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Microsoft have issued patches for all versions of Office on Windows, including XP, 2003, 2007 and 2010 and Office for Mac 2011. They have not however delivered the security patches for Office for Mac 2004 and Office for Mac 2008.
This has caused a huge uproar among the Macintosh community with one user emailing Kitguru saying “I knew I should have bought the Apple office software, but after moving from Windows XP I found this was less of a hassle, relearning software. I have been running Office now with serious loopholes in the software and Microsoft won't patch it. Its a political move to force users to Windows.”
Jerry Bryant, a group manager in Microsoft Security Response Center, told Computerworld “We cannot give an exact date, but we expect to provide these updates during one of our normal monthly update cycles very soon. The updates for Mac Office 2004 and 2008 were not ready for broad distribution at the same time as the updates for the affected products used by the vast majority of our customers.”
We doubt his response will make Macintosh Office users very happy, as basically his comments say that they are down on the priority scale. Surely they have multiple teams working on software development and updates? This isn't the first time delays with OSx updates have been an issue.
Bryant also told Computerworld that Office for Mac users were not vulnerable to the same types of attacks, although hackers could try to dupe them into opening malicious RTF (rich text format) documents attached to e-mail messages.
KitGuru says: If you are a Macintosh user and unhappy, make sure you let us know.
If thats being treated like a second class citizen, I wonder under which category… windows users like me fall when looking support for our iphones and itunes… and how tight apple try to control every aspect of it’s product, even to the point of hurting the client.
Yeah Apple suck, but I understand why people buying office would be pissed off on the mac, its not cheap either.
honestly speaking the fact that they made the office suite for Mac users is enough to say that they try to support the Apple community by giving them an office experience as for windows users. Also let’s all remember that IE9 is not compatible with windows XP. The idea is that we’re in continuous progress and resources allocated for older products are becoming less as time passes. I’m not a big fan of Microsoft but i can say that Apple never gave me a free iPod whereas windows did provide me as a student with a free copy of Windows 7 Professional right when it became RTM and that was 1 month before it’s official release. Also i’m getting every Microsoft dev software free. So in that sense thank you Microsoft for supporting me.
A very interesting and informative article.
I agree with MS. Why the hell should Microsoft be in any rush to dev and deploy updates that help Apple? People have to remember that these two are rivals!
Use a PC for ms office if you want to take advantage of the latest Microsoft Security updates, simple.