“Office 2008 for Mac has gingerly stepped out of the alpha phase of its development as Microsoft works towards a late 2007 release of its overhauled Macintosh suite.
‘We’re in private betas right now’ confirmed Sheridan Jones, Lead Marketing Manager for Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit (MacBU), during an exclusive interview with APC magazine.
While Jones was unable to speculate on the timetable for any public beta or the targets for RTM (release to manufacture), a demo of an alpha build showed the revised user interface is moving in a very appealing and Mac-like direction,” David Flynn reports for APC Magazine.
Flynn reports, “Our peek at the alpha build, which Jones cautioned was still in the very earliest of stages of both the UI and backend development, showed hints of a streamlined look with a modern black sheen, at times similar to the elements in recent Apple applications such as iTunes 7 and iLife 06. Rest easy, Mac-fans — this is not Office for Windows.”
“Parts of the redesign are peeking through almost every application, as well as application modules such as the notebook view in Word, and Jones promises that there’s plenty to share in the months ahead.” Flynn reports.
“While there’s no Office 2007 ribbon in sight, one inheritance from its Windows counterpart is the ‘Escher’ graphics engine which is responsible for Office 2007’s dramatically improved art and charting capabilities,” Flynn reports. “All of the Office 2008 for Mac applications, most noticeably Word and PowerPoint, can conjure graphics with elegant visuals such as 3D effects, mirroring, glass effects, glows and shadows.”
Full article with screenshots here.
MacDailyNews Take: Thrilling. Hey, have you seen? NeoOffice 2.1 is out! NeoOffice (screenshot) is a fully-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing programs) for Mac OS X. Based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, NeoOffice has integrated dozens of native Mac features and can import, edit, and exchange files with other office programs such as Microsoft Office. Released as free, open source software under the GNU General Public License (GPL), NeoOffice is fully functional and ready for everyday use. The software is actively developed, so improvements and small updates are made available on a regular basis. More info and download link: http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/download.php
Related articles:
Microsoft warns of Office flaw; Office 2004 for Mac potentially vulnerable – February 05, 2007
‘docXConverter’ converts Microsoft Office 2007 ‘docx’ files – December 21, 2006
Beginning of the end for Office for Mac? Microsoft drops Visual Basic support in Mac version – December 09, 2006
Microsoft’s Office 2007 for Windows saves documents in Mac-incompatible format – December 05, 2006
All-new user interface coming for Office 2007 for Mac – September 18, 2006
Mac users should not buy Microsoft software (or hardware) – May 16, 2003
Now with 10% more anal leakage.
If things go our way, this will be MS’ flagship product soon…
just ridded myself of office with neo and msn with adium, microsoft free mac here!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> and happy
Still gonna be feces.
Wasn’t Escher the one whose drawings looked cool at first, but when you tried to figure them out you got more and more frustrated?
Hmmmmmm…
My MS word 2004 crashed last night with my document….Grrrr…lost a whole page of what I was writing. As Triumph would say…I poop on you (MS)!
Looking forward to this.
Good job, Microsoft.
Better do something sooner than that. Keynote makes Powerpoint look like a child’s toy. My presentation’s put everyone else’s to shame. Excel has it’s moments but there are alternatives and what about Word? We’ll, it’s better on the Mac then that PC already but how many ways do you need to type a document. If you want quick, fantastic layout with text, charts and graphics then Pages make’s you look like a hero.
Honestly, I like Office for the Mac but if MS thinks they are going to hold Office hostage like they have done in the past, then they are truly delusional.
Yeah. Tell me about it.
Feces it certainly will be.
Bloatware for fools.
Just this week I played properly with Pages and it’s so refreshingly easy to work with. Incredibly intuitive and surprisingly powerful. I say surprisingly because it appears to be very minimalistic at first until you really play with it. Makes Word look stupidly overbloates and poorly implemented.
MDN word: social.
As “I wonder how many MS employees will be drawing social security benefits in a few months time”
Sorry, Micro$haft, but you need to do more than just give your graphics engine a cool name!
iLife/iWork – save me from MSOffice – Please!
I’ll give NeoOffice a look-see.
Keyman,
So right you are. When I give lectures for the residents and medical students, I invariably hear “holy shit!” from somewhere in the audience near the beginning. Last year, I actually had an audience break out into spontaneous applause with the transition from my first slide to the second one (the cube effect). I realized these PowerPoint-fed masses were hungry for real graphics and replied, “don’t worry – it’s a Mac”, to great laughter.
Although, I wish Keynote would provide support for glows and glass effects.
Anybody have any interest in creating a consortium to explore the possibility of buying the MacBU of MS?
Thanks for the heads-up about Neo-Office. I’ll give it a try at home. I’ve already begun to switch over to OpenOffice here at work (PCs, unfortunately). My boss doesn’t even realize I’m switching. I figure at some point they might notice, but I doubt it. If I can get others around here to switch, when they come up to us and ask us to switch to Vista and the God-Awful Office 2007 from Microsoft, we can say ‘no thanks.’
That’s my hope, at least.
RE: MDN Take
Do you guys never do any real work? It’s sad but true that Excel (yes, originally a Mac only product) is the best spreadsheet program out there. It’s the only one you can use to do any real work or analysis with, don’t make me laugh by pathetically pointing to inferior products.
Like it or not, hate Microsoft or not, Office for Mac is a very important suite.
I am hoping that Excel 2008 for Mac supports multi-core like Excel 2007 for Windows does; that’s a killer feature.
Mr. Peabody,
I’ve got some pocket fluff I’m willing to donate to your purchase of MacBU.
Well I like it – keep going MacBU…
If things go our way, this will be MS’ flagship product soon…
That was Bill Gates’ original vision, for Apple to do the OS and Microsoft to provide the “productivity” apps. Apple did him the favor of his life by knocking him back.
If we’re lucky, it may eventually be Apple doing both …
@Cubert
I have had that same effect when I give seminars using Keynote. I have cool animations and trasitions and the shadow/mirror effects on graphs and images have people coming up to me afterwards to ask how I did that in Powerpoint. I was mean once to a person I dislikes and told him that it was simple, to just read the Microsoft powerpoint help file…..Snicker snicker.
yeah I know…I’m going to hell.
I’ve been a Mac user since ’84, but MS Word has it’s place. Apple’s Pages (to the best of my knowledge) )doesn’t do table of contents, cross references, and otehr things I need in professional documents.
For light-weight word processing, you can go MS free, but for heavy lifting, Word is still where it’s at.
That said, I’m glad to see Word is becoming more Mac like.
Why did the MBU dump Visual Basic in the Mac version of Office?
Erik Schwiebert is the Software Design Lead at the Macintosh Business Unit. He responded on his weblog back in August, 2006 with a long explanation and a defense of the decision:
http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-goodbye-to-visual-basic
http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/10/so-tell-us-what-you-want-what-you-really-really-want
Long story short? MS doesn’t think there’s enough return on the investment.
@ Buster
that was mean !!
(but funnier than hell !!)
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Hey, I still happily use AppleWorks. The ability to pop a mini spreadsheet into ANY AppleWorks document STILL hasn’t been beat by anything else! AppleWorks and MacLinkPlus are STILL a pretty good combo!
I’ve given Pages a spin, but found the current version slow and a bit klunky.
So, I’m downloading NeoOffice 2.1 right now to give it a go.
We shall see.
MDN’s take illustrates that they clearly never have to actually use their office application – beyond perhaps writing a letter or using a pretty Keynote template. iWork simply doesn’t cut it for business use and NeoOffice is great for its price (free), but very 1990’s in terms of features, look and feel. Mac:office is a great product and it’s pathetic that people here knock it, just because the owner is Microsoft. You lose any credibility you might have once had. There simply is no alternative for business use.
I never heard of NeoOffice until a few days ago. Downloaded and installed it. So far, all pps, xls, and doc files worked as expected. I’m impressed and may even send a donation to help keep them going.
MS purposely does not want full compatibility with Macs. That is why they are dropping Visual Basic. Period.
“You lose any credibility you might have once had.”
– Reality Check
That is the FUNNIEST thing I have read today! Remember kids, irony does not mean full of iron. Oh lord, my sides hurt.
MDN – your take is great. I think this is the year I’m gonna switch to Neo.
@ RC
MS Word used to be the de facto app “for business” .. and, in a way.. it probably still is.. only because most businesses think its the only fish in the pond !
But, when you look at how bloated Word .. (and Office) has become over the years .. it begs the question …
“How many of those ‘features’ are actually being used on a daily basis ?”
If the answer is .. not all of them .. then why would any business spend the money to upgrade it ?
Especially since the alternatives do the same job at a more resonable price … (some for free) …
The days of Microsoft being the dominate player is rapidly coming to an end ..
and even people like you must face it !
Here is a good indicator for you to check out … and .. This is something to compare it with …
Now why does the phrase … “See the handwriting on the wall” … come to mind ?
MS Office Clearly has a place for the Mac User. While we may not need PowerPoint anymore (Pages is by far much better), Excel & Word are by far more advanced than Pages & the non-existent spreadsheet Application.
Microsoft Word & Excel are arguably “the” best programs Microsoft make. And frankly, I like the Office for the Mac versions more than the Windows versions.
My question is why doesn’t Microsoft of Apple release something ala Corel Printhouse or MicroSoft Publisher? I’m thinking of getting boot camp just to run that programme.
@ Shogun:
Yep, that’s Escher. I noticed that too….. it’s an odd name for a UI. Escher drew the famous “Escher spiral”, which is basically a never-ending drawing that just makes you dizzy.
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I’ve been a Star Office and Open Office user while in Linux, and I use NeoOffice.
Great apps! The only thing which hey dont have (who needs them anyway?) is the VBscripting capability (also absent i the Mac version), and which you will use if and only if you are a developer.
But I’m sure 95% of people on planet Earth would be totally satisfied with NeoOffice (or OpenOffice if you use Linux or Windows)
MW Word: “led”, as in “Led Zeppelin rocks”, yeah, I know, nothing to do with anything, but… I’m a Zeppelin fan, couldn’t help myself
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@Reality Check,
Its precisely that kind of thing that got us where we are with Windows today.
Buster,
You should see their faces when I tell them it’s a $40 program (half of $79 for iWork). Forklifts needed to reset people’s jaws.
The Escher Engine is for the Graphics Engine, not the UI. Great name. If Apple used it you guys would be all over it.
regarding Keynote… if you need a flashy presentation then you’re not presenting your material well enough. Effects are not supposed to distract from your presentation. YOU are giving the presentation, not your computer. For that purpose, powerpoint and keynote and hey, even a SLIDE projector do essentially the same thing.
@RC
“NeoOffice is great for its price (free), but very 1990’s in terms of features, look and feel.”
Care to enlighten us all with some examples? Or are you just moaning for the sake of it (again).
Opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one, and they usually stink.
take your time MS. The new Offices are going to have a slower adoption than VIsta.
@IT Dud 3
Nice ideal – Maybe – or Maybe not.
While I’m an Office 2004, and cautiously look forwardd to Office 2008, I would rather have M$ port Microsoft Word 5.1 for the Mac to the Mac OS. Better yet, I’d like Corel to port WordPerfect to Mac OS. How I miss WordPerfect 3.5e!
Without VisualBasic, this new verison of Office is quite limited and rather useless. I will NEVER upgrade to this version or newer ones that don’t have VisualBasic.
Mark
1. I’ve been using Neo and OpenOffice for several years.
I would say that OO/Neo’s word processing is highly comparable to Word, feature wise. Sure, there are a few features each has that the other doesn’t, but, bottom line I would say that OO/Neo is more compatible with the current version of Word than a previous version of Word is.
Yes, the programs are different, but any open minded person will be productive quickly and save money.
Word is fairly notorious for refusing to open files with only mild corruption.
Here’s a great OO trick: try opening the file in OO instead of Word; for mild corruption It Just Works.
OO nit: no split window in word processor, only in spreadsheet, bizarrely (my biggest beef).
2. I would rank the spreadsheet as not functionally equivalent to excel, for serious users, altho I’m not a spreadsheet head.
3. I would rank the presentation as noticeably less capable than powerpoint, but that is what keynote is for.
4. base (the OO database), has issues but is better than Mac Office’s database component.
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bottom line: try Neo/OO first.
I’m with Darth — all I want is a port of Word 5.1 to run under OS X and I’d be very, very happy.
I’m a professional writer who uses Word eight hours a day (okay, more like 4-5 hours), and there’s been nothing I’ve tried that had the simplicity and effectiveness of Word 5.1. It had its limitations, especially when handling font and line spacing. But if I want a design program, I’ll use a design program.
I waited three years to upgrade to OS X simply because I wanted to keep using Word 5.1. I’m now working with Office 2004, and while I appreciate some of the new features, some of the bloat simply gets in the way.
In Word 5.1, if you wanted to add up some numbers, you simply highlighted the numbers and pressed CMD-=. In Word 2004, you have to set up tables and work with spreadsheet formulas. Aargh!
If Neo Office documents can be opened by Word, I’ll give it a try. I need to be able to supply Word documents to my Windows-using clients.
MikeK:
Neo Office supports many file formats. For maximum compatibility with Word simply choose one of Word’s native formats.
Neo has its own native format, the ISO approved open ODF format (which is in the process of being required by some governments so as to avoid burdening citizens with m$ taxes). Not surprisingly, m$ doesn’t suppport ODF currently, altho they’re going to support it to some degree.
In your case, regardless, it would seem like the Word format would be best.
My cousin is GPL. GPL rocks.
I spend a lot of time writing large documents and spreadsheets for my work and have tried both OO and Neo. Both of them work fine for “typical” documents, like a 2 or 3 page letter or simple spreadsheets, which is probably a large majority of the users out there. But both failed miserably when I tried to use them on very large proposals or technical design documents. I couldn’t recommend them to anyone in a professional world. They MIGHT work fine, but I KNOW that Office will work. It’s simply not worth the risk. Of course, I am also much more pragmatic about things – I don’t hate Office simply because it is from Microsoft. The best tool for the job…
If anyone bothered reading the article, and noticed the screenshots, its hard not to be impressed with the changes Office 08. The three best improvements in my book are:
1) Excel formulae are now more easily accessable to non-xls geeks.
2) The graphics engine is revamped, so making Keynote-type presentations in PowerPoint should be possible (and Keynote-made presentations probably won’t lose their ‘look’ when opened in PP now).
3) The little Entourage app that puts your day’s schedule in a nice little desktop window – no email, just your day-plan logically laid out. That’s something I’ve wished for in iCal for a while now. I just wonder how it’s activated – I don’t want to have to fire up the full Entourage app just for that.
I like Apple’s iWork & iCal & Mail, but right now they look in danger of being equalled for sure in most areas, and surpassed in others. If the flashy-but-thin Pages app & no spreadsheet weren’t enough of an indication, this new Office suite should be telling Cupertino it’s time to get back to work!
magic word is … needed … Ha!
An fully equipped competitor for Office on the Mac is …
Can that Entourage day calender be exported to iPod? That would be sweet …
I just downloaded NeoOffice 2.1 and the interface is completely redesigned. It loads about 2x as fast as the previous build. NeoOffice is continually improving. Sure, it has some bloat, but I’m not going to pay $400 to use Microsoft bloat instead.
When I got my first Mac (MacBook Core Duo 2.0 gHz) I took the risk and bought iWork. There was a learning curve while I got rid of my bad MS Office habits, but now that I’m use to pages and keynote, they are so intuitive. I get so many comments about my presentations. I had a group applaud then ask me to transition slides again when they saw the reflection transition.
With free NeoOffice and $80 iWork, I can do more than anyone with MS Office.
You can export an Entourage calendar to the iPod right now with this http://www.zapptek.com/ipda/
[Quote]3) The little Entourage app that puts your day’s schedule in a nice little desktop window – no email, just your day-plan logically laid out. That’s something I’ve wished for in iCal for a while now. I just wonder how it’s activated – I don’t want to have to fire up the full Entourage app just for that.[/Quote]
According to the article it’s a standalone app.
Regardless of what any of us think of MS Office, it’s a life saver for us hold-out Mac users in PC-based companies. File transfers are seamless, and most PC users who come into my office to show me something (or vice versa) can quickly find the menu or command required.
Any hint of file incompatibility would quickly bring the wrath of IT upon my head, and create another “how can you justify using a more expensive Mac” drama that would rumble on for weeks.
All credit to the Mac unit in Redmond. Keep up the good work guys.
Ronin:
1. I’m not surprised that OO/Neo’s spreadsheet didn’t work for you. I am somewhat surprised that the word processor had issues. Some questions:
Did you try the latest version of OO (a number of improvements were made in OO 2.0)? What issues did you encounter?
How version particular are your documents? Would they, for example, work in the previous version of Word? Do they behave identically Mac vs. Windows versions of office?
Did you try Neo 2.1, which is the first version of OO supporting VBA (but only for Excel)?
2. I don’t think the issue is hatred of Office, but rather the fact that a lot of people have a problem with Microsoft’s business practices and lack of innovation. But, absolutely, the best tool for the job.
I Like It …:
3. There is a big problem with Microsoft Office 2008 Mac – it is not supporting VBA. This means that Office PC documents using VBA will *** NOT *** work on the Mac – Microsoft is dropping a feature and thus introducing incompatibility between the PC and Mac versions.
This seems brain dead – why would they reduce compatibility? I expect that this will significantly hurt Office 2008 sales. And, technical difficulty as argued by Microsoft developers is not an acceptable reason.
see
http://www.macworld.com/2006/12/opinion/microsoft/
Note that Neo 2.1 supports VBA for Excel, and that regular OO doesn’t (yet; code not yet integrated, probably in next version). VBA for Word still coming, I gather.
As someone who works with technical documents 8 hours a day, the concept of Word “just working” is nothing more than a painful joke. Look, there’s a reason why there’s discussion after discussion on Word instability, problems with templates, Word vs. Frame flame wars, and on and on. The standing wisdom is to never use Word for documents of any length, especially over 100 pages. And its TOC/Indexing abilities simply bite monkeys. Everyone knows it.
Now, I haven’t tried OO for large documents, so I can’t testify to it. But Word is notoriously unreliable, and has been for a long, long, time.
MacBU is the best part of Microsoft, and the largest group of Mac developers outside of Apple. If any of you are reading this, keep up the good work. I look forward to seeing the next release of Office.
All of the NeoOffice download servers are running slow….
behold the power of MDN.
I wrote my last novel in MS Word, and when the document exceeded three hundred pages, things got weird.
So I bought Pages.
Scrolling at 150% (I have two 30″ displays stacked vertically) no longer goes out to OZ, and last line disappearances are a thing of the past.
In my international distribution company, pdfs are the norm. Where once .doc compatibility was expected, I now find read-only pdfs are universally accepted, and edits are handled with addendums.
When I’m asked, “Are your documents Word compatible?,” I answer rightfully, “Sure. It was created with Word.”
I mean, who can tell.
Excel is best Excel
Keynote is the best PowerPoint
Nisus is the best Word:
http://www.nisus.com/