Not a chance. There's just too much legacy code sitting in Office, that a complete rewrite isn't feasible or viable.
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Microsoft Office 2015 (2016?)
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Do you really think so?
I do not think that Microsoft would rewrite all the code in Office as there is too much of it. But can't Microsoft write specific parts in Swift, such as a new interface that looks like the one in OneNote?
Perhaps they could but I guarantee you they won't. They're not going to go to that much trouble for the Mac suite. Plus, Swift isn't tried and proven yet. Also, I don't think they'll alienate all the pre-Yosemite users.
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I missed this before. My issues are with Excel. Windows Excel has functions that Mac Excel does not, macro support is lacking, table and chart commands are not equal, and little things like using a formula to control conditional highlighting does not work as it does in Windows.
Even though a lot of the headache is from two different designs, Excel for Mac has no where near the functionality of Excel for Windows. Additionally, it's performance is utterly unacceptable. Excel froze while sorting a table with, get this, 6 rows! I was only testing a feature before I attempted it in a 6000 row spreadsheet, but it couldn't even handle 6! Back to Office 2013.
AND! I have fallen in love with Office for iPad, but even IT isn't fully compatible with the Mac version and has some functions from the Windows version. Office Mac is the odd man out and it's irksome.
Side note: When I enable OneDrive on Windows 8.1 for iPad integration it turns the entire account into and "online" account with setting and other info synced to OneDrive so you can just use it as a simple sync folder like you can in W7.
Will software written in Swift be only available for Yosemite users? I was under the impression that this software would run in previous versions of OS X as well.
I have also learned that there is a mobile platform now called Xamarin (http://xamarin.com) that allows the creation of OS X and iOS software using C#. According to their website, Microsoft is one of their customers. I was skeptical about Xamarin until I learned that Rdio app was developed using it; and it appears to be really good under iOS and OS X. Would Microsoft use such a platform for Office for Mac?
Yes, I guess the main problems are with Excel. Fortunately, I do not use Excel that much. I use Word a lot, and I already lots of trouble with it. PowerPoint is the second most used program here, and the Windows version is better as well.
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No. Not yet. And it has not even been announced yet.
(In my own humble opinion) only a nerd would even think of installing MS Office. Why? Why do it? Simply install Pages and Numbers. If you really need to access a document created on MS softs, put a windows version in a virtual machine, open it there, then save it under a compatible with Pages or Numbers format, or just cut and paste the content over.
For those pedantics who argue that they cannot do without the vastly-unused specialist technology included in Office, I offer that you are untruthful and argumentative for argument's sake.
For those pedantics who argue that they cannot do without the vastly-unused specialist technology included in Office, I offer that you are untruthful and argumentative for argument's sake.
I have to disagree with you on that assessment. Number is clearly so inferior to Excel that normal users are better off with Excel the Numbers, not just "nerds" as you put it.
For instance, pivot tables, lack of functions, poor compatibility to excel (and yes many non nerd business users will need excel compatibility). Then there's the task of entering data into Numbers vs. Excel. For small (read tiny) spreadsheets this is an annoyance, move beyond a couple of rows/columns and its significant issue.
YMMV, and this is just my opinion but I think classifying usage needs beyond numbers as nerdiness shows a lack of grasp of how many people rely on fairly basic functions, formulae, and features that Excel has and Numbers doesn't. True there are so many features in excel that I'll never use, but on the other hand, some very basic features that Excel has which are missing in Numbers basically dooms it.
Oh, please. Believe me, those Microsoft Office features are there because there are people actually using them. They are not just "vastly-unused specialist technology". They are useful features.
I understand that the vast majority of people may think Microsoft Office has lots of features nobody uses. Some of these people might benefit from these very same features.
If Pages or Numbers works for you, very well then. It doesn't for me and I assure you this is not just because I am pedantic. I really need those features, or they make my life much easier. I will tell you why.
I finished my PhD thesis last year. It had more than 300 pages and over 1,000 footnotes. Some of these footnotes contained a lot of text, so as the footnote did not fit just one page. Pages, however, does not allow a footnote to be split between two pages. This is very basic functionality that is missing in Pages. As a result, there is missing text in my footnotes if I use Pages to work on my PhD thesis. Word, however, allows me to split the footnote in two or more pages. In addition, several of these footnotes referred to other footnotes. For instance, footnote 543 referred to footnote 219. If I insert a footnote 192, then footnotes are renumbered and footnote 219 becomes footnote 220. In Word, I use a feature called "cross-references" that automatically renumbers all references so that reference to footnote 219 automatically turns into a reference to footnote 220. Pages does not have such feature and, as a result, I have to manually renumber all the references. As I have lots of footnotes and references, this is a lot of work, and is prone to errors.
So, if Pages is good for you, then use it. But your requirements are certainly different from mine, and from lots of other people. I need Office's features, and I am not pedantic or a nerd because of that. These features are really useful for me. And this is why iWork is not sufficient for my kind of usage, and this is why I need Microsoft Office instead.
I can wait for Office 2014 for Mac and continue to use Office 2011. I won't use Pages and Numbers because I would have to pay for them. And if I am going to pay I will pay for Office, which I do through Office 365. Office 365 is worth the $6.99 per month just for the 1TB of cloud storage included.
I just bought a Dell XPS 2720 and installed Office 365. I'm about halfway through editing a 50-page technical paper with extensive tracked changes and comments. It hasn't crashed once. By comparison, Word 2008 on my iMac would crash after just a few pages of extensive tracked changes and comments.
My iMac and MBA are great machines, and I'll continue to use them for other tasks. But a stable Office experience is key to my productivity, which means the Dell just became my main machine.
My iMac and MBA are great machines, and I'll continue to use them for other tasks. But a stable Office experience is key to my productivity, which means the Dell just became my main machine.
Me too. However, I think this is not the case, as there is not even a beta version of the new Office. I am expecting something great to compensate all this time Microsoft kept us waiting.
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I will not use Pages or Numbers because they will not fit my needs. I could use Office 2011, but it does not behave well under Mavericks in my Mac. The best way is still using Office 2013 on a virtual machine, which is far from an ideal solution.
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At least you have the option of buying a 27-inch decent Dell desktop. Every all-in-one available here in my country (Brazil) are crap, except for the iMac. Dell only makes available some cheap desktops, and none of them is acceptable. I can say the same about laptops: the only decent ones are MacBooks. The rest is cheap garbage and I will not even consider buying one of these plastic low-resolution things. Shoud manufacturers release something like the Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus or the Asus Zenbook Infinity, I could consider buying a Windows laptop. Otherwise, I am not even considering the possibility.
All true.
As a university instructor, I only accept assignments submitted electronically in word, or sometimes in PDF. Our class management software takes care of time stamping and validating submissions. I return the student's file with comments and corrections using the tools available in Word. I have created some key shortcuts in word which facilitate this. PDFs are discouraged since there does not seem to be a standardized way of commenting and tracking corrections; therefore I always get at least one email saying,"I can't see the comments!"
No. Nothing so far. There is no beta available. At least not a public beta. But no private beta leaked as well...
I remember Microsoft released a beta for Mac Office 2011 through invitation only. However, the beta leaked on the Internet and it was wide available through torrent websites. Several versions of the beta became available so, even though it was not public, people had wide knowledge of it.
But the next Office... there is no one single leak. That makes me wonder if there is even a beta of it.
The most I've seen are grins, that seem to say "Yep, hold tight", from MS reps at conferences over the past year when asked about Office for Mac 2014. They still verbally say "Nothing has been announced" but they definitely give the look as though something is on the horizon.
Then again, I've been seeing those same looks and indications for well over a year now.
As someone who oversees around 200~ Macs (each with an Office 2011 license) in an Exchange 2007 based office, with 250-300 PCs all running Outlook... I am really, really, really hoping for a newer and better version to be released. Several of our Mac users have started using the native Mail, Contacts and Calendar apps in OS X. These perform well for basic tasks (compared to Outlook) but fall short of Outlook when working with scheduling, sharing, etc.
Well, we are holding tight for more than a year now, and no signs of a new version. I hope there is really something good at the horizon as I am getting tired of waiting. Office 2011 is sub-par and I hope that, after so much waiting, the next Office (which at this point is probably 2015 and not 2014 anymore) is not another disappointment.
Next Office was in development way before Yosemite was revealed. There's nothing particularly Yosemite-ish in it at this time.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/18/6375419/microsoft-office-16-features-screenshots
Looks like the next Office for Windows is under-development!
Looks like the next Office for Windows is under-development!
Based on what I read it was about the Windows version, not the Mac version. I am hopeful that the Mac version will bring a better parity between the Mac and Windows versions, but at the same time I am not going to hold my breath.
Oh, I wanted to ask you. Have you every tried Scrivener? It can't (and wasn't designed to) replace Word for final edits and layout adjustments, but it a great tool for actually writing. I'm using it now for my thesis and love it. I'll compile and export it to Word to finish it up and fix any endnote citation issues. The biggest thing that held me back was endnote citations, but apparently endnote does work with it.
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Other thing I was thinking about...
Yes, I'm a computer "nerd," and love software and have tried many Office suites. Since I use them so much all day everyday the right choice was important. I never hated Office because: (1) there's no reason to, and (2) I'm an accounting major and will finish my Masters and get my license within 2 years. I will be using Office, Access, and MS Dynamics (among other enterprise system software) all my life. I get a lot of Access and Excel projects in class right now. I tried, I really tried, to do my Excel projects on the Mac version, but it simply didn't have the functionality I needed, it lagged, and it wasn't very compatible.
Well, I loved Pages 09. I used it for everything from letters to research proposals, but my usage has dramatically changed for a few reasons. First, I am using my iPad a lot more now. It's easier to take an iPad and a good keyboard to class than a 15" rMBP. Second, Microsoft finally released Office for iPad, and it was really good. Is it perfect? No. Is it a solid release that has received much support? Yes. The only compatibility issue I've had was with one font that wasn't on my iPad. Third (and last), Apple destroyed iWork. Even before the update, the Mac and iOS version of iWork were NOT very compatible so I gave up on them. With me using the iPad at school I wanted good Mac/iOS communication and OneDrive has worked out great. Why use Pages 09 on Mac and Word on iPad? I've almost completely cut out Pages without even thinking about it. It makes me sad because Pages was an amazingly refined and useful word processor and page layout tool. I have all kinds of pages documents still on my system, but Word was just easier and is the standard. All my professor post material as .docx (why not .pdf, I don't know...). There is also Word and Excel communication in Windows, I haven't tested it in the Mac version. Office is the standard that I will use and it's good. Why not use it? Pages will not be supported and will fade away eventually, Office is here to stay. Office has it's issues and many people dislike it with good reason, but for my usages it fits. I've started using Word for all the small tasks too (if I don't use textedit for really quick things) and Scrivener for big projects that get exported into Word for final edits. I've even grown to enjoy OneNote.
Microsoft has done some amazing work. I just wish that they would function more like a neutral software company and make great products with parity on all platforms. Sadly, the Mac clients will never be what the Windows versions are, which is to be expected (or not surprising I should say.) Now I just use Mac Word for a viewer and some lighter usages and Mac Excel for only the most basic spreadsheets. I use Office 2013 in VMWare for everything else.
Quick side note: When I first moved to Mac, I really tried to like Numbers, I really tried. I used it a lot, but it was just infuriation to use! Simple things were completely absent and even the implementation of what was there was unintuitive.