Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Microsoft Office 2008 Delayed Until January 2008
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
This is my question too. I don't tend to use the comments & revisions feature that most often gets quoted here. What else is the major selling point for 2008?
Tight Exchange integration with an email client would be the only thing that jumps to mind. I've heard that Entourage isn't as well done as Outlook, however.
What say you experts?
i have switched to using open office and neoffice and am pretty happy.
my very old copy of MS office (v.X) works but not very well. the opensource alternatives are as good if not better than that.
but the main reason i switched is not for any strong MS hatred but, rather, for cost reasons. free is a pretty hard deal to beat.
granted, i do not use any part of the MS suite except excel. and even then, it's fairly basic stuff. so, im not asking neooffice to do much for me.
im just cheap i guess.
-kyle
my very old copy of MS office (v.X) works but not very well. the opensource alternatives are as good if not better than that.
but the main reason i switched is not for any strong MS hatred but, rather, for cost reasons. free is a pretty hard deal to beat.
granted, i do not use any part of the MS suite except excel. and even then, it's fairly basic stuff. so, im not asking neooffice to do much for me.
im just cheap i guess.
-kyle
Seeing as how Microsoft can't release anything close to the date it says it will, I think they should only announce the product when it's almost finished.
You're joking right? Office a Cocoa Application? The current Office isn't even a Mach-O format binary (its a PEF). Its barely an OS X application!
I just upgraded from an old 1 Ghz PowerBook to a new Macbook Pro and I find office to run like before. Meaning loads of crashes and so forth. But I have never got the impression that it is slower (I never use Word though, just Excel). If someone just made a spreadsheet app that did not lack in functionality compared to Excel I would not be using office at all as I believe there are better wordprocessors out there.
Meh...
Not that surprising considering their delay in releasing vista. Seems like the going thing these days whether it be Microsoft, Apple or even third party game developers...
As long as it won't be too long after the PC version is released. The major issue will be with the compatibility between all of the older office versions. Hopefully they will incorperate a choice to make files work with older versions of the software.
aussie_geek
Not that surprising considering their delay in releasing vista. Seems like the going thing these days whether it be Microsoft, Apple or even third party game developers...
As long as it won't be too long after the PC version is released. The major issue will be with the compatibility between all of the older office versions. Hopefully they will incorperate a choice to make files work with older versions of the software.
aussie_geek
A rather asenine comment if there ever was one.
hey i guess you never saw kanye west's comments about geroge bush....
PC office 2003 replaced by Office 2007. 4 Years? (unless they had a stealth release of office 2005 which i didn't notice).
Why are people a little bit down that they can't use it for the new school/uni term? I've not been in education for a while now, but surely grades aren't improved with the version of office you have.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of applications out there that became a Universal Binary. Need I say CS3? Heck, even Apple knew how to recode all it's iApps and even an entire operating system in a matter of months.
And then there's Microsoft, the biggest third party, who only gave us a decent Instant Messenger and a Beta Remote Desktop Connection. Say what you want, but I think it's simply pathetic.
A rather asenine comment if there ever was one.
That hilarious Kanye West reference was obviously wasted on you. That was brilliant actually...
Oh, and if we're being critical of other people's posts, then I should point out that you spelled "asinine" wrong.
As for the news at hand, I don't see this as a bad thing at all. Software gets delayed all the time - it happens. I'd rather Office 2008 be delayed and released when it's ready to be released rather than have a buggy, poor version released "on schedule" just to make a previously defined (and now unrealistic) deadline. Release it when it's ready, no sooner.
Okay everyone who know this quote?
Alright everyone that does know something about software development sing along with me:
"The best way to make a late project even later . . . hire more people."
Having said that, the first Intel Mac came out 18 months ago. I believe MS Office new file format was 100% formalized over a year ago, and close to complete before that. Development Intel macs have been available for about 2 years. No something just sounds fishy about the about Intel & office xml formats.
When MacBU announced second have of 2007, Leopard was supposed to be out in July. Now no one likes to go through a major software release, and really there's Office and CS are the biggest things out there, and then have to do a substantial rewrite 2 months later. I think spotlight took the MacBS by suprise last time. The had to do a lot of rewriting to take advantage of it, because people expect it. But they weren't able to heavily promote it. I bet they are just waiting for the final Leopard to see if any there are any surprises that would integrate with the office suite and provide some nice advertising headlines on release day.
Also a lot of people will be buying Macs between now and December. Most will get office. If MacBU waits till January most will pay for office again.
And before everyone disses the MacBU, weren't many of the people that created Claris emailer responsible for Mac Outlook Express and Entourage? Wasn't the MacBU originally created out of the ashes of Claris when Apple was laying off people left and right back in '97 (and I had just overclocked my PowerCenterPro from 180mhz to 210!!!!).
Alright everyone that does know something about software development sing along with me:
"The best way to make a late project even later . . . hire more people."
Having said that, the first Intel Mac came out 18 months ago. I believe MS Office new file format was 100% formalized over a year ago, and close to complete before that. Development Intel macs have been available for about 2 years. No something just sounds fishy about the about Intel & office xml formats.
When MacBU announced second have of 2007, Leopard was supposed to be out in July. Now no one likes to go through a major software release, and really there's Office and CS are the biggest things out there, and then have to do a substantial rewrite 2 months later. I think spotlight took the MacBS by suprise last time. The had to do a lot of rewriting to take advantage of it, because people expect it. But they weren't able to heavily promote it. I bet they are just waiting for the final Leopard to see if any there are any surprises that would integrate with the office suite and provide some nice advertising headlines on release day.
Also a lot of people will be buying Macs between now and December. Most will get office. If MacBU waits till January most will pay for office again.
And before everyone disses the MacBU, weren't many of the people that created Claris emailer responsible for Mac Outlook Express and Entourage? Wasn't the MacBU originally created out of the ashes of Claris when Apple was laying off people left and right back in '97 (and I had just overclocked my PowerCenterPro from 180mhz to 210!!!!).
I use office x (circa 2002) and there's not one ounce of sluggishness about it. Nada. Opens quickly. Runs perfectly. What is sluggish to you? 12 nanosecornds? 20 nanoseconds? In emulation it's probably running faster than it did on a G5, especially since it probably didn't support multiprocessors, and the multiprocessor on intel being duo core isn't seen as 2 processors, but one. Exactly what new features in the new office are you dying for? The only thing I noticed with 2004 is that it is harder to install on 2 computers, so I stuck with office x myself.
Errrr... Apple has had an Intel Version since the very inception of Mac OS X. It was kept up to date and progressed along side it's PPC sibling. Probably a similar situation with their applications.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090300165.html
"Kanye West's Torrent of Criticism, Live on NBC"
If you're actually using a Mac for the presentation, you'd figure that Keynote would be used.
beg pardon?
The dual core shows up as 2 processors, a quad core as 4 CPUs, and a dual quad as 8 CPUs.
A dual-core is often licensed as a single processor, but the software sees it as two, and you have to have SMP support in the OS and multi-threading in the application to use both.
Office has been multi-threaded for ages - I can remember it using both CPUs on a 180 MHz Pentium Pro that I had in 1996.
The dual core shows up as 2 processors, a quad core as 4 CPUs, and a dual quad as 8 CPUs.
A dual-core is often licensed as a single processor, but the software sees it as two, and you have to have SMP support in the OS and multi-threading in the application to use both.
Office has been multi-threaded for ages - I can remember it using both CPUs on a 180 MHz Pentium Pro that I had in 1996.
This is terrible for all of us who are students. Having an Intel Mac and no office suit to work with (well, one aside from Open/Neo Office). I guess Vista was just the beginning of Microsoft's "delayed products" list. I was affraid of something like this happening, esspecially since we had no news of this coming in last few months.
I think there is way too much overreaction here. Firstly the MBU was hampered by the slow development of Office 2007, having to wait until that was finished before it could even see where it was going with the Mac version. From that, it had to take a decision about how many of the changes it could incorporate into the codebase, bearing in mind that the entire codebase had to be ported over to Xcode so that it could compile as a UB. Since Office 2007 only went gold last November, they have effectively allowed themselves one year to update the product AND change to UB. It is not an unreasonable amount of time given the size of the program, and my initial reaction to the initial autumn release date was that it was too aggressive. You can also see from the drag and drop converter just released that they still have some work to do with Excel's new file format.
Disregarding the whingeing going on, I think the uptake of Office 2008 will exceed 2004 for the sole reason that for non-students it will have to be cheaper. Microsoft changed the licensing on the Windows version from Students to Home and Students for the version containing Excel, Word, Powerpoint and One Note. This is as much as most users will need, and all for £100 in the UK. Since the Mac version only contains Excel, Word, Powerpoint and a very cut-down Outlook aka Entourage, one would think that a similar low price will be introduced, perhaps dropping Entourage, which few will miss.
Disregarding the whingeing going on, I think the uptake of Office 2008 will exceed 2004 for the sole reason that for non-students it will have to be cheaper. Microsoft changed the licensing on the Windows version from Students to Home and Students for the version containing Excel, Word, Powerpoint and One Note. This is as much as most users will need, and all for £100 in the UK. Since the Mac version only contains Excel, Word, Powerpoint and a very cut-down Outlook aka Entourage, one would think that a similar low price will be introduced, perhaps dropping Entourage, which few will miss.