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Mac Office 2008 Preview

Macrumors said:
They've also posted a sneak peak at Mac Office...
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Am I the only one who is not impressed here?

The big news for Word is more toolbars at the top (only they are bigger)

The big news for Excel is ... what exactly? OLE?

The big news for Powerpoint ... no news at all.

The big news for Exchange? They seem to have built in support for Windows Mobiles with that "Today" widget.

Wow, there are so many people using Windows-Mobile based handhelds that want a "Today" page in Exchange on their Mac????? There must be dozens of people in that market.

How about keeping the butt-ugly interface we have gotten used to, but actually fixing the bugs that keep you from ... you know, actually using the thing? :rolleyes:
 
Haha I love the fact that the preview site does absolutely nothing. Well actually I take that back, you do get to see a lovely MS logo at the bottom of the page....how exciting.
 
I was one of the people to vote negative.

It's because Microsoft refuses to get rid of that damn ribbon interface. It's so convoluted! The old one was perfect. Why get rid of it when it works perfectly?

Luckily we have a little app called iWork. I have never created a table so easily in Word as I did in Pages '08.
 
Talk about a useless web site: it is as counterintuitive - and slow - as it can possibly get. There are many IQ-smart people at Microsoft but they simply do not get the very concept of user interface. If they were asked to design a soup spoon they would have come up with an FM, blueooth, Wi-Fi - enabled contraption that requires antivirus, software update, and crashes whenever the batteries run out... and requires you to download plugins for each new kind of soup.
Sad....
 
DeathChill said:
Sounds like the people at this forum about Apple.
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Au contraire, you won't find people anywhere griping about Apple stuff more-so than in Mac user forums. :p We're a demanding bunch.

DeathChill said:
We all know iWork '08 is not in the same league.
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Depends on how important this "league" of which you speak is. 99% of the people I work with don't have a clue about 99% of the features in Office. Fact. Heck, iWork 08 is overkill for them.

People (and companies) are starting to realize they really don't need a $400 office suite to meet their needs. And once this happens en masse, Microsoft is in big trouble. Ribbon or no.
 
phytonix said:
The ribbon interface may seems like a lot of clicks.
But what Office 2008 can do in those video seem pretty nice. iWork does not seem as powerful and Office 2008 seem to be able to produce things as pretty.

Wait and see, and I am excited to see how it will turn out to be.
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I was surprised at how useable the new iWork is though. I had written off the last version in about ten seconds as "lame," but iWork 08 is useable for the first time.

What I was surprised at was the lack of a data merge feature in the new Pages application. If it just did that, we could replace half the Office users in our Faculty, but without it, we are locked into Office for the foreseeable future. Then once all our users have gotten used to the new Office, trying to get them to switch to a different product (even if it's better), will be very hard indeed.

I was hoping that Apple would really try a lot harder with iWork 08 as this is a golden opportunity to switch a lot of folks over while MS has such a crappy product with a semi-crappy one on the way. A serious word processor from Apple with a data merge utility would have eliminated Office, instead we are going to be comparing the two ad infinitum.
 
Why does MS even make Office for the Mac? I mean, they are making it for a competitor's minority market share OS. It can't be nearly as profitable as Win32 Office, considering the huge difference in number of sales they must rack up. And I'd imagine the development costs are about the same. Sure they leverage already having developed the file formats and so forth. But it has to be easier to develop for a platform when you're also the ones who developed the OS and all the development tools!

I am really glad they sell Office for OS X- a lot of people have to have the real deal at work or else they couldn't use their Mac. I'm just curious as to why they spend the effort? I'm sure there is some part of the equation that I am missing.
 
bdkennedy1 said:
... You know what the ribbon is? It's a patch. A patch to make bloated, difficult software seem easier to use. Microsoft has used the same GUI for so long it felt it had to come up with something else, and the ribbon shows that they're out of ideas. ...
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I don't find the Ribbon to be a "bad idea" overall, it's just poorly executed and over-rated. If you take the excellent floating format palette idea from Office 2004 and stick it at the top of the window sideways, you basically got the same thing (a context sensitive tool palette). So you could argue that the ribbon came out of the work of the MBU, who are the only "Apple-guys" at Microsoft.

The problem is, you are right about it being a patch, but unlike any other patch, it's not optional.
You use the ribbon or you don't use Office at all. I think they were afraid that if folks had a choice they would not bother with the thing.

Another really bad (or good depending on your allegiance), thing about the Ribbon, is that by default it does not include some basic options (like "Save As.." for one), and is somewhere between minimally configurable and not configurable at all.

So it's not the UI idea of the Ribbon that's at fault, it's the Fascist stupid way they implemented it, and all the heuristics behind those decisions. Like many Microsoft products, it's not designed to be useful to the end user so much as it's designed to promote Microsoft and their other products. This is of course similar to the way they are trying to tie Entourage into Windows Mobile devices (as if this is relevant for the average Mac user) and push that new file format down our throats.
 
Why Does MS Make Office for the Mac?

irun5k said:
Why does MS even make Office for the Mac? I mean, they are making it for a competitor's minority market share OS. It can't be nearly as profitable as Win32 Office, considering the huge difference in number of sales they must rack up. And I'd imagine the development costs are about the same. Sure they leverage already having developed the file formats and so forth. But it has to be easier to develop for a platform when you're also the ones who developed the OS and all the development tools!

I am really glad they sell Office for OS X- a lot of people have to have the real deal at work or else they couldn't use their Mac. I'm just curious as to why they spend the effort? I'm sure there is some part of the equation that I am missing.
Click to expand...


I read once where Bill Gates said that MS makes over $400 million dollars a year from Office for the Mac. That's why they do it.

Glennsan
 
I wonder which will make it out first MS Office or OpenOffice? Personally I can get everything I need from open office. As it is I do much of my writing in text edit these days anyway. If I need to make it complex later there's InDesign (though I could use LaTeX or OpenOffice). Point is, there's better ways to do text stuff than MS Word. The most of the rest of the stuff can get done elsewhere too.
 
Sorry Microsoft, but I got tired of waiting and bought iWork '08. I'll just stick with my copy of Office 2004 for the precious few docs and spreadsheets I've come across here that won't work right with iWork '08's apps.
 
just great its in widescreen now doing this on macbook is going to be a horror im sticking with iowrk 08 and ms office 2004 thank very much :D GO :apple:
 
I'm loving Office 2007.

I just hope that learning the Ribbon in Windows will translate over to OS X. It's a difficult task with the persistent menu bar.

Come on MacBU, get that page working.
 
The only reason I am still looking at Office is Entourage. Most folks in my industry use it and the fact it work seamlessly with my Hotmail account is a big plus. But heck, I just hate using it. I am thinking switching to all Apple apps after Leopard is released.
Just not sure if Apple Mail supports Hotmail. I heard about a patch but will that work under Leopard?
 
irun5k said:
I am really glad they sell Office for OS X- a lot of people have to have the real deal at work or else they couldn't use their Mac. I'm just curious as to why they spend the effort? I'm sure there is some part of the equation that I am missing.
Click to expand...

They make a profit on it, which cannot be said for other parts of the business.

It is foolish to pull out of a market where you are making a profit.
 
irun5k said:
Why does MS even make Office for the Mac?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if there is a single answer. I could point out that both PowerPoint and Excel were originally Mac applications that only got ported to Windows later in life. I could point out that Office:Mac is profitable. Or I could just point out that there are 180 of us here in MacBU who are all Mac users and we want to create great Mac software. Even though I realise that some of you guys might disagree with this last point. ;)

I know that the sneak peek website is slow. It's getting absolutely hammered with traffic right now, and I'm really sorry that you guys are running into problems.

That's my blog post that is quoted here. If you guys have specific comments about my post or about the user experience work that we've done in Office:Mac 2008, I'd love to hear it.

Regards,
Nadyne.
 
nadyne said:
I'm not sure if there is a single answer. I could point out that both PowerPoint and Excel were originally Mac applications that only got ported to Windows later in life. I could point out that Office:Mac is profitable. Or I could just point out that there are 180 of us here in MacBU who are all Mac users and we want to create great Mac software. Even though I realise that some of you guys might disagree with this last point. ;)

I know that the sneak peek website is slow. It's getting absolutely hammered with traffic right now, and I'm really sorry that you guys are running into problems.

That's my blog post that is quoted here. If you guys have specific comments about my post or about the user experience work that we've done in Office:Mac 2008, I'd love to hear it.

Regards,
Nadyne.
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Thanks for the reply in this thread. :D

Hopefully your higher ups will notice the demand for this preview site. ;)
 
Virgil-TB2 said:
This is of course similar to the way they are trying to tie Entourage into Windows Mobile devices (as if this is relevant for the average Mac user)
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Are you talking about My Day? My Day is a little app that sits on your desktop. It reads data out of Entourage for your calendar and tasks. It isn't related to Windows Mobile (or any other particular mobile device) in any way. It's just a quick way for you to see what you've got going on in your day.

For syncing with all mobile devices, Entourage uses OS X Sync Services. Personally, I sync Entourage with my iPhone. Entourage syncing with mobile devices is totally unrelated to My Day.

Regards,
Nadyne.
 
In the time it has taken M$ to update Office Apple has converted all computers to Intel, released a few different revs of the iMac, macbook, and macbook Pro. Has updated a number of software suites (iLife, iWork, and Logic) and have almost completed work on 10.5, and released all new iPods and an iPhone. What is the deal with the snail pace of M$, at least if they were this slow you would expect something good.
 
anamznazn said:
Looks good so far. Can't wait til I get my hands on it
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Looks good? Their site doesn't even load.

Yo! Microsoft webtards! I'm not running IE on Mac! You don't even publish that anymore! Design for Mozilla!
 

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nadyne said:
Yeah, I think it's safe to say that they're quite aware of it. :)

Regards,
Nadyne.
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Well you have my site's volume license and my personal copy as a sale then. :p

I just hope the Office Open XML File Format Converter shapes up as well as Office is looking.
 
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