“Across the board, each application has had its UI completely overhauled as Microsoft has made the wise decision to redo the entire layout of the application suite. Instead of the awful configuration found in Office for Mac 2008, 2011 draws from both Office 2007 and Office 2010 for Windows. In fact, it did such a good job that we can’t think of a reason why someone who is used to one OS wouldn’t be able to jump into the other and get work done in Office,” Bettiol reports. “One of the main reasons for this is Ribbons.”
Bettiol reports, “Sadly there is a pretty big weak link in Office 2011: Outlook. It seems that Microsoft simply sacrificed brains for beauty. Don’t get us wrong. It’s definitely the best and most powerful email client we’ve ever used on OS X, but after using it for 10 minutes we honestly gave up on it. Why? Because it simply requires more work to get simple tasks done than on the Windows version. It sucks to say it, but given the choice between using the new Outlook for Mac and virtualizing Outlook for Windows, we’d go with the latter any day.”
Full article, with over 50 screenshots, here.
MacDailyNews Take: A lot of people, especially Windows to Mac switchers, seem to think that they need Office. While some do, the vast majority do not. We suggest taking advantage of Apple’s 30-day free iWork trial to see how well iWork works for you, before you dump more money into Microsoft’s coffers. Microsoft. You know, the company that thinks you’re stupid for spending “$500 for an Apple logo” on your personal computer. Plus, you’ll probably quickly see the benefits of having the same office suite on your Mac as you do on your iPad.
Dance monkey boy dance for us again
I avoid MS Office as though it were the plague.
Well, this certainly looks better than 2008, which I avoided like the plague. I am slowly switching over to iWork, and will hopefully make the complete switch soon. Making my life more Microsoft free each and every day.
BTW, you guys want to see Apple’s market cap go past Microsoft soon rather than later, buy iWork instead of Microsoft Office, and who knows, maybe we can pop the cork off the champagne one day earlier, and never look back!
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More importantly, can Excel operate for more than a few minutes without locking up?
If you buy, get ready to free up 100 GB of drive space.
MW= larger
I really like iWork. But let’s not be blind zealots. Until Numbers can do some basic things that are common in Excel (such as calculate using iterations), it’s just a basic spreadsheet with some nice looks.
I really hope Numbers comes up to snuff with Excel, but for now Office is still needed by those that do heavy spreadsheet work.
I will never spend money on this crap from Microsoft. Microsoft will never get another dollar from me again. Google is next on my sh** list, by the way.
“…It’s definitely the best and most powerful email client we’ve ever used on OS X…”
I almost fell over! I have to use Outlook at work, and the quoting mechanism is as ass-backward as it gets. It makes following a multiple quote message a nightmare! The Author(s) shoould go learn what netiquite really is . The only people that like utlook are people that grew up with it. Those of us who became net citizens when rules meant something just about gag when forced to use Outlook.
If you have to have an Office suite and don’t want to buy iWork, which is well worth the money, you could always download Neo Office. It works well, too.
No need to buy MS bloatware!
I would avoid office if numbers was more powerful like excel
Fist I was afraid i was petrified when i switch three yrs ago to mac and the first thing i bought was ms office a yr later i bought iworks. Today I use only iworks for work and home, I only use office if a document by default opens in it. My partner bought a his first macbook pro and he only got iworks, (he does many keynotes presentations at work) since then, three coworkers have asked for macs. he doesn’t even has office and he doesn’t miss it at all
Just great… The only advantage that Office 2008 had over 2004 is the lack of VB macros – the only spreadable Mac OS X malware I’ve ever come across. Now they’re back, and we’ll have to deal with a whole new generation of “Are You Surprised!?!?!” garbage…
Avoid.
I prefer iWork because it is just simpler to learn and use. I don’t need all of the extra stuff you have to wade through in Office for Mac but I guess in the end, that is the whole point. Too much gobbledygook in Office for it to be useful to this occasional writer.
I use iWork and it performs well for what I want to do with it. I think it’s logical to assume that no version of iWork will ever be as “powerful” or as feature-rich as Office for Mac, however.
MS Office is huge, bloated and as mentioned everywhere, 90% of the “features” go unused by 95% of users. What makes MS Office a mess is the feature creep since the start; I don’t think Apple will ever allow so many increased features/bloat to the point of overwhelming the good that exists today in iWork.
As such, it is likely that there will always be users who point out that iWork lacks something compared to MS Office. Get used to it.
Office 2007 is better looking than 2008???? Is this guy smoking crack. All PC users I know hate 2007 and the 2008 for Mac, although crappy, is still more easily picked up when people jump from 2004.
Outlook stank and entourage is not a whole lot better.
Maybe when Apple bypasses MS in Market Cap they can start to consider buying the office suite to replace the APple suite. Imagine if Apple (not MS’s virtual Apple) software engineers sink their teeth into it.
SImplify it, stabilize it, make it what the USER wants.
Ok ok….I must wake up now……….
It’s time we set the record straight. iWork is incredible, there is no denying that. Keynote is far better than Powerpoint will ever be and every presentation I have ever given with it has gotten comments from people who said they have never seen slideware do things like that before.
Pages was a much harder switch. It took me letting go of over 13 years of use with Word — its shortcuts, functions, etc. One thing that really helped was learning early on (mostly thanks to Keynote) how very important the inspector is. It took 2 weeks of use, but after that, I was hooked. It truly is easier and simpler and produces much better looking documents than word could ever hope to thanks to its page layout roots. Also, for the first time, I had no problem creating charts and graphs in my word processor instead of creating in Excel and pasting in. Word’s creation tools seem clunky and unintuitive.
Numbers is a different animal. When I need to do number crunching, Excel still far outstripes Numbers. However, at the end of the day, when I need to present my final copy, everything gets put into Numbers. Numbers seems more focused on the display of data than the creation. It produces beautiful graphs that excel just cannot compete with. This is almost analogous to where Pages was two years ago, before its word processing function was added: great for making a beautiful finished product, crappy for creation. I have a feeling that in the future we will see more of the advanced mathematical functions added to numbers just as we saw the word processing added to Pages.
So there it is. iWork replaces Powerpoint and Word, but isn’t quite there yet with Excel. In a year or two, hopefully that will no longer be the case.
MS Office, why bother? I haven’t used it in years. OpenOffice, NeoOffice, iWork. More than capable to meet all my needs.
Attn MDN: I don’t have an iPad and don’t want one. But, heartily agree with the rest of your take.
Does Excel actually have all the standard MS Add-in packages and functions of the Windows version now? If so, I MAY be able to take some of my work home. I have no option but to use Excel at work and numbers is no where near advanced enough for my use.
Bunch of hit whores at Boy Genius. Absolutley usless array of screen shots. Half dozen or so of the images are nothing more than install progress message changes. Serves no value other than generating ad revenue for boygeniusreport.com. All thanks to macdailynews.
Too little too late.
Worse than Adobe, actually.
I’m just glad the floating Inspector Window is no longer needed. Depending on performance, I might actually be excited to upgrade.
When we’ll get iWork new version?
If only Pages had a running word count.
I’ve used MS Office on both Mac and Windows machines since it first came out in the 80s (Macs) and 90s (Windows). I also have used iWork since it was first released. I concur with most of the comments above and have a few of my own observations to add:
Keynote vs. Powerpoint: No competition. Keynote is just flat out better.
Pages: Once you get used to it, it is so much easier and more pleasant to use than any version of Word. If you want proof, just try to incorporate a graphic or picture into a Word document. Nailing down a graphic on a Word document is like trying to grab Jello.
Numbers vs Excel: As Frank said, for presenting spreadsheets, Numbers is the only way to go. But when you are doing heavy-duty spreadsheet work, Excel easily wins out. When you can split your worksheet pane in Numbers, then we’ll talk.
Old Office vs New Office: At my job where I have to suffer using Windows, I recently had the pleasure of being forced to switch from Office 2003 to Office 2010. What a POS! The new interface in Office does absolutely NOTHING to help the user. All the ribbon bullshit takes up too much screen real estate and you cannot even create your own ribbon with just the stuff you need. Plus, MS played 52-card pickup with the users by moving all the commands around to places you would never look. An absolute POS on both Macs and Dells.