a pattern emerges. This pattern can be interpreted in a couple of different ways. The simplest and most benign is that MS just focuses more programming resources on its Windows products and that Mac products receive less. That makes sense in a business kind of way.
Apple often warns developers that they are going to make some fundamental change in a particular technology so that they can have their code compatible with an upcoming architecture before it is released. The warning usually precedes the actual change by more than a year. This was the case in the file system for the Tiger OS. Most developers respond with their fixes in advance of Apple’s change, Microsoft evidently didn’t.
Here’s the pattern: Microsoft is frequently behind the curve on these pre-announced architectural changes. I remember working out a problem with printing in System 7.1 printing where your tech actually said to me, ‘Do you mean to imply that every time Apple changes its OS, that you expect Microsoft to change its application software to match it?’
I know that MS employees, by inclination or indoctrination, believe in the Redmond-centered universe, but when you’re making application software for someone else’s OS, doesn’t it make sense to abide by the concepts, rules and architecture of that OS? Doesn’t Microsoft also warn/dictate its application developers concerning planned technology changes?
I don’t know if Microsoft has let itself get behind the curve time and time again out of incompetence, arrogance or because it perceives there is a competitive advantage to crippling the usefulness of non-Microsoft software (OS X Server), but it is maddening. The reason you perceive me to be patient is that a) I’ve been in this position many times before and b) I’m older and less inclined to fly off the handle and c) it doesn’t help anything to get mad.
I have seen Microsoft’s ‘competitive spirit’ from the trenches, and it plays out at every level of the process. Here’s just one example from the micro level: When Windows NT was still fairly new, a customer asked me to figure out why Windows NT running on an old, under-powered server was out-performing his company’s new, high-powered Novell server. With a protocol analyzer, I saw how Microsoft inserted an artificial wait time between packets into its IPX driver to throttle Novell’s performance and make it appear that NT servers performed as well or better than Novell servers. That’s a programming decision someone made at the smallest level of code.
The problem that we are having is near the top level. My mind reels as I consider the multiplier effect of dozens of independently-made coding choices that add up to major problems of the type that we are currently experiencing.
Kurt
* * * * *
This was in reply to this non-technical email:
From: Microsoft Tech Support
Sent: Friday, September 16, 2005 11:12 AM
To: Kurt
Subject: Closing email for case # SRX———
Hi Kurt,
It was indeed a pleasure working with you. I really appreciate you being so patient while we worked towards finding a solution for your specific issue regarding Applications tend to crash while trying to save files on the network server. I would like to provide you with my contact information along with a summary of the case for future reference.
I wish to let you know that as you seemed to have resolved this problem by switching over to your old OS9 AppleShare IP server so I will be making this case as non-decrement before closing this case.
Again, it was my pleasure to work with you. If you have any questions or problems with the troubleshooting steps we discussed, please do not hesitate to contact me directly in the future. Very Satisfied Customers are my top priority. If you wish to provide feedback on your support experience please feel free to contact my manager.
Sincerely,
Support Engineer, MCSD, MCSA, MCSE
Mac Enterprise Business Application
* * * * *
Here’s the last of the tech emails:
From: Kurt
Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2005 11:05 PM
To: Microsoft Tech Support
Subject: RE: Case # SRX———
We have moved the server volume containing all the Word documents to an OS9 AppleShare IP server and now we are able to use the word docs normally. I haven’t tried Excel yet because it’s a newspaper and the people affected by this are the writers, not the business people, but I assume that that will work OK, too.
We’re still anxious to get the fix as our OS X server is much more powerful, stable and resilient (RAID, power, backup, etc.).
I’ve researched and thought a bit about what MS have to do to fix this. I think this is probably not the kind of fix you can do with a small patch. It seems to me to be the kind of thing you do with a service pack or even a new version. I know you can’t comment on that, but I’ve advised the customer that the fix may take 2-3 months or even longer. We’ll get by in the meantime, but I still would appreciate notification when the fix is ready.
Kurt
* * * * *
To which he replied:
Dear Kurt,
You are correct in figuring out that the resolution of this problem cannot be addressed in next Service Packs, it may be addressed in next version and when that will be there, you are correct again in pointing that I am no in the position to comment on when that will be.
Please let me know if you are fine with this then I can make this case as Non-decrement and send you the closing email on this.
Thanks
[Name withheld from this blog, to respect privacy and professional communications]
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