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Microsoft Office Update, and Visual Basic for Applications to Return
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Microsoft Tech Support Call
I just got off the phone with Microsoft Mac Technical Support... These are my findings.
A little history first...
I own a 2008 MacBook Pro 2.4Ghz Penryn with 4GB RAM. I had installed Office 2008 previously and the speed was horrible. I'm talking almost a minute or more to load all the programs. I talked with tech support (We tried EVERYTHING, and when I mean EVERYTHING, I mean EVERYTHING!), they said an update would be coming out, I waited, applied it (12.0.1), nothing. I gave up, but I still needed to use Office because of college. I had no choice to move to another program or I would've purchased Apple Pages in a heart beat! Now, all this hype about SP1... I try the AutoUpdater, nothing. So, instead of messing around, I figured Microsoft needs a phone call...
She tells me that they haven't made it available in AutoUpdater yet, just in case they start having issues with it, like mine! She pointed me to where I could download it. I did, I install it, I launch Word. It takes longer to load than any other time in history. We quit, relaunch, same thing... Over a minute to load. We quit, create a new user account, launch Word, same SLOW Word I've come to know, but not love... I could hear in her voice she was none to happy. She kept saying how they have tried it on these Intel Macs and SP1 speeds things up BIG TIME! I tell her that I've heard the same things, but it isn't happening on my brand new Mac, HELP! We delete everything Microsoft in the preferences... Launch Word, same thing. So, she starts asking me about Entourage, I didn't install it. I told her I ONLY installed Word, Powerpoint, and Excel and NOTHING else. So, we decided to TRASH EVERYTHING MICROSOFT on my computer... From user preferences, HD preferences, User Data, application folder itself, you name it, it got deleted. I emptied the trash.
I loaded the CD. I installed EVERYTHING but Entourage and MSN. Everything else got loaded... Fonts, tools, languages, the whole works. We didn't use the little update, 12.0.1, we went directly to SP1 (12.1.0) and updated Office. Everything was done... We loaded Excel, FAST... We loaded Powerpoint, REALLY FAST, we loaded Word, I crossed my fingers... WOW, FAST! I restart my computer... Load Word... I can't believe my eyes! It works and it works FAST! We are talking a program that used to load in a minute or more to a program that loads in under five seconds!
She decided that Office "hung" when trying to locate some Fonts that it "needs"... I now don't need to keep Word open in the background any longer... It took a LONG time to get to this point, but the speed is finally here... Could it be better? It could ALWAYS be faster... But I was one of the last to be plagued with the slowness of Microsoft Office 2008... NO LONGER!
Thank you Microsoft MacBU!
I just got off the phone with Microsoft Mac Technical Support... These are my findings.
A little history first...
I own a 2008 MacBook Pro 2.4Ghz Penryn with 4GB RAM. I had installed Office 2008 previously and the speed was horrible. I'm talking almost a minute or more to load all the programs. I talked with tech support (We tried EVERYTHING, and when I mean EVERYTHING, I mean EVERYTHING!), they said an update would be coming out, I waited, applied it (12.0.1), nothing. I gave up, but I still needed to use Office because of college. I had no choice to move to another program or I would've purchased Apple Pages in a heart beat! Now, all this hype about SP1... I try the AutoUpdater, nothing. So, instead of messing around, I figured Microsoft needs a phone call...
She tells me that they haven't made it available in AutoUpdater yet, just in case they start having issues with it, like mine! She pointed me to where I could download it. I did, I install it, I launch Word. It takes longer to load than any other time in history. We quit, relaunch, same thing... Over a minute to load. We quit, create a new user account, launch Word, same SLOW Word I've come to know, but not love... I could hear in her voice she was none to happy. She kept saying how they have tried it on these Intel Macs and SP1 speeds things up BIG TIME! I tell her that I've heard the same things, but it isn't happening on my brand new Mac, HELP! We delete everything Microsoft in the preferences... Launch Word, same thing. So, she starts asking me about Entourage, I didn't install it. I told her I ONLY installed Word, Powerpoint, and Excel and NOTHING else. So, we decided to TRASH EVERYTHING MICROSOFT on my computer... From user preferences, HD preferences, User Data, application folder itself, you name it, it got deleted. I emptied the trash.
I loaded the CD. I installed EVERYTHING but Entourage and MSN. Everything else got loaded... Fonts, tools, languages, the whole works. We didn't use the little update, 12.0.1, we went directly to SP1 (12.1.0) and updated Office. Everything was done... We loaded Excel, FAST... We loaded Powerpoint, REALLY FAST, we loaded Word, I crossed my fingers... WOW, FAST! I restart my computer... Load Word... I can't believe my eyes! It works and it works FAST! We are talking a program that used to load in a minute or more to a program that loads in under five seconds!
She decided that Office "hung" when trying to locate some Fonts that it "needs"... I now don't need to keep Word open in the background any longer... It took a LONG time to get to this point, but the speed is finally here... Could it be better? It could ALWAYS be faster... But I was one of the last to be plagued with the slowness of Microsoft Office 2008... NO LONGER!
Thank you Microsoft MacBU!
This is completely untrue. Experience has shown over and over again that software cannot be developed quicker due to increases in manpower and money. The Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns still applies to software, and at some points, adding more people slows the project down. This phenomena has been experienced and documented by some of the greatest minds in the field.
Actually it is a complete mystery. No one except Intel (including Microsoft, Adobe and even IBM) knew before Steve announced on stage that Apple was switching to Intel processors. Developers usually don't know these things until it happens.
Adobe and Microsoft are in the same position--their code bases are built on Carbon. Did you just admit here that the roadmap is unclear?
Writing a compiler takes years.
VBA has little to do with speed. I'm not sure why it is too slow, but I'm guessing they lost a lot of their Code Warrior specific optimizations while transitioning to gcc coupled with the fact they revamped UI among other things.
When I ran iPhoto, I found that it is actually slower than Word with my small library (< 2,000 pictures). No one complains about that though. There are a lot of slow apps in Mac OS X. We just care about Office a lot more.
That's true. Too bad I have the Office 2008 box and contents with receipt sitting right next time. Work on your trolling skills.
Considering I run Leopard 90% of time, no. And I wouldn't call you a fanboy either, I'd call you ignorant. You've never used Office, yet you're unimpressed with it. As for Vista, you have to actually use it for more than 5 minutes to qualify judgment. Vista (SP1) x64 runs very well. Drivers are everywhere (but that's not Microsoft's problem anyway), and on fairly new computers it runs fantastically. I could only suggest getting Vista if you're getting the 64-bit version however. Upgrading from XP (32) to Vista (32) isn't as important. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, no doubt, but how about actually using the product before judging it?
Anyway, I have no idea what happened, but after restarting my comp. and trying again this morning, it went through finally. Word seems to start up faster, and I'm sure there's other fixes I'm not seeing.
A side note .. probably for another thread, but...
I go to the Apple stores in the greater Dallas area all the time. I have noticed that (my perception, not actual polling data) the first thing sales people hand a customer is a new copy of Office 08. Why wouldn't the customer first be shown a copy of iWork? Bueller?
I go to the Apple stores in the greater Dallas area all the time. I have noticed that (my perception, not actual polling data) the first thing sales people hand a customer is a new copy of Office 08. Why wouldn't the customer first be shown a copy of iWork? Bueller?
OK!
Thumbs up from me. Good service pack. Been using it tonight a lot and it's so much faster. I actually think about opening it now, whereas before i was always afraid hehe.
Thumbs up from me. Good service pack. Been using it tonight a lot and it's so much faster. I actually think about opening it now, whereas before i was always afraid hehe.
Worked great for me - no installation issues at all. I'm a big fan of Office 2008 and in my opinion it is vastly superior to the train wreck that is Office 2007 on Windows.
I know a lot of people have had problems with Office 2008 (mainly seems to be people with a lot of fonts), but for me it's fast, stable, easy to use and has great compatibility with the dark side.
IMO, it's the best office suite Microsoft have released on any platform - a massive thumbs up to the Mac BU
I know a lot of people have had problems with Office 2008 (mainly seems to be people with a lot of fonts), but for me it's fast, stable, easy to use and has great compatibility with the dark side.
IMO, it's the best office suite Microsoft have released on any platform - a massive thumbs up to the Mac BU
I completely agree. The installation went fine for me - no problems at all. Word used to take about 20s to start up and now it does it in 5s.
IMO Word 2008 is far superior to any other office style apps on the Mac.
They haven't put it on the auto-update servers yet. No-one knows when they will so until then you have to download it from the Microsoft Mac Division site.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx
Well, I am glad they are bringing back VBA for office. The fact they removed it, and the number of problems I heard with 2008 is why I have not tried it and am using the Windows version on Parallels (that and I already had the CD's for the Windows version).
Personally, if they give me:
Word
Excel
Powerpoint
Outlook (not Entourage)
OneNote
I would like to have Access to, but I realize that is only but a dream. If MACBU can give me those 5 apps in MACOFFICE, then I may switch from the Windows to the Mac version. I have too much vested (especially in OneNote) to switch away for something that is sub-par.
then I may switch to the mac version. I am trying to get rid of anything PC related except crucial apps I need. However, I will not switch just for the sake of switching. the product has to be worth the switch.
Personally, if they give me:
Word
Excel
Powerpoint
Outlook (not Entourage)
OneNote
I would like to have Access to, but I realize that is only but a dream. If MACBU can give me those 5 apps in MACOFFICE, then I may switch from the Windows to the Mac version. I have too much vested (especially in OneNote) to switch away for something that is sub-par.
then I may switch to the mac version. I am trying to get rid of anything PC related except crucial apps I need. However, I will not switch just for the sake of switching. the product has to be worth the switch.
What are you running for a machine? My iphoto library has about 4,000 photos and I have another album with a few thousand clip arts. I do not find it slow. the only time my macbook slowed and I seen the beachball is when I am burning a CD, listening to music, downloading a youtube video, and reaching some CHM files all at the same time (had about 10 windows open - all actively running someting). Yes I work my machines. Other than that, seems pretty good to me. Alot faster than my Dell XPS laptop that is supposed to be the best, as it is supposingly built for gaming. I must say, I have no complaints with my mac. Even the problems people report on threads; I do not have.
(Mac + 5 applications) > (Windows + 20 applications)
You can do more with a mac and requires less applications to do it with!
I would have to agree, office 2007 on Windows is pretty good. I bet the ultimate version that sells for $500+ sold pretty well, as you can pretty much run an entire small business on that suite. If I did not have 2003 version already, had the $500+ to spend, and did not buy OneNote separately; then I would upgrade to 2007 ultimate.
My work runs 2007 Professional. Works great.
One can only wish for a decent running 2007 ultimate equivelant for the mac.
May I ask why the Mac version is always more expensive than the Windows versions? is it because they do not sell as many copies?
I'm using a MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz with 2 GB RAM with a fresh Leopard install from about 3 months ago. When I'm editing photos in iPhoto, it can take 1-3 seconds to respond to mouse events. It doesn't always pinwheel but it definitely lags despite the fact it's the only app I have running. I've also found iTunes rather unresponsive when I have devices connected.
I'm not complaining because as a software developer I can appreciate the complexity in making apps appear fast. I'm just grateful Mac OS X allows me to compile an application while listening to music, composing an email, participating in instant messaging and watching YouTube and yet handle the load without glitches and remain fully responsive.
I see the same thing happening my self here in North Carolina. Why, because not many people know about iWork, all other compatible office suites that claim to work with MS docs are not 100% compatible (even on the Windows side), and the name MS Office is just so sonomous with what everyone else is using and "needs". I have iwork, but I have not tried it all yet, so I cannot judge.
Another reason why the stores may be pushing Office2008 is because those switching from 2008 want to be sure they remain compatible with the rest of the world. Most people I see in stores buying macs for the first time ask, "can I still run or be compatible with my work or friends who use PC's"?
Plus, you just kinda get used to one thing and hate to switch. When my work upgraded from 2003 to 2007 on windows, I was like "ok, now how do I?? or Where did that go??" one thing a person hates is having to relearn everything.
Interesting, that is what I have a 2gb 2.4ghz macbook, although mine is not a pro - so I would expect yours to be running faster).... Do you have the updates loaded? You say your a developer... Would it be possible that one of your self-programmed apps could be the issue? I am not blaming your programming by any means. However, as a developer myself (windows, mainframes, proprietary OS's) I have seen where sometimes an app just hogs resources - that app may run fine, but others will suffer the consequences. I am learning and working with MS-SQL at the moment and well, lets just say I have seen how that looks fine but slows down other apps.
Just a thought.... I have not done any developing on my mac as of yet (too busy programming for work), but I plan on writing some stuff in Python or C++ when I get a chance though.
*Edit - oh and as for itunes with external devices connected... My mother-in-law wa in town and got a 1gb mp3 player for free (some no name product, difficult to use). I was loading some songs on it for her, and my itunes did not get sluggish -that was one of the 10 windows I had opened. I bought my machine about a month ago preconfigured from MacMall, so maybe they juiced it somehow.
Of course.
No, I don't develop on my personal machine. If that weren't the case I do know enough to kill a rogue process!
I think iPhoto gets slower with every release, but my photo size also tends to increase. I don't find the response unreasonable; my original point is that not everything is lightening fast.
I thought this post was interesting. I have no idea what GCC's optimization setting was in this example, but it really does show how Code Warrior is the gold standard compiler. If GCC's output is that much worse, it's no wonder Office runs so slow--the processor has to do 3x the amount of work to accomplish the same thing!
I'm unimpressed with the bug reports stacking up on Mac forums, I'm unimpressed with screenshots of it (they can't even stick to standard GUI guidelines), and I was unimpressed with the free trial of the previous version I got with my iMac crashing immediately on startup. I'm also unimpressed with Microsoft's efforts on OSX generally. That's more than enough to convince me not to spend money on it. How much more do I need to do to lose the "ignorant" tag?
Exactly how do you know how long I've used Vista? I've used it for some time, actually, and I'm not talking about drivers, I'm talking about a dreadful user experience - Vista is the must confusing and poorly-designed OS I've ever used. I'd switch back to AmigaOS from 1992 before Vista.
But Software isn't Hardware; the "map secrecy" levels are different.
Apple has been anything but silent about telling software developers to transition. For transitioning, the drum for Carbon has been beating since OSX began and for XCode specifically since 2003.
While we can agree that some of the motives behind the message ... ie, flexibility to go to Intel ... weren't necessarily revealed, do you still want to claim that Apple's messages to Software developers were a complete and utter "mystery"? YMMV, but I find that a bit hard to swallow when they've been very openly been publishing the developer tools for a half decade.
No, merely acknowledging that the roadmap recently changed in an abrupt fashion that clearly impacted Adobe but not Microsoft.
Adobe got tripped up by Apple in regard's to Apple's change of direction in regards to 64-bit Carbon support. However, Microsoft simply does not need Carbon to be 64-bit for supporting features in Office, so that announcement should not have had any relevancy on Microsoft's plans or schedules, so it can not be blamed for Microsoft's actions.
And my point was that despite these differences in how they were being affected, Adobe still got ripped up, yet we're choosing to give Microsoft a "buy". So why are we so clearly being inconsistant?
So what compiler is needed that doesn't already exist?
If the argument is for XCode, even if we want to claim that it wasn't really mature enough to use for 'Real' projects until it hit revision 2.1 (provided support for universal binaries), that revision was released at WWDC 2005, so it is now 3 years old .
I think you missed my point: from a high level macroscopic perspective, the code for Office got smaller (no VBA), plus it was able to run native (no Rosetta), yet its UI performance got worse.
Why?
Okay, we can play the overly simplistic "blame the lousy compliler" game, even though we don't have clear evidence that it is indeed the cause of the performance woes. The fallacy is that this gambit conveniently ignores the fact that the contribution of even a "bad" compiler will be offset by the previous code having to take a healthy performance hit by running under an emulation layer (Rosetta). Thus, this explanation doesn't seem particularly plausible to me, sorry.
No, its just that you're making a very unequal comparison:
- iPhoto is launching its App ... and then opens its database (data file).
- Office merely launches its App...no User data files are opened.
I suggest that you try to make a more reasonably fair performance comparison: from a fresh boot, go into our Documents folder, select just 100 DOC files in your home directory and hit "Open" and compare that time to how iPhoto did with 2000 records.
And to be more comprehensive, repeat the exercise with a like number of EXE and PPT files for Excel and Powerpoint.
-hh
True, but software is directly related to hardware, especially in this case.
Carbon is the framework that was to be used to transition to Mac OS X. That was an expensive move for many companies. Switching to Xcode, which wasn't introduce until Panther, is also an expensive move, which would have had no benefit until Apple switched to Intel processors. Xcode is inferior to Code Warrior so what motivation did Microsoft and Adobe have to move there unless they had to?
Um, yes, I want to argue it was a mystery. They completely blindsided everyone. You can go research the commentary made by developers during that time period. The fact they have been publishing their developer tools has absolutely nothing to do with this. These tools did not support Intel processors until after the announcement; they added to their developer tool suite after the announcement to make compiling for i386 possible.
Adobe requiring Carbon to be 64-bit for Adobe's 64-bit plans is somewhat analogous to Microsoft requiring PowerPC for VBA. Apple's change in direction (not making Carbon 64-bit, or moving to Intel processors) affected the software development schedules (Adobe has to move to Cocoa, Microsoft has to rewrite for i386).
Interesting, although this is ambiguous. It seems Microsoft got ripped up for not getting VBA out the door in time for Office 2008. They didn't get ripped apart for not being 64-bit yet because there isn't as much benefit for their apps. It seems to me that Adobe wasn't as adversely affected because they couldn't move their Mac line forward as quickly; they didn't have to cut a feature. Yes, people are pissed off, but Adobe's customers don't lose anything.
A VBA compiler for Intel processors. That's important for executing VBA on Intel processors. They only had one for PowerPC processors. PowerPC and Intel processors are not compatible.
As I mentioned above, regardless of how well Xcode may work, it still doesn't work as well as Code Warrior. Therefore there was not incentive to move and incur the massive cost of transitioning. Xcode is also subject to Steve Jobs's reality distortion field; it's not the best IDE ever.
It was documented FireFox actually ran faster under Rosetta than it did on real hardware. Anyway, I wasn't saying the compiler is the sole reason, I believe I have outlined a variety of causes that may have contributed to the slow performance. Performance is a hard issue. I was merely suggesting that due to the numerous possible causes it wasn't necessarily feasible to improve in the release schedule.
When editing photos in iPhoto, which is where I said performance lagged, it is a fair comparison. Anyway, as a user I don't care what the reasons are, I just want to get my work done as fast as possible.
I got stuck in the Setup loop after installing the update.
So, I tried the workaround and it totally trashed Office. NOTHING would work.
So, I tried deleting everything and reinstalling from scratch... Office was still trashed. The Word icon would appear and then disappear. At least I wasn't still stuck in the Setup loop.
I spent many hours hunting and deleting all MS/Office files. I made progress after deleting the stuff in the Receipts folder. When I reinstalled everything almost worked. The Setup program was trying to crash the kernal and the OS was fighting back by crashing the Setup program. After a quick reboot, the Setup worked and Office is super fast and running version 12.0.0.
I think I'll pass on the update. I prefer functionality to Microsoft's version of "increased" functionality. Thanks for increasing my productivity MS!
So, I tried the workaround and it totally trashed Office. NOTHING would work.
So, I tried deleting everything and reinstalling from scratch... Office was still trashed. The Word icon would appear and then disappear. At least I wasn't still stuck in the Setup loop.
I spent many hours hunting and deleting all MS/Office files. I made progress after deleting the stuff in the Receipts folder. When I reinstalled everything almost worked. The Setup program was trying to crash the kernal and the OS was fighting back by crashing the Setup program. After a quick reboot, the Setup worked and Office is super fast and running version 12.0.0.
I think I'll pass on the update. I prefer functionality to Microsoft's version of "increased" functionality. Thanks for increasing my productivity MS!