Showing its continuing commitment to the Macintosh, Microsoft has made available updates to two of its Macintosh products—Office X and MSN Messenger—although in both cases the Macintosh version lags behind the comparable Windows product. Besides bug fixes, the Office update reintroduces certain database features that were available in previous versions of Excel for the Macintosh, but not in the initial OS X release. The new release of MSN Messenger for Mac OS X is comparable with MSN Messenger for Windows 2000 and 9x but lacks some messaging capabilities found in the newer Windows Messenger client in Windows XP.

Office Update Improves Database Interoperability

Service Release 1 (SR1) of Office for Mac OS X includes support for the Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) API, which allows Excel worksheets to include data retrieved from a variety of databases, such as Oracle or SQL Server. Although versions of Excel for the previous Macintosh operating system allowed Mac users to access databases via ODBC (with a third-party ODBC driver), Microsoft did not convert this feature for the initial release for Mac OS X. This meant that spreadsheets created with the Windows version or previous Mac versions of Excel, and which relied upon ODBC, could not be used with Office X.

SR1 reintroduces ODBC support, albeit with significant limitations. Although spreadsheets that use ODBC can now be opened with Excel X and the data refreshed from the database, OS X users can neither modify the database queries used to generate the data nor create new queries.

In addition, Microsoft still does not make any ODBC drivers available for the Macintosh. An ODBC driver is the software component that communicates with the specific database being used. Users who want to use the ODBC capabilities of Excel will need to obtain the appropriate driver from a third party.

MSN Messenger Features Still Lag XP

Microsoft has also updated its MSN Messenger client for the Macintosh. MSN Messenger 3.0 for the Macintosh includes the same text messaging and contact list features as MSN Messenger for Windows 2000 and 9x, and allows Macintosh users to exchange instant messages with both MSN Messenger and the Windows Messenger client included with Windows XP.

However, the Macintosh version lacks some of the features contained in the Windows XP client, such as videoconferencing and the ability to make phone calls over the Internet. More specifically, it does not support the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which is slated to become the sole protocol used by Microsoft's online messaging services and conferencing products. (See "Windows Messenger Moves IM, Conferencing in New Direction" on page 8 of the Aug. 2001 Update.)

Resources

For more information on Microsoft’s overall Macintosh product strategy, see "Macintosh Applications to Continue" on page 15 of the May 2002 Update.

Service Release 1 for Office X is available at www.microsoft.com/mac/DOWNLOAD/OFFICEX/OfficeX_SR1.asp.

The new version of MSN Messenger can be downloaded at www.microsoft.com/mac/DOWNLOAD/MISC/msn_messenger3.asp.