The marketing folks at M$ told them to hold off on the Mac fix.. that way they could plan some astroturf about Macs being vulnerable to viruses.

Frankly, anyone using a Mac should be using the far-superior Keynote. It’s cheaper and better, how could you go wrong?

And ChoMamma hit it on the head. Do they actually think we believe that they need a “few more weeks” to work on the patch for PowerPoint for Mac? Please.

Indeed, why did the security bulletin even mention the Mac software if the patches weren’t available? MSFT could have just omitted mentioning that the Mac versions had similar vulnerabilities and simply issued another bulletin when ready.

we made a decision to go early with the Windows packages

...and I made a decision to avoid Microsoft software on my Mac.

I guess we’re even.

As of this two hours ago, I switched to KEYNOTE and I now wonder why I did not switch earlier.

Frankly, I don’t even use any part of Microsoft Office.. Word? nope.. textedit, Powerpoint? nope.. Keynote, Excel? nope..MySQL(I’m a web designer/dev..)

You guys are all missing the REAL pronouncement here!

Microsoft security engineer Jonathan Ness says,

“... none of the exploit samples Microsoft has analyzed will reliably work on the Mac…”

What Microsoft is REALLY saying is what Macintosh users have known for a while. And that is that the architecture of the Mac OS X OS is secure enough that even if Microsoft releases buggy, insecure applications for the Mac, you’re still safe because you’re on a Mac.

Thank you Microsoft for re-enforcing what we’ve know all along. Hmmm, I see another “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC”, commercial in that.

He added that none of the exploit samples Microsoft has analyzed will reliably work on the Mac, so the company didn’t see an issue with releasing information about the flaws before offering a security patch for Office 2004 and Office 2008.

So.. then it shouldn’t be all that hard to knock out a fix/patch then eh?

Frankly, anyone using a Mac should be using the far-superior Keynote. It’s cheaper and better, how could you go wrong?

You will go wrong if you work in a windows-based corporate environment where, like it or not, PowerPoint is ubiquitous.  And no, importing/exporting to/from PowerPoint is not the same thing.  When you get all sorts of PP files from many different clients, you want the genuine software, not an ersatz version of it that makes subtle changes to your file.

Keynote is an excellent app, but it’s really only great if you that’s it’s the only thing you and your company uses.

You will go wrong if you work in a windows-based corporate environment where, like it or not, PowerPoint is ubiquitous.

That’s why I’m glad my company has gone to OpenOffice. Aside from a few accountants that need to share files with outside companies, we don’t use M$Office.

Plus aside from a single virtual environment my Mac is MS free as well. Come to think of it I haven’t used that environment in a couple of months anyway. I think I’ll trash that as well.

This is why I NEVER use Microsoft products….. EVER. Overpriced, bug ridden, bloatware.