BlakeBlog

The Debacle of VBA on the Mac

So Microsoft's Mac Business Unit (MBU) released Office 2008 without support for Visual Basic for Applications, commonly abbreviated VBA. VBA lets power users program Office applications to do things that Microsoft doesn't support out-of-the-box. The technology is heavily used by companies to support their unique business processes and is a standard feature in Office 2004 for Mac, as well as Office for Windows.

VBA on Windows was a little different than VBA on OS X, but developers could usually work around the differences and make a single program work well on both operating systems. This interoperability was a key enabler for Mac fans in corporate America, since it meant that they could use all the custom tools their company had developed for Windows, yet enjoy the advantages of OS X.

Microsoft announced in advance that they wouldn't be supporting VBA in Office 2008 and trotted out a long list of reasons why they simply couldn't do so. There was a loud uproar from developers, corporate America that supports OS X, and users, yet Microsoft said that some new, limited support for AppleScript functionality would have to suffice. So, developers either translated their VBA to AppleScript (in the limited instances where AppleScript could suffice), declined to upgrade to Office 2008, or cast around for alternatives. One alternative is NeoOffice, which provides file compatibility and limited support for VBA on OS X.

Now, Microsoft has announced that they will support VBA on OS X in the next release of Office for Mac. The next release should be out in 2010 or 2011, which leaves users without VBA support for 2-3 years. This brings up a number of questions:

1) Microsoft swore up-and-down that VBA on the Mac just couldn't be done. Folks went through a lot of effort to identify alternatives. Now Microsoft says it can be done after all. Why should we ever believe Microsoft in the future? They've just shot their credibility all to hell and put a huge number of supporters through considerable stress.

2) Now folks have a 2-3 year wait for VBA support again, meaning many of them will sit out of the upgrade game and skip Office 2008 entirely. In fact, a very low adoption rate is probably one of the things that pushed Microsoft to again include VBA support. Microsoft's not going to make much money on Office 2008.

3) With 2-3 years to wait, and distaste fairly strong in their mouths, users will cast around for less-expensive alternatives that actually listen to what they want. Contenders include NeoOffice (free, and with continually improving support for VBA), and Apple's iWork (if companies decide that VBA isn't critical after all).

This entire incident really highlights how insulated Microsoft has become from its customers, and thus how poor it is at responding to the market.

Pet Peeve of the Day

So I'm trying to subscribe to a group over at Yahoo! Groups, and there's a section where you can enter a message to the list owner that's up to 200 characters long. This is quite a useful feature, as spammers will almost never take the time to write a topical message. However, the text field isn't limited to 200 characters via a maxlength attribute in the HTML, nor is there some Javascript that provides a character count as you type. The only way to find out the number of characters is to either use an external text editor that can count characters, or submit the form and be told that you've exceeded 200 characters—please try again. (And, no, the error message doesn't even show you where the 200 character cut-off is in your text.)

What a PITA!

TechShop: A DIY Candy Store

Several days ago I caught a recent post over at Cool Tools about TechShop, a local (but expanding) "shop club." Members have unlimited access to an amazing array of large, expensive tools, plus they offer reasonably-priced classes to anyone, member or not, in how to use the tools and make interesting things. Right now they're open 9:00 AM until midnight every day, but soon they'll be open 24 hours a day.

Some of the tools that especially interest me include the lathe and milling tools, including a CNC milling machine, the plastic roto molder, the 3D printer, the laser cutter, all the sheet metal tools (brakes, English wheels, punches and shears), the anodizing station, and all the welding goodies (plasma cutters, MIG, TIG, OxyAcetylene, and spot welders), plus carbon fiber layup tools and oven.

While it's not cheap, the membership prices are really quite a bargain considering the considerable expense of the equipment and the the space it takes to hold them all. There's no way I could ever hope to have the space for even a small number of the larger tools, so $900/year (going up to $1,200/year on Jun01) is still a reasonable price. (Six-month and one-month memberships are also available, too.)

I think I'm going to start off taking some of the classes first. They're the least-expensive way to get hands-on with the tools, and in some cases they're required before you can use some of the tools that are more complicated or powerful. I've always wanted to learn how to weld, but the junior college/night school route just didn't mesh with my schedule. Now I can take a quick 1.5-hour class to learn the basics, then practice as much as I'd like. Of course, the CNC plasma cutter class would be useful as well. And the molten aluminum sand casting class. And the carbon fiber layup class. And... and... and...

Amazon's "Subscribe & Save" Is a Winner

To help my personal fitness program I drink some sport drink mixes pre- and post-workout. These come as powders that have to be measured out and mixed with water, which is a bit of a hassle (but that gripe's probably best for another post). Anyway, the ones I like are hard to find locally, and when I can find them they're sold at full retail plus sales tax (plus the cost of gas to get to the store!), which makes the already spendy stuff even more so.

So of course I turn to "teh Internets" for better pricing and convenience. Supplements being what they are, there are lots of companies out there selling them and many of these companies don't have the best customer service reputations. Of the companies I've tried, far and away my favorite has been AllStarHealth.com, but they're located here in California so I get to pay the tax man and the UPS man when shopping with them. The biggest disappointment is that they don't carry one of my new favorite mixes, even though I've emailed them and they've said they plan on stocking it soon.

Being in need of more mix RSN, I started looking for another store that stocks both mixes. Imagine my surprise when a Froogle search showed that Amazon.com is now selling both of my favorite mixes. This isn't via their Marketplace service that lets other companies list products at Amazon; Amazon itself is selling the products directly.

Even better, they're available via a service called "Subscribe & Save" that I hadn't heard of before. It looks like it launched late last year as part of their beta Grocery service, and it lets you schedule regular shipments of your items. OK, so that's not that new of a feature—even my old favorite (AllStarHealth.com) offers a subscription service as well. What makes it exceptional is that Amazon gives you a 15% discount on their regular price for buying via subscription, and they also waive the fees for standard shipping. That's a huge discount and makes the all-in price significantly lower than anyone else I've been able to find. And, because it's Amazon, the payment process is quick, painless, well-communicated, and they also provide obvious control over my subscription with a nice dashboard.

As I write this my first order is slowly making its way to me via USPS. The two downsides I've observed so far are 1) A limited scheduler (1-, 2-, 3- or 6-month increments only), and 2) Long shipping times with USPS. The long ship times can be easily accommodated by order a little more in advance, but the scheduler could be a pain if you consistently use up a product at an odd interval. It's pretty easy to skip a shipment so it's not like you can't manually tweak the shipping schedule as needed, but it'd also be nice if there was an "Advanced..." button to let control freaks define a custom interval, too.

UPDATE May07: It seems that the USPS doesn't really know when they're going to deliver packages. Their online package tracking told me that I'd receive both shipments on May08, but one arrived on May05 and the other arrived on May06. Note to Amazon.com: Y'all really need to optimize your shipping engine. When multiple products are scheduled to ship on the same day you'd save a bunch of money if you consolidated them into a single box.