“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.
Price again:
Anyone with your feelings of entitlement probably values their time and effort accordingly right?
Can you come be a janitor here for a generous $2 an hour ?
WIll consider pricing again…@$1 an hour if you do overtime.
Another reason us “dim-witted IT doofuses” use Office is that we can’t get around it.
If you think you can walk into a a law office and swap out word for something like Pages, you’re an inexperienced dolt.
In many businesses there are extremely complex documents, formatted in the night by fastidious elves making use of every hidden feature of MS Word. These documents get e-mailed around from company to company.
WORD is as entrenched in the Enterprise as Manila Envelope. It ain’t goin nowhere.
MDN’s take on it is at best naive.
Time to haul down the white flag, Lotus. The OS Wars are resuming, and with the iPad a hole on the enterprise market is opening up, and you have a kickass spreadsheet program called Improv that was developed for OS X when it was called NeXT to headline a revamped 1-2-3 Touch. Steve Jobs was a big cheerleader for Improv. Do it, time for a little revenge on M$.
@PR – I don’t think that’s the kind of formula Sam is talking about. When you mention “cells” you’re talking about a formula in a spreadhseet, where you’re taking numbers in other cells and performing some arithmetic computation on them to get a result for the cell you’re in.
What I think Sam is talking about is “Equation Editor”, something that would allow one to
” rel=”nofollow”>create mathematical notation in a typeset document or slideshow presentation (such as a math lecture on Hypergeometric series, for example)
TheloniusMac is absolutely correct. Microsoft’s strategy was always to stake out a territory and get so entrenched it would be impossible to supplant them.
So absolutely, the people who have Word will keep using it. BUT
and this is useful to understand I think. Microsoft has a long history of totally missing paradigm shifts. They completely misunderstood the internet, don’t really get (still!) gaming (xbox is a steaming pile of junk), and never really figured out how tablet computing would work. They never understood SEARCH for god’s sake.
They don’t grasp ease of use (Bob was a legendary disaster), and have protected their turf (and profits) through licensing and increasing complexity. That road has to end somewhere. The trend is not toward “harder to use” anymore. As the technologies move forward they will get easier, more “self repairing” (really…they will), and be open and more interchangeable.
@PR
thanks for the links !
actually, the one for Keynote might be useful, I will try that out although I do not like LaTex.
the one for Pages seems to be for doing numerical calculations, which is not what I need. I need printed formulas.
I wonder why Apple does not simply offer a formula editor like the one they already have in Grapher. That one already covers 95% of my needs.
@Mormegil
I don’t know Visio, but I know I have no use fot Project or Access.
@ SamLowry: You can get MathType, which fortunately integrates with all iWork apps (not to mention rotten ol’ M$ apps).
@Rhinehard,
Yes I get what you are saying…This might help then.
http://news.dessci.com/2009/01/apple-picks-mathtype-as-the-equation-editor-for-iwork-09.html
http://dessci.com/en/support/mathtype/workswith/iwork.htm
@ Rheinhard
yep, you got me. OK, next time I say “equation editor”.
For a lot of companies, Office will always be used because Excel blows anything else out of the water. There is just so much you can do with it that cannot be done with Numbers or OpenOffice etc. Numbers is great for the home user who just needs simple, presentable spreadsheeting.
I really hope Office 2011 for Mac will have the capability to run macros. 2008 was a joke, a big step back from 2003, in typical Microsoft fashion.
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.