Entries tagged with “microsoft” from O'Reilly Digital Media Blog

Microsoft Live Mesh is a free (so far) online storage service. Microsoft recently released a beta client for Mac OS X Leopard. I installed it on my MacBook and took it for a spin. You can find nearly a dozen screenshots illustrating the installation procedure and initial configuration.

I hate the slim Mac aluminum keyboard. Unfortunately, Leopard seems to dislike my Microsoft keyboard. Do I have to buy a Logitech? Sigh.

If you wait long enough, things appear. Microsoft finally released a production version of RDC2.

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac users can finally read those DOCX, XLSX and other "X" files created by Microsoft Office 2007 (for Windows) and 2008 (for Mac). Office 2008 for Mac gets its own giant 12.1.1 update with a bunch of fixes (some related to the previous SP1 update).

Believe it or not, Microsoft has useful tools (many free) for Mac users. I cover a bunch of them in here: Silverlight, MSN Messenger 7, Remote Desktop Connection Client, Flip4Mac WMV, SkyDrive, and the Microsoft Memory Mouse 8000.

With a sweet $18 billion of cash in the bank, it was just a matter of time until Apple would consider a major acquisition. Who would have thought that Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit would be their object of desire.

I had set this year as the year I would become Microsoft free. I have nothing against Microsoft --- there were just some products I wanted to stop using: IE, Office, and Windows.

Reader M.M. asks where one can find a developer to build an Entourage script. But, my advice is to wait until Office 2008 for Mac is released on Jan. 15, 2008.

Microsoft's Office Live Workspace stores, shares, and displays Microsoft Office documents on the web. And, it works with Firefox on a Mac.

O'Reilly just released Windows Vista Annoyances and you can read the multimedia solutions chapter online for free.

Cakewalk, one of the first music software manufacturers to achieve Windows Vista compatibility, just launched a musicians' resource site for the new OS. It explains the musical benefits, lists audio gear with Vista drivers, and features links to other sites with Vista music information. Speaking of which, be sure to check out O'Reilly's Vista site as well, where you'll find...

I'm sure you've heard the news that Microsoft must pay $1.5B as the result of a lawsuit brought by Alcatel-Lucent. You can read about it, but it sure is a good lesson. You better do your homework before licensing patents. I encourage everyone to look into the use of Vorbis Ogg format. First, it sounds very good. And it's patent...

I stumbled across this little Windows tech support article on Mercury News. I suppose it wouldn't occur to me to copy the raw files from CDs onto Windows rather than use a program like iTunes or Zune Software to do the rips, but apparently there's a built-in security feature in Windows that automagically sets copied CD-ROM files to read-only. If...

According to online Zune docs, it is not. Given that Vista is supposed to ship any second, this seems like bad planning to say the least on Microsoft's part....

Recently I installed Microsoft Vista Release Candidate 2 on my MacBookPro using Paralells. So far it seems to be fast, stable and very attractive. So far I've only been running Office 2007, FrontPage 2003 and Firefox, but I plan on installing a 3D CAD program soon to really stress it out. I must say that I'm just doing this because...

According to CNET, RealNetworks will release open-source software at the end of this year to allow non-Windows software to play Windows Media files (WMV and WMA.) All made possible by...

MicrosoftWatch.com reports: Microsoft is still pushing full-steam-ahead with a music-making program, code-named "Monaco," according to Microsoft partners who requested anonymity. Monaco would be very similar to Apple's GarageBand application, but would be optimized to take advantage of Windows Vista and the Aero user interface. The article doesn’t explain how Areo would benefit music; I’m guessing musicians will actually get better...

What is a covenant anyway? The U.S. government has been agressive in demanding that other countries accede to noxious IPR innovations. Does international law need to catch up for when IPR owners want to give up these "rights"?

Wow! Big response to my post, made with tongue only partly in cheek, accusing Microsoft of designing Office apps to crash on Macs. More on my experience as a crash test dummy, plus other perspectives.

It has to be deliberate: Almost nothing crashes on my Mac except Microsoft products, which do so frequently and with gusto.