The "Apple Tax" is actually a "Microsoft Tax"

Or: How to alienate and antagonize your customers

Microsoft is clearly feeling some pain from Apple's growth, as demonstrated by the recent interviews given by various of its people who are now more urgently repeating messages about PCs being better than Macs and about what they like to call the "Apple Tax".  Two nice examples are the late September interview with Steve Ballmer in pcmag.com and one with Brad Brooks in CNET.

There's much in these interviews that sounds like desperation and I have neither the time nor the patience to dissect them in detail.  I'd just like to focus on one thing, the statement that "you don't really get full Microsoft Office [on the Mac]."  

Well, whose fault is that, Mr Ballmer?

I use a Mac at work (through choice) and I use Microsoft Office because that's what everyone else uses.  On the whole, Office 2008 on the Mac works pretty well.  But, as Steve Ballmer says, it falls short of Office on Windows in a couple of respects.

The first is compatibility with the Exchange, the widely used mail and calendaring server.  In years gone by, Microsoft used to sell a version of Outlook for the Mac that worked pretty much like Outlook on Windows.  But then Microsoft dropped Outlook on the Mac for something called Entourage, and Entourage is what you get with Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac.  

Entourage is fine as a mail tool and while there are some bizarre bugs with font sizes (thanks to deficiencies in the HTML it generates) it works pretty well.  

On the downside, its integration with Exchange is deficient.  You can't book resources (meeting rooms, for example) using Entourage, and checking another user's calendar is a long-winded process.  Some of this is simply because Entourage simply doesn't have access to the full set of APIs that it needs to work well with Exchange.

If Exchange were a third party product, that might be excusable.  But it isn't.  Microsoft makes Exchange and defines the APIs.  It also makes Entourage.  Can it get them to talk together properly?  Apparently not.

The other niggle is Excel.  In Microsoft Office 2008, Microsoft have dropped support for macros.  Microsoft now says that this support will return in a later release, but once again, this is Microsoft failing to support its own customers.  Fixing the problem cannot be impossible - apparently OpenOffice has VBA support on the Mac (and other platforms).  

Neither of these problems are show stoppers for me, though the VBA one is for quite a few people.  The reliability, freedom from viruses and overall performance of the Mac makes it a pleasure to use, even with these shortcomings in Microsoft's software.  But it does annoy me that Microsoft have clearly chosen to try to degrade the user experience of their customers who fail to loyally keep paying for Microsoft Windows. 

Here in the UK, Microsoft are selling Office Ultimate 2007 for £38.95, including tax.  You need an ".ac.uk" email address to get this price (it's aimed at students).  Funnily enough, the offer seems only to apply to Office for Windows.  Office 2008 for the Mac (Student Edition) is £79.97 on Amazon, while standard edition is £329.98.

Apple Tax?  Or Microsoft Tax?