Microsoft to Release Office for Mac 2011 in Late October

[HadItWithWindow]

I wished I'd Known This Before I Bootcamped Win 7

just to buy MS Office.

I found iWork to be impossible to use so I bit the bullet and purchased Win7 and installed Office 2010.

Now they are coming out with a product for the Mac? Cool.

Maybe one of these days Quicken will make a worthwhile accounting program for Mac.

 

[314631]

Right on the money. iWork is toy, and Open Office is a bloated and semi-compatible pile of garbage. I'll be damned if I (and I doubt anyone who works for a living) would dare send off a spreadsheet to a client only to find that it doesn't open correctly.

Sorry Fanboys, in the real world it's MS Office or nothing. All this said, I hope this will finally replace my copy of Office for Mac 2004.

Agree on all counts. iWork is fun to use at home when writing letters and doing some basic accounting. But in the corporate world, Microsoft Office is the de-facto standard that you have to learn to work within.

Open Office is just horrible. I would rather use Windows all day than try to use Open Office for business.

 

[johnmcboston]

So Outlook is $80, and it would only work with Exchange 2007 and above? That's an expensive email program!

That's the first thing I noticed as well. So as a "home" user we're not expected to use email? Only "Businesses" use email?

 

[discounteggroll]

any chance the .PST can simply be moved/copied from a 2003 or 2007 version of outlook into this one?

Also, is this really full blown outlook or simply entourage with an updated icon?

 

[parkds]

With Office 2008, we were able to get it for a steal with the Black Friday offer and then the Free Upgrade to Office 2008. Has anyone been able to find a similar deal this time around?

 

[Marzzz]

But in the corporate world, Microsoft Office is the de-facto standard that you have to learn to work within.

Seconded. Wish it weren't true, I like iWork but you still have to use Office if you want to interface with the rest of the world.

 

[NAG]

Right on the money. iWork is toy, and Open Office is a bloated and semi-compatible pile of garbage. I'll be damned if I (and I doubt anyone who works for a living) would dare send off a spreadsheet to a client only to find that it doesn't open correctly.

Sorry Fanboys, in the real world it's MS Office or nothing. All this said, I hope this will finally replace my copy of Office for Mac 2004.

I love how everyone bashing the Apple apps doesn't give specifics and only says things like "it's a toy."

The only app that is behind is Numbers. Excel for Mac vs Excel for Windows doesn't favor Excel for Mac either if you want to get technical.

So with Numbers behind that leaves Keynote being far and away better (eg: you don't have to worry about your presentation exploding if you don't test it on the presentation computer first). Pages is also better when it comes to useful features as well as layout (Word can also throw a fit between versions but not as bad as Powerpoint). Mail works with Exchange 2007 well enough.

Therefore, might I suggest you be slightly more specific with your egotistical rant unless you think the real world uses Excel 24/7.

 

[oahazmatt]

Office is one of those things that I love on Windows but hate on Mac OS. Office 2008 just doesn't seem to have a natural interface to me. My wife bought a family pack so I had been using Word 2008 but I found it to be -- I don't know -- clunky? I used it on and off for a year and I never got used to the interface. I bought a family pack of iWork after trying the demo. I do wish some of the commands were standard (for example, cmd E doesn't center text) but I've been quite happy with it.

 

[fleshman03]

I still like iWork better. No one can beat Keynote. Keynote has some amazing slide transitions and effects.

+1. I actually bought both suites and compared them side-by-side. iWork just runs so much better. I actually find it easier to work with too.

 

[triceretops]

Office 11

I didn't put office on my latest mac just to see if I could get by without it. I put on iWork instead. What I've found:
There are issues with importing PowerPoint into Keynote, usually because of font translation. There seems to be some kerning issues and sometimes letters are spaced so close together that they overlap.
Doing graphs in Numbers is much more difficult than doing them in Excel. Only 6 lines to a single plot, so the workaround is a pain in the a$$. Also, there seems to be no macro capabilities either. However, there are some things that are rather cool, such as having more than 1 spreadsheet on a single page. For page layout it is great. However, for what I do I actually liked ClarisWorks better.
I haven't used pages enough to really say much about it. I did create a flyer from a template that was totally awesome and easy to do. I could not have done this in Word. However, when printed as a PDF it was 10 MB! Transferred to a PC (my work computer) and reprinted as a PDF it was only 256K.
At this point, I think I can keep going Microsoft free, it's just not as convenient.

 

[*LTD*]

iWork + MobileMe. Can easily edit/save MS docs. Great pdf options. And of course, the unparalleled Keynote.

MS can keep their under-optimized, bloated crapware.

 

[jonnysods]

Can't wait for Outlook. One of the things I really miss about Windows. Actually I really like the Windows version of Office and the ribbon, so I hope it's just like that with Mac flair.

I just hope they have not-for-profit-pricing as I have 5 staff that need upgrading badly so we can enable some better Exchange functionality.

 

[farmboy]

We all acknowledge that Office is essential for business, Word is massively bloated but critical, Excel is much better than Numbers, Keynote is better than Powerpoint, Mail is a basic but very functional email app. Seems pretty rational to me.

 

[Small White Car]

I hate all word processors but of them all I hate 'Word' the least.

Looking forward to this. (And is it just me, or is $150 for 3 computers cheaper than it used to be? Dunno, seems that way to me.)

 

[Speedy2]

So with Numbers behind that leaves Keynote being far and away better (eg: you don't have to worry about your presentation exploding if you don't test it on the presentation computer first).

Unfortunately, that doesn't matter much if you are exchanging files and the client works with Powerpoint. I have yet to see the converter for any Office format that works flawlessly. Also, Pages is quite good for layouts, but Word is stronger when it comes to business or science oriented documents like memos, specifications or papers and the workflow that is attached to them.

 

[chrfr]

If you own 1 Mac the additional cost for Outlook is $80.
If you own 3 Macs the additional cost for Outlook is $330 (or $110/Mac).
Microsoft proves that it is greedy and stupid.

Yeah, this pricing change is absurd.

 

[kernkraft]

"But this one goes up to eleven!"

It's now the second half of 2010 and we don't know anything about the next version of iLife '09 and iWork '09. What's the point of naming a software after a year, if Apple doesn't stick to the annual refresh cycle anymore?

I have Office for Mac from two years ago and I also have the latest iWork. I like the full screen mode in Pages and the templates are nice. I also have NeoOffice, which I mostly use for creating pdf files.

But in the end, there is a level of tasks when the open source alternatives won't cut it and when iWork's eye candies will not make you forget that Office is the most capable suite of them all. Word and Excel is what our economy is built upon, if you like.

 

[Brinkman]

So crazy, 199 vs 79

Hmmmm....

 

[alphaod]

I look forward to some proper Outlook on the Mac; pricing looks alright.

So crazy, 199 vs 79

Hmmmm....

Mmmm, industry standard vs something to fill the market gap.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Wait, Word, Powerpoint, and Excel are the only programs included in Office?

What happened to Equation Editor? That's the only thing I ever bothered with Office for. (I write the equation in it, then copy and paste it into Pages... I've tried other programs like Latex and stuff, but none of them seem to be as exhaustive as far as covering all the symbols or as easy to use as Equation Editor... I guess it's time for me to go write my own application to do it or something...

(And don't try talking about Outlook, it's a damn email & calendar program, as a student I couldn't care less about it, email in iOS 4 + gmail online both work fine for me... IDK what anyone is complaining about Apple Mail for, seems like a fine application to me... and iCal is a fine calendar program.)

 

[RandomKamikaze]

any chance the .PST can simply be moved/copied from a 2003 or 2007 version of outlook into this one?

Yes you can import .PST archives directly in to the upcoming Outlook.

The new suite is pretty nice, much better than Office 2008.

Has anyone seen any info about the new Office for Mac being available on Technet, MSDN or the VLS site?

 

[Dimwhit]

I'm just hoping for a version of Microsoft Office that doesn't take forever to launch.

I prefer iWork, and we don't do anything very complex, so compatibility isn't much of an issue. But we still get Office. Assuming TechSoup gets it (like it has previous versions), I can usually get it for around $15/license, so it's nice having the options.

 

[Centst]

If you get the family pack any idea on how they track the registrations. Can the locations be different for each member, or do they track by IP address, etc? Been awhile since I've updated Office.

 

[chezhoy]

I have it too and just uninstalled it this weekend...I couldn't get the updates to take. Plus, I can convert Keynote, etc over to the Microsoft formats...which actually look dull on the Microsoft side.

Eh, I got the 2008 version. Is there really a reason to upgrade?

 

[knightlie]

Right on the money. iWork is toy, and Open Office is a bloated and semi-compatible pile of garbage. I'll be damned if I (and I doubt anyone who works for a living) would dare send off a spreadsheet to a client only to find that it doesn't open correctly.

Sorry Fanboys, in the real world it's MS Office or nothing. All this said, I hope this will finally replace my copy of Office for Mac 2004.

Those blanket statements don't really make much sense. I'm sure your definition of "real world" is very different from other peoples'.

Agree on all counts. iWork is fun to use at home when writing letters and doing some basic accounting. But in the corporate world, Microsoft Office is the de-facto standard that you have to learn to work within.

Open Office is just horrible. I would rather use Windows all day than try to use Open Office for business.

Ahh, so the "real world" is the corporate world, and home or small business users don't count. I see.