MS Access for Mac
May 14, 2008
The new version of Office 2008 is out now for Mac and we will look at why this version, like all the others that have come before does not include MS Access.
Current programs can simply be ported between operating systems as they are written in high level descriptive programming languages, some of which are virtually identical on every platform. While with the cross-platform Java language you can simply recompile the project for any operating system. Although with java you will have to face certain limitations in how you code your program. With most other languages all the code that communicates directly with the OS will have to rewritten as they are different for every platform. Also some libraries are platform specific so you have to find alternate methods which make work in a different manner as well, unless you are willing to program them. While the code that actually does the processing within your program can simply be imported directly into the new version with little or no re-coding as long as the programming language remains the same.
Unfortunately in the case of access it doesn’t just communicate with the system it also uses many other libraries and applications like .Net and Microsoft Jet Database Engine which are only available on Windows. So you would have to port all of these libraries and applications onto Mac as well, for Access to work.
Microsoft has never shown much interest in porting the two biggest components, .Net and Jet to Mac because it’s not in their own interest to do so. Adding the additional architecture of .Net to Mac would make it easier for PC programmers to bring more software to Mac and help raise the quantity of software available for Macs which could not only damage their market share but would offer little financial compensation. As for MSSQL there are many alternatives for Mac some are free open source distributions so you would have a hard time selling it as a product.
All in all, it makes MS Access too large and expensive a project for something that less than half of all Microsoft Office users even use.
Written by Grey · Filed Under Programming
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