Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit (MBU) “has been hard at work on the first new Office for Mac release in four years, and one that’s been designed to take on Apple’s iWork apps. Although the programs are still Carbon, rather than Cocoa, they now combine the look-and-feel of OS X 10.5 with some of the innovations Microsoft introduced in Office 2007, like the ribbon,” Jonathan M. Gitlin reports for Ars Technica.
Gitlin takes a look at the Mac Office 2008 versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage:
• Word: New features are in keeping with Microsoft’s aim of allowing users to create better looking documents more easily and, combined with the new Publishing Layout View, points to Microsoft taking a careful look at Pages and deciding that they liked what they saw. I might add that I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing; anything that makes an oft-used software tool better is a good thing, even if the idea was poached from somewhere else. Word also now supports OpenType, meaning that fonts finally look like they should with no need to mess about.
• Excel: It’s not all roses. Microsoft has removed support for Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) from Office 2008, despite leaving it present in Office 2007, the Windows version. While this might not worry the casual spreadsheet user, anyone who uses highly customized files with lots of actions as part of their daily grind will be very poorly served by the transition to 2008. Perhaps the easiest workaround would be to run Office 2007 via Parallels. At a guess, this would be Microsoft’s preferred solution, since it means a sale of both Windows and Office 2007, but that kind of defeats the point of having a Macintosh version of the suite if you ask me.
• PowerPoint: As with the new additions to Word that suggest the MBU has been paying attention to iWork, PowerPoint 2008 also shows the signs of lessons learned from the competition.
• Entourage: Apple’s Mail, iCal, and Address Book have many fans, but Entourage isn’t as bad as it’s often made out to be. And if you need to use Exchange for your e-mail, then really it’s your only choice for an e-mail program… Integration with Exchange might not be quite as feature-replete as our PC-using cousins enjoy via Outlook, but I’ve found the experience utterly painless. Shared calendars work perfectly, and global address books show up, although I’ve found that these can take some time to display.
Gitlin reports, “The Mac Business Unit has looked at what others, notably Apple, have brought to the table with competitor applications, and they’ve incorporated some of the best elements into Office. And if they haven’t consciously done that, then the end result is still the same. The applications are better looking, and produce better looking documents too… That it does that in just the way you’d want a great Macintosh program to behave is good news for Office workers.”
Much more, including reams of screenshots, in the full article here.
“At a guess, this would be Microsoft’s preferred solution, since it means a sale of both Windows and Office 2007, but that kind of defeats the point of having a Macintosh version of the suite if you ask me.”
Sounds familiar?
Embrace, extend and extinguish
Sure, but does it blend?
…And “maybe” even “compatible” with M$ Office Vista?? We shall see! |o|
Who Cares ?
Word finally has ligatures. “Wow” moment!!! MS brings the technology of the early 90’s to you TODAY!
Pages will continue to work fine for me. Although…. has anyone else noticed that since the 10.5.1 update that you can’t export keynote to powerpoint consistently? About three of my switcher friends and myself are experiencing this.
Another very “kind” review from Ars Technica. :rollleyes:
While the guy doesn’t exactly blow any smoke, he glosses over all the flaws and doesn’t really compare the product to iWork or any of it’s competitors.
It’s also ironic that the basic message of the review is that Office 2008 is more “Mac-like” and borrows from iWorks virtues, yet the only reason it is (he doesn’t mention this) is because Apple wrote those parts.
It is the core animation stuff that Apple created that once added to Office, makes it palatable. How ironic is that?
The ribbon is an “innovation”? I think Gitlin meant “irritation”.
The old Office for Mac works just fine. Thank you.
Dud round from a Gitlin gun.
I had reluctance, but by degrees weened myself from MSFT last year. My international company now operates entirely Microsoft-free, most especially as I use PDFs for all contracts.
Word and Excel docs come in, but are opened in Pages or Numbers, and exported as PDFs for security. Happily, most of my files are for final agreements, not collaboration.
The only problem I haven’t solved is password protecting Numbers documents. A disk image seems a poor work-around.
Wow, Microsoft is finally coming out with Office for MAC. At long last MAC sheep will be able to enjoy Microsoft’s wonderful office productivity suite which Windows enthusiasts have loved for years. Welcome aboard, lemmings! Doesn’t seem the same running on something other than Windows, but it’s a start.
Actually this looks to be Microsoft’s way of killing the MAC once and for all. Once you get a taste of Microsoft on MAC the Office halo effect will ultimately lead to upgrading to the magnificent Vista, Zune, xBox ecosystem. Buh bye Apple.
Your potential. Our passion.™
The programs are still in CARBON!!!! What the ……..!
I stopped reading when it mentioned that the MS Office is still Carbon and not Cocoa.
Office v.X still works fine, BTW.
zac
In addition to losing VBA in Excel, Word for Mac still doesn’t support right to left typing of foreign languages, which its Windoze counterpart has done for years.
At some point, Apple will need to release iWork for Windows, Linux, etc to compete with Office.
I have been a mac user all my life, but only bought my own computer a few years ago as opposed to sharing the family mac. I now own two macs (a 17″ G5 iMac at home and a C2D MacBook for using at University), and I am happy to say that I have never installed Office or any other Microsoft software on either machine, with the exception of a brief use of MSN for Mac and the driver for my MS mouse. I use some combination of iWork and TextEdit for everything. I have never had much need for Office, but as a last resort I can always use OpenOffice if something is acting wonky in terms of compatibility. I mostly export to PDF for sending files to people.
I think there are a lot of people who use Office who don’t really need to. I see a lot of people in classes with Mac laptops who are running Office instead of iWork (yes, it’s kind of sad that I notice), and I often wonder why they decided to spend $200+ on a version of Office for Mac instead of just getting iWork. I have yet to have a class which has required electronic submission which hasn’t supported a format other than Word… and most classes still don’t allow electronic submission of Essays or other assignments, much less to the exclusion of paper copies.
I can understand using it in a company for internal compatibility, although if the whole company shifted over that wouldn’t be a problem, but it seems as if there is little compelling reason for a home or school user to choose Office for Mac over iWork these days; the lack of an Excel equivalent was pretty much the last real reason.
” MAC the Office halo effect ”
Must be the real ZT because that’s pretty funny.
No Coverflow, what crap
That Billy Goats has more stragery than a Texas road possum. He’s the mastubator of the internets, my new turd blossum!
I have Microsoft Office for Mac 2004 and I’ve haven’t used it in probably 2 years.
After Panther, I stopped using Entourage. And after iWorks, I stopped using Word/Excel.
I don’t see the point to buy 2008. I might have bought it 2 years ago…but not today.
The Mac Unit at MS has been hard at work on Office 2008 and good on them. They consistently one (or one hundred) up the Windows version of Office. I still need Excel to work with advanced spreadsheets used with my Windows using counterparts. As well, most of the business world uses Powerpoint and Word and for near-perfect compatibility, I need to use Windows for Mac to check all my iWork docs before sending as some formatting can go awry.
Guys in the Mac BU at MS are decent Mac lovers who want to develop great apps for the Mac. You may not use the software but give them some slack. You don’t always have to be !@$@#.
And good on MDN for not slagging them either. They don’t deserve it even though the rest (and I mean upper management) at MS does.
Not quite sure it’s worth the price of admission since I already own a copy of Office::2004… but’s it’s definitely a league above Apple’s iWork.
I missed the usual MDN take — Mac users are smart enough to know they don’t need Windows, but not smart enough to know they don’t need Office.
So now neither Numbers nor Excel will do the job many of us need. I would love to just use Numbers but it lacks so much of the real sophistication and power that Excel has grown to have. Part of that was VBA. VBA has always empowered me to take on problems and tasks that many wouldn’t think possible in a simple spreadsheet program.
FSCK MICROSOFT.
Use NeoOfficeJ:
It’s free, it’s compatible and cross platform with OpenOffice on Windows.