Microsoft Corp is planning to release revised versions of its Macintosh browser, email and Word applications in the fall and says that the products will have features not in the Windows versions. The company previewed Macintosh editions of Internet Explorer 5, Outlook Express 5 and a dedicated iMac version of Word 98 at MacWorld Expo in New York yesterday.
Microsoft – which says it is the largest developer of Macintosh software in the world – claims that IE5 and Outlook are aimed at the same target market as the iMac – consumers who want an easy to use product. IE5 for the Mac features a new rendering engine, dubbed Tasman, which is intended to allow Mac users to view web pages created using Windows PC. This has been difficult in the past because of the differing color palates used by the two operating systems. The email client, Outlook Express will include a ‘smart attachments’ feature that will automatically convert Windows and Unix documents so that they can be read by the Mac OS. Microsoft is also proposing a junk mail filter for the new software. The Word 98 iMac edition will feature 5,000 clipart images and be priced at $99.
After Microsoft invested $150m in Apple Computer Corp two years ago and signed a software alliance, the company has been keen to debunk what it describes as the myth that the companies were deadly adversaries. Interestingly, other developers at the show suggested that the increased compatibility between the existing versions of Office 98 for Windows and the Mac OS – a Word file can be read by both machines without the extraneous characters that resulted with previous versions – has allowed IT managers to consider using a mixture of Macs and PCs in a business environment.
