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Microsoft Office 2008 Delayed Until January 2008

Father Jack said:
I installed Office 2007 running through parallels on my Mac Mini just to see what it was like ...... Sorry I think the new user interface is grim.
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It does take some getting used to. I found the easiest way was to try to forget everything I knew about Office already and start again from scratch, as if I was coming to Office anew... I also forced myself to use it and nothing else for a couple of weeks until I got comfortable with it. It is a big change interface-wise, but once I got past that I grew to like it (and I don't say that about Microsoft products lightly ;)). In fact now when I go back to Office 2003 on Windows I find it quite clunky and unnecessarily menu-based in comparison.
 
brygruver said:
From what I understand Office is still the best selling piece of software for the Mac and that makes me sick.

I recently trashed my Office 04. It was dog slow compared to the rest of my apps. If Microsoft can't update their software to a Universal Binary then they definitely don't deserve my money for 2008. Yes, I understand that Adobe did the same for Photoshop, etc, but they had a lot more to convert / rewrite. Besides, it's hard to replace the entire Adobe Creative Suite. I now use either textedit, Pages, or Google Documents to open my word files and I use Google Spreadsheets to open the occasional excel file. I can't tell you when the last time I had to use a spreadsheet. There are sooooooo many other pieces of specialized math/calculating/accounting software out there, spreadsheets are obsolete. The only time I have to open an excel file is when someone creates a document in a spreadsheet because they don't know any better.

Use Keynote instead of Powerpoint and the only application you then have to replace is entourage, which I've never used.

Let's get Pages and Keynote on the Windows Platform and give MS Office a run for it's money.
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I wasn't aware that you are keen on what is in the source for Office for the Mac and CS3. But depending on how their old version of Office was made the Intel migration might have been more difficult. Who knows why it is late, Perhaps they made office in an internal language where Microsoft won't release the compilers for so with the switch to Intel they needed to remake the compilers, then they can remake office. Or they use to have their own compilers then they needed to learn X-Code (Which is not as as simple as people want you to believe)... There are a lot of factors involved that could cause delays in migration especially if they were working on a PPC version of office 2008 before the Intel Announcement so they needed to go back and redo some stuff.

I am glad you are able to successfully free yourself from using MS Products good for you. But for other people it is not as simple as using alternatives.

While Keynote is a great product that really competes well with Powerpoint the issue is for a lot of people when they make a presentation they are normally at an office where there is a system hooked up to a projector and that system is usually a windows system with powerpoint... You can convert the keynote to powerpoint but you may loose features that you put in Keynote causing your presentation to not go as well as you expected, if you used office powerpoint you know what features are available and use them so your presentation goes completely as expected.

Textedit/Pages/Google Documents are all fine but a lot of people can send you rather in-depth word files some of them are forms you need to fill out and if you are not using word your formatting may get really screwed up and depending who you are sending the form they may just put the reject stamp on it because they didn't see the answers where they expect it...

Same problem with Sharing Excel Files... Yea there is so much math software but none as flexible as Excel. Excel is more then just math it is a spreadsheet it is good for non-programmers to make quick programs (But god help them if they need to use them in a production environment). I use excel daily at work just to prototype code to see if the math works out or if I am analyzing data or I need to report on my analysis of the Data Excel works great. Sure there are so many specialized applications and I agree they should use them over excel for a lot of the cases. But there comes a time that you are spending tones of money finding special apps where excel saves money (It is more then just the cost of buying the apps it is the full evaluation process)
 
Voltayre said:
It does take some getting used to. I found the easiest way was to try to forget everything I knew about Office already and start again from scratch, as if I was coming to Office anew... I also forced myself to use it and nothing else for a couple of weeks until I got comfortable with it. It is a big change interface-wise, but once I got past that I grew to like it (and I don't say that about Microsoft products lightly ;)). In fact now when I go back to Office 2003 on Windows I find it quite clunky and unnecessarily menu-based in comparison.
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I really don't like it .... but I know when it does become available, no doubt I will get it and get used to it as well ... whether I grow to love it, remains to be seen ... :eek:
 
jellomizer said:
While Keynote is a great product that really competes well with Powerpoint the issue is for a lot of people when they make a presentation they are normally at an office where there is a system hooked up to a projector and that system is usually a windows system with powerpoint... You can convert the keynote to powerpoint but you may loose features that you put in Keynote causing your presentation to not go as well as you expected, if you used office powerpoint you know what features are available and use them so your presentation goes completely as expected.
Click to expand...

Then you need to make your presentation on a PC, I have seen strange issues of powerpoint screwing up with simple user interface elements from PC to Mac powerpoint so it isn't perfect.

The only way to guarantee your presentation will work is to bring your own laptop/cables, Macs can export to DVI, VGA or S-Video so should be able to work with any projector and then you can use Keynote.

If you have an Intel laptop you can also use your Apple Remote ;).
 
"It really is just a quality issue across the board,"

Have they not taken a look at XP?!

There doesn't seem to be any quality control at M$

This is typical M$, give themselves plenty of time to release, but still drop the ball anyway...

The switch to intel is a really cr*p excuse tbh...

Yes we'd like to blame something that nearly every other company has managed to do way before us...
 
At least we can compare it with iwork 08, I'd probably go with iwork 08.
 
just... right

...just a quality issue...
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So that's Microsoft's official stance on quality? It's a "just" criteria? Well you have to give them credit that they at least publicly admit this.

And: One of the two reasons made responsible is home made. New office format? Guess the Office 2007/Win team just pulled that one out of their a**es at the last minute before Office 07 was released...
 
Office 2008 delay - iWork related?

There have been rumours that Apple agreed to hold back on releasing an update to iWork until Office 2008 appeared. So could the Office 2008 delay be because Apple are about to release an update to iWork next week? Another factor that supports Microsoft’s delay being political is its decision to bundle MS Works with Vista.

iWork 08 is said to be a major update that will include a spreadsheet. Its word processor - Pages - is also supposed to have vastly improved. If this is true and if Pages can be made load a document from a local drive as fast as Safari loads a page from a site 8000 miles away; and if Pages can save documents in Office Open XML file format - then Microsoft's concern will be justified.

KW
 
Well I can't say I'm terribly surprised, though I am disappointed. I say take the time and don't rush the suite out of the door, make it compatible and stable. I'm sure the intel switch set them back as well as having a change in command. Leopard was delayed by four months, Office has been set back by a few too. Who knows what they have to deal with, put up with. I'm sure they're a great team that probably has to put up with a lot, considering they use Macs in the company that makes Windows.

My only real question is this, once it's released, is it going to be a worthwhile upgrade? I know people ask this all the time when considering upgrades to software. But seriously, Office is becoming bloated and not really adding any value to itself. The ribbon, I feel, is awful. I remember reading they tried to bring it to the mac, but the UI was so confusing to users that they had to stop. If I'm writing a paper, I don't need a billion little buttons telling me where to click and flash when a menu will do fine. I enjoy my screen space, and Microsoft's approach seems to be to fill up as much of the screen with buttons as possible. How is that easier? Taking simple text menus and turning them into bloated categories of buttons. Is anyone else seeing that screenshot of PowerPoint? The slide is less than a quarter of the screen size, how is that helpful, how do you successfully edit that?
 
MacRumorUser said:
Well since Open Office have been promising a native aqua version for what must be over a year at this stage (since neooffice already supply one) then I wouldn't hold your breath for them to hit their release schedule either.
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Wrong. In the last few months OOo set up a team to tackle this job. Its well on its way to becoming a reality now.
 
Gav said:
Oh noes!! Office 2008 isn't going to be released until... 2008?
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I appreciate the irony. But actually there is some precedent for Microsoft releasing Year N+1 software in Year N.

Office 97 was released in 1996.
Office 2000 was released in 1999
Office XP (Containing applications labelled "2002") was released in 2001.

Mind you, in those cases, MS didn't actually attach permanent names to their upcoming products until they actually had firm, immovable release dates in mind. So it's possible that they wanted to release Office 97 as Office 96, but they weren't sure whether it'd be ready in time, so they defensively named it Office 97 instead.

I will need a very compelling reason to choose iWork 2008 over any of the alternatives the next time an upgrade impulse overtakes me. I actually bought iWork '06 with my newest Mac, and ended up dreading it so much that I decided to download OpenOffice X11 instead. Happy OOo user ever since.

On my previous (PPC) Mac, I'm still perfectly comfortable with Office 2004. But as a matter of principle, I'm keeping PPC software off my Intel Mac.
 
Still - at least it's coming out in the year the package is dated with (i.e. 2008).
 
Genghis Khan said:
i just hope it loads quicker :(
Click to expand...

Bah... it will have some superfluous gui and loading time will end up not being significantly less than the current ones. :rolleyes:

I just wish iwork'08 will have some excel like app in it - so I can finally be totally weaned off Office. I do use word's track changes and every now and then - but that shouldn't justify a bloated, sluggish, lethargy of an application suite on my system.
 
brygruver said:
Use Keynote instead of Powerpoint and the only application you then have to replace is entourage, which I've never used.

Let's get Pages and Keynote on the Windows Platform and give MS Office a run for it's money.
Click to expand...

They have to add a spreadsheet app and get Pages to a point where it's actually usable as a word processor first.
 
There goes the return to school sales for Office 08. I was hoping for an updated version for my final year at uni but i guess i will have to stick with my current setup of Office 07 running through parallels off my bootcamp partition.
 
Sorry I didn't Verify my credentials.

jellomizer said:
I wasn't aware that you are keen on what is in the source for Office for the Mac and CS3. But depending on how their old version of Office was made the Intel migration might have been more difficult. Who knows why it is late, Perhaps they made office in an internal language where Microsoft won't release the compilers for so with the switch to Intel they needed to remake the compilers, then they can remake office. Or they use to have their own compilers then they needed to learn X-Code (Which is not as as simple as people want you to believe)... There are a lot of factors involved that could cause delays in migration especially if they were working on a PPC version of office 2008 before the Intel Announcement so they needed to go back and redo some stuff.

I am glad you are able to successfully free yourself from using MS Products good for you. But for other people it is not as simple as using alternatives.

While Keynote is a great product that really competes well with Powerpoint the issue is for a lot of people when they make a presentation they are normally at an office where there is a system hooked up to a projector and that system is usually a windows system with powerpoint... You can convert the keynote to powerpoint but you may loose features that you put in Keynote causing your presentation to not go as well as you expected, if you used office powerpoint you know what features are available and use them so your presentation goes completely as expected.

Textedit/Pages/Google Documents are all fine but a lot of people can send you rather in-depth word files some of them are forms you need to fill out and if you are not using word your formatting may get really screwed up and depending who you are sending the form they may just put the reject stamp on it because they didn't see the answers where they expect it...

Same problem with Sharing Excel Files... Yea there is so much math software but none as flexible as Excel. Excel is more then just math it is a spreadsheet it is good for non-programmers to make quick programs (But god help them if they need to use them in a production environment). I use excel daily at work just to prototype code to see if the math works out or if I am analyzing data or I need to report on my analysis of the Data Excel works great. Sure there are so many specialized applications and I agree they should use them over excel for a lot of the cases. But there comes a time that you are spending tones of money finding special apps where excel saves money (It is more then just the cost of buying the apps it is the full evaluation process)
Click to expand...

Sorry I didn't verify my credentials. At my job, I write Cocoa Applications in Objective C using Interface Builder and Xcode. If CS3 and Office are Cocoa Applications, porting them from PPC to Universal should be a fairly simple task. I'm not saying that it wouldn't take time, but if the applications were written correctly in the first place, it should be an easy task. From what I can tell, Office is a Cocoa application as where Adobe's products seem to still use some of the Carbon API. It's 2007....OS X and Cocoa have been around since 2000......that's plenty of time......then again this is Adobe and Microsoft we are talking about.
 
sdds said:
So that's Microsoft's official stance on quality? It's a "just" criteria? Well you have to give them credit that they at least publicly admit this.

And: One of the two reasons made responsible is home made. New office format? Guess the Office 2007/Win team just pulled that one out of their a**es at the last minute before Office 07 was released...
Click to expand...

Maybe this is my excuse to start goofing off at work. I'll stop shaving, dress in rags, arrive late, skip days, miss deadlines, and surf Facebook all day. At my next performance review I'll just say "well, it's just a quality issue across the board".

As for the file format, I'm glad that someone called them on it. That's the first thing I noticed when I read the story. A file format change? Another one? What's the matter, Microsoft, are too many people trying to be compatible? Feeling threatened? Got to break that compatibility to artificially keep ahead?
 
This is a serious question for those of you out there who might know better than me: Is there a reason I shouldn't be satisfied with NeoOffice and will want to buy Office 2008 when it comes out?
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It's slow, it hardly ever gets updated, and worst of all, it's java.
 
I have no plans to buy the office suite anymore, I expect iWork, openoffice, neooffice and others to replace the office needs.

Makes no difference to me
:D
 
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