Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday offered details about the compatibility of its Mac products with Mac OS X v10.4 “Tiger.” Apple announced earlier on Tuesday that Tiger will ship on Friday, April 29, 2005. According to Microsoft, it has worked closely with Apple to make sure that Office 2004 works with new Tiger technologies, and “will conduct final testing” on its Virtual PC product when Tiger is available.
“For example, upon installation of the new OS, Spotlight will be able to index Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats,” read a statement offered by a Microsoft spokesperson. “Support for additional features such as sync services will be enabled by a future update.”
Microsoft offered Macworld further details of how Tiger and Microsoft Office 2004 work together at a meeting earlier this year.
“Additionally, Microsoft is collaborating with Apple to identify potential issues when running VPC 7.0.1 on Tiger and will conduct final testing upon Tiger’s availability,” said Microsoft. “Microsoft will release a free update within the next two to three months to address any issues. The update will be available for download from www.microsoft.com/mac.
A Microsoft spokesperson identified virtual switch, zero configuration printing and the dock start menu as potential problem areas for Virtual PC 7.0.1 running on Mac OS X v10.4. “However, we won’t know for sure until the team can begin testing final code upon Tiger availability,” the spokesperson said.
Updated 5:00 PM 04/12/05: Information about Virtual PC 7.0.1/Tiger compatibility added.