Microsoft treat Apple mac users like second class citizens

Microsoft have issued patches for all versions of Office on Windows, including XP, 2003, 2007 and 2010 and Office for Mac 2011. They have not however delivered the security patches for Office for Mac 2004 and Office for Mac 2008.

This has caused a huge uproar among the Macintosh community with one user emailing Kitguru saying “I knew I should have bought the Apple office software, but after moving from Windows XP I found this was less of a hassle, relearning software. I have been running Office now with serious loopholes in the software and Microsoft won't patch it. Its a political move to force users to Windows.”

Jerry Bryant, a group manager in Microsoft Security Response Center, told Computerworld “We cannot give an exact date, but we expect to provide these updates during one of our normal monthly update cycles very soon. The updates for Mac Office 2004 and 2008 were not ready for broad distribution at the same time as the updates for the affected products used by the vast majority of our customers.”

We doubt his response will make Macintosh Office users very happy, as basically his comments say that they are down on the priority scale. Surely they have multiple teams working on software development and updates? This isn't the first time delays with OSx updates have been an issue.

Bryant also told Computerworld that Office for Mac users were not vulnerable to the same types of attacks, although hackers could try to dupe them into opening malicious RTF (rich text format) documents attached to e-mail messages.

KitGuru says: If you are a Macintosh user and unhappy, make sure you let us know.

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