Mac Office 2008 Preview

[springerj]

fixing the wrong problems

Between Office XP and Office X/2004 and Open Office, people know what to expect in the office UI. I really don't think it needs fixing. Changing the UI is incredibly frustrating for low-end users and not particularly useful for high-end users. It's like deciding an automatic transmission should go P 2 3 D R N instead of P R N D 3 2. The workers in my office are aghast at Office 2007 and I'm refusing to bring it in. Hopefully we can buy office 07 licenses and use them to activate more office xp installs.
On the Mac, I love the formatting pallette. (But most Mac users are not much better than PC users: bold, italic, and default tab stops. That's about it. Getting them to use tabs instead of spaces is a big win.)

On the other hand...
The list numbering in Word has been broken for years. Doing a T of C is awkward. It continues to make its own decisions about setting formats even with all the "automatically do xyz" stuff off. The picture and graphic tools in Word suck. Excel won't let you enter an email address without making it a hyperlink. Excel can't dedup rows in a list. The Find/Replace in Excel is ridiculous. Pivot tables are a conundrum.

In other words, there are some real flaws in these programs that never get addressed. In the meantime, there's a bunch of cosmetic changes that just confuse everyone. Just sell more of those "PC Professor" CDs i see on TV I guess.

 

[Toshimoto]

iWork inflluences

I finally got it to work in Safari 3 and 2 things jumped out at me in the preview.

1. The interface of PowerPoint is taking on (lifting) a lot of iWork/iLife traits, especially the pallettes.

2. When I saw the Excel worksheet at first I thought it was Numbers.

Now we know why Office 2008 has taken so long. Microsoft was waiting for a copy of iWork '08 to put on their photocopiers to finish building the interface.

 

[Kallikinos]

iWork 08=$79
Office 08=Some outrageous amount...

I'll stick with iWork.

 

[majordude]

The workers in my office are aghast at Office 2007 and I'm refusing to bring it in. Hopefully we can buy office 07 licenses and use them to activate more office xp installs.

Office XP? Isn't that the one from 2000? Office 2003 is much better.

I remember the word processing wars in the mid-90s. Word Perfect, Ami Pro and Word. In the end, Ami Pro was the absolute best and then Lotus gave up. They were in the lead but got scared and quit. Word Perfect invested time and money into DOS and then made Word Perfect for Windows a port of their DOS program. A blue screen for word processing in Windows? It took them a release or so to understand WYSIWYG. Shrugging shoulders.

 

[Stridder44]

I personally can't wait. iWork doesn't cut it for me, and Office, despite being made by Microsoft, is actually a very solid app.

 

[anirban]

Call me old fashioned and functionally fixed, but I am NOT going to use the fracking office 2007. Office 2003 is a great and solid application suite, and it does the job well.

I use Office 2004 for the macintosh and its just great. If Office 2008 is going to be anything like Office 2007 for XP/Vista, then count me out- if I get a chance, I would throw a brick at the Office box... sorry for the rant.

 

[Darkroom]

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!

I question who is the tard. Works fine on FF on my MBP. I think you shouldn't jump to conclusions until you actually let the site load. That and check your extensions. Check your adblock settings. Mine was blocking some elements of the site.

they don't even employ flash preloaders... this website is honestly a joke... and besides, if they're marketing a product to mac users, they need to have solid code that works for Safari, which it currently does not...

a joke...

[EDIT] of interest, i noticed they are using SWFObject in the site's code... which is hilarious, since microsoft started the whole active-content-blocking crap with MSIE... wow... what a bunch of fools...

 

[majordude]

they don't even employ flash preloaders...

FrontPage doesn't do Flash.

 

[kcmac]

Yo! Chill out on the website design. Ya knowz they are doin it to make the Vista thing look fast! Word to yo momma!

 

[majordude]

Word to yo momma!

As long as it ain't Word fo' my Mac.

 

[macFabri]

Terrible. Confusing. Microsoft didn't understand yet how to make it easy.. Hope they can learn with iWork

 

[deejemon]

*

 

[bdkennedy1]

I don't think there's anything wrong to expect Microsoft's web site to function properly with OS X's default web browser and the OS it's designed for.

I question who is the tard. Works fine on FF on my MBP. I think you shouldn't jump to conclusions until you actually let the site load.

 

[thespazz]

lol....that is not ribbon.

i love all the apple fanboys "ripping microsoft a new one" due to their website design and quoting the "photocopier" line from WWDC. hah, have any of you taken the time to compare WWDC '07 Leopard to the Vista released 6 months before? Shockingly similar. Way to go Apple, you used your own line to describe yourself.

Sorry guys, Office 2007 for PC is a dream to use. Office 2008 for OS X I'm sure will be even better.

 

[Anawrahta]

Sorry guys, Office 2007 for PC is a dream to use. Office 2008 for OS X I'm sure will be even better.

My sentiments exactly. The rabidity of the zealots in this thread almost makes me embarrassed to use the same OS as them.

What amazes me is that Apple is doing better than ever, is stealing market share left and right, yet these people have more foam coming from their mouths than ever before.

Nobody has even used this software and they're bashing the bits out of it.

 

[aristotle]

I still am not over the fact that they aren't supporting vB macros. I'll stick with my Office 2004 + iWork 08 combination.

If you want macro support and Office 2007 compatibility, get Neo Office (based on Open Office 2.x) or wait for the Aqua release of Open Office.

 

[isgoed]

The big news is that this will be an Intel native app, and crash less often (hopefully). To me, that would have been good enough. In fact, a universal version of Office:Mac would have been perfect as well. I always liked it, and it was VERY easy for me to do everything. iWork 08 isn't powerful enough if you have real spreadsheets and documents to write. Of course, even when I do write proper documents, I do it in LaTeX.

It took to post 80 before someone finally mentions that this will be a universal binary. Seems that all the complainers don't do any serious work, because they would have mentioned it already. I actually like word for its features. Making an intel native version will certainly give better performance when working with multiple applications when memory is limited. Although it seems they completely use up the extra CPU-power with their preview-everything-interface. I hope it works.

bloated and full of "features" not many people know about or use.

Is this some kind of reverse reasoning? C'mon it's ok to be a Macfan, but keep it real.

 

[BKKbill]

I've used versions of Office since it came on floppy disks, and I've used the ribbon in the Windows version of Word. I strongly dislike the ribbon, and will probably avoid updating my Macs if they add the ribbon to the Mac version too, given how many hours I spend in Excel (approximately 25 per day).

So if you spend 25 hours a day on Excel did you borrow time from tomorrow to post this today?

 

[ddubbo]

Between Office XP and Office X/2004 and Open Office, people know what to expect in the office UI. I really don't think it needs fixing. Changing the UI is incredibly frustrating for low-end users and not particularly useful for high-end users. It's like deciding an automatic transmission should go P 2 3 D R N instead of P R N D 3 2. The workers in my office are aghast at Office 2007 and I'm refusing to bring it in. Hopefully we can buy office 07 licenses and use them to activate more office xp installs.
On the Mac, I love the formatting pallette. (But most Mac users are not much better than PC users: bold, italic, and default tab stops. That's about it. Getting them to use tabs instead of spaces is a big win.)

On the other hand...
The list numbering in Word has been broken for years. Doing a T of C is awkward. It continues to make its own decisions about setting formats even with all the "automatically do xyz" stuff off. The picture and graphic tools in Word suck. Excel won't let you enter an email address without making it a hyperlink. Excel can't dedup rows in a list. The Find/Replace in Excel is ridiculous. Pivot tables are a conundrum.

In other words, there are some real flaws in these programs that never get addressed. In the meantime, there's a bunch of cosmetic changes that just confuse everyone. Just sell more of those "PC Professor" CDs i see on TV I guess.

I had the same problem too. But after week of suffering, I should to say, 2007 far more powerful and easy to use. Word at last works like a normal word processor, Excel have a lot of new features, and the feature I like most, now you can save any doc as PDF

 

[ServicePack]

I hope the product works better than the web site!

Errors on loading, hanging and of course it crashed my IE (on 2 seperate machines).

:-(

 

[doemel]

Errors on loading, hanging and of course it crashed my IE (on 2 seperate machines).

:-(

The funniest thing is that they use Flash for this. I thought MS have "developed' their own "superior" alternative to Flash now...

 

[AdeFowler]

I've used versions of Office since it came on floppy disks...

Same here... about 25 disks IIRC

I really don't like the cluster of collapsable palettes on the right hand side. I find them awkward in the current version and they don't seem to have improved here.

My main use for Office, is typing the occasional letter and generating invoices, both of which I'm sure iWork could handle without a problem. I often receive copy from clients in Word or Excel format, but CS3 imports them, so I'll think hard before I splash the cash on Office 08.

 

[doemel]

If you want macro support and Office 2007 compatibility, get Neo Office (based on Open Office 2.x) or wait for the Aqua release of Open Office.

VB macros are so 1999. Plus it's on Microsofts blacklist of technologies to be abandoned. And did I mention that they are a PITA, especially when using hard coded directory/file paths and trying to port them to the Mac version?

 

[gikku]

20% of the revenue for Office is coming from the Mac. It isn't some small 2% like most people would believe. Perhaps it is less piracy, I am not sure why the number is so big.

All the switchers avoiding Vista buying Office for mac 2004 instead because their Office 2003 versions not compatible with their shiny new OS ?

 

[Uragon]

the product hasn't come out yet, and we are seeing a lot of negative reponses, I will wait and see and most probably buy one....hopefully though they don't have 7 versions of it.