“Office 2011, due before the holidays, replaces the much-despised Entourage e-mail client and information manager with a real version of Microsoft Outlook created for Macintosh,” Coursey writes. “When that happens, Mac users become full participants on their companies’ Exchange-based e-mail systems. End of the Mac as a second-class corporate citizen.”
MacDailyNews Take: Too late. We don’t use Office anymore; haven’t for years. The only reason to use the bloated Office is if you’re stuck working at a place with dim-witted IT doofuses who’ve screwed their companies by shackling themselves to Microsoft “solutions.”
Coursey continues, “Microsoft could have done this previously, but used Entourage to create a barrier between Mac users and Exchange. Given the issue persisted for a decade, the incompatibility must be considered intentional. This nonsense went on much too long and Microsoft still deserves roasting for having pulled such a stunt in the first place. So, no congratulations from me.”
“Entourage appeared in 2000, replacing the previous Outlook Express that shipped with Office 98. Asked why they didn’t just offer a new Mac version of Outlook, Microsoft replied that Entourage was intended for a different audience than Outlook served,” Coursey writes. “That ‘new audience’ being Mac users who didn’t need to connect to Exchange, which left out a huge number of potential Windows-to-Mac converts over the decade. Intentionally crippled as a client for Exchange servers, Entourage was a sure way of keeping Macs from expanding their presence in businesses large enough to use Exchange and Outlook.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Anyone who gives Microsoft money for Office after such prolonged mistreatment, not to mention public ridicule from Microsoft’s CEO (please see: After attempting to belittle Mac users, Microsoft tries to sell them Office 2008 with free trial), is either a masochist, a fool, or stuck trying to get some work done with junk provided by the aforementioned IT doofuses. Our condolences.
Unfortunately, far too often, OpenOffice or Pages will not format Word files properly, and vice versa. Same with Numbers and Excel. Having a version of Office which is at least close to fully compatible with the Windows version remains a necessity for many (and even then, compatibility isn’t always 100%).
Now wasn’t Office 2011 also supposed to return VBA compatibility?
Word and Excel are both pretty well entrenched in most Enterprises. While Pages and Numbers will gladly do at least 90% of what 90% of all users actually need, that will not satisfy the “experts”, the ones who feel it is their duty to use every extraneous “feature” they can possibly apply. This is not a case of stupidity, but of pride and of job protection: if nobody else can even <u>support</u> their documents then maybe they won’t be the ones laid off.
There are certainly other solutions, workable solutions, that could help those who would replace these icons, but those have their own problems – like the Job Protection forces already entrenched, who may not even realize what they are doing.
@Steve Embalmer
“OmniPlan and OmniGraffle professional…
That only leaves MS-Access”
http://www.filemaker.com
I have never used Word in my life. PageMaker then inDesign. Oh – I’ve installed it a few times ON CLIENTS Macs. (Only way they would switch) I have the full Office Pro edition sitting in the drawer – right by that floppy disc collection that I can no longer view.
Microsoft can inject such differences any time they want. I would term this a “truce” not an end of the war.
Look at Office 2008 for the Mac and it’s non-conformance with the windows version. What on earth was the point of putting out software incompatible between Windoze and OS X? Microshaft does this type of thing on purpose, and being monday morning quarterback, its a darn good thing they did given the pile of you know what Vista was.
Office difference did help keep some customers in the Microshaft fold.
I’ve used Excel since version 1 on the Mac. These days I have a PC next to my Mac simply for running Excel 2007, as no other spreadsheet solution works for my requirements.
I would be happy if Microsoft mad Excel on the Mac the real Excel again, and not some hybrid nonsense. I even like the ribbon interface, and would like it in the Mac version (drop the legacy stuff please).
Once Visual Basic is restored my functions will work again (hurrah), and the only thing I’ll have to worry about is the likes of Reuters plug-in not being compatible (then again it’s not compatible with Windows 7 or 64-bit OSes either, and I have to run a VM for it anyway!)
Horseshit! It’s just another Trojan. And if you don’t think that Microsoft will somehow cripple Office 2011 (especially Outlook) then you really haven’t been paying attention the last 20 years!!
Wake up and stop enabling!
I can’t imagine that M$ will include Access in a future edition – as without it Office 11 Mac cannot surely be regarded as an equal for corporate use.
I die a little bit every time I have to use Office on an XP machine at work.
Like the German soldier’s peering out their bunkers as the Normandy invasion became apparent. All Balmer can see on the horizon are iPad’s locked and loaded with number’s. At $10 a pop Apples office application’s will invade the
market. This effort by Microsoft is to little to late!
Microsoft had and still have friends in high places. It should have been crippled with fines a long time ago.
The only reason Microsoft is doing Outlook is because Mail, Calendar, and AddressBook already support it for free. Same goes for the iPhone. Microsoft is just late to their own party.
Your take is completely wrong. It’s the business and business users that are shackled to MS Office afraid that they won’t be compatible w/ vendors, partners, clients or flat out refusing to learn something new.
Microsoft can go frak themselves.
Stupid games they play.
Guess way, their stupid games taught me how to live without them.
@theloniousMac
You’re right about the complex docs. I’ve been called in as a consultant many times to ‘fix’ problems of extreme instability in such Word and Excel docs. In the case of Excel, I have found that a solution was possible in FileMaker Pro, producing almost identical looking reports. Instability issues disappeared because it seems easier to scale to large data populations with a database.
With Word, clients were often pushing the formatting capabilities of Word beyond its limits in terms of numbers of elements needing careful formatting, alignment, line spacing etc etc. Word just cannot hack it without creaking groaning and crashing. The solution is often breaking the work into smaller docs or moving the whole shebang to InDesign.
On another note, whether for Mac or Windows, is anyone really interested in another Office version? I’m a reasonably ‘poer-user’ type but I still find Office 2003 (Win) and 2004 (Mac) to be more than I want in feature terms. Interested in your thoughts on this. If demand for Office declines through lack of need or interest in upgrades, that is one whole MS’ cash cow going into diminishing returns mode. Not a day too soon when it happens.
Office 2011? . . . Isn’t that more vaporware?
Does that old chestnut definition of insanity ring a bell to anyone here? . . . Of course it will be crippled.
I just feel sorry for those poor people from the Mac division of MS, like the ones Steve Jobs paraded onto the stage at a Keynote a couple of years back.
How do you think they feel, being in sight of greatness, and then having to be hobbled by their bosses into producing something of mediocrity?
“The only reason to use the bloated Office is if you’re stuck working at a place with dim-witted IT doofuses who’ve screwed their companies by shackling themselves to Microsoft “solutions.””
Yup, that’s me. It’s also called, “If you need to earn money for little luxuries like food and clothing.”
Apart from that small issue, iWork (which I’ve had for several years) still doesn’t cut it for me. As a single example, Pages doesn’t offer highlighting which I use extensively in my writing. Even NeoOffice has this feature now.
How can we survive without Word and Excel? The horror of having to think!
I disagree ENTIRELY with various comments here that say these ridiculous programs are somehow essential.
It can all be done on something else, and anyway, if a document is so complex, shouldnt we be trying to simplify it?
Or are we also supporting pointless complexity in all areas of our lives to avoid thinking and taking responsibility or to further the aims of various power structures in society that rely on obfuscation.
Lawyers, doctors and other charlatans are good examples of complexity where none is needed.
Office sucks.
“Needing” it is a myth.
Now that my connection through the VPN is working, Apple Mail, iCal and Address Book are all working for me connecting to Exchange both inside and outside the firewall. Outlook, why?
@DLMeyer and Derek in Milan
Try telling an engineering/consulting firm that the only reason they use complex Excel documents is because of pride and job security. They will laugh in your face. They would love to make things simple, but the reality is that real work is complicated, and often requires complex functions and analysis.
Next, you’ll be telling people that all companies will increase productivity by replacing their computers with iPads, because they can run iWork and are so easy to use! What a great idea!
Wrong again from the writer. Until Mac users are free of Active-X/.net/.aspx/Sharepoint/ that forces users to use Windows with Internet POS Explorer, the war will not end. We are still treated as 3rd class citizens.
I wish I could keep using Word 5.1… Tried WordPerfect then, but alas…
I use both iWork and Pages. Pages is superior for page layout things like placing figures into text and having them stay where they belong, but it is harder and slower to use particularly for text formatting, lacks some important features, doesn’t have the large collection of keyboard shortcuts that speed work, and is much less customizable (menus, keyboard shortcuts, toolbars, etc). In the end, for serious work, Word, bloated and slow to load as it is, is the more useful product. Beyond that MDN is dreaming if he thinks Pages will ever replace Word in the workplace as many above have clearly enunciated. If Apple wants the iWork suite to take hold they need to release a Windows version as they did for iTunes. This is especially needed for Keynote. Powerpoint is available on every computer hooked to a projector. If you want to use Keynote you have to drag your computer to every meeting, not just a flash drive with your talk.
“If you want to use Keynote you have to drag your computer to every meeting, not just a flash drive with your talk.”
Yes, that’s currently a major impediment to the use of Keynote, but I wonder if that might change when the iPad becomes available?