MSFT: Lion Features Coming to Office "In Months, Not Days"

[KnightWRX]

I suppose this is just the word processing version of "you're not a pro unless you use x". Total rubbish. I used Word to write a 250 page engineering design. Totally fine no issues at all. I would've wasted a lot of time teaching everyone else how to use TeX and messing around on their computers rather than just running a program that people know how to use.

Yeah, why waste time using the best tool for the best job.

TeX has many front-ends that make it as wysiwig as Word, no need for long setups/high learning curves. LaTeX comes to mind. The fact that you didn't know this just tells me that you use Word because you don't know any better, not because it's really "fine no issue at all". You've just learned to live with the issues.

 

[xUKHCx]

Yeah, why waste time using the best tool for the best job.

TeX has many front-ends that make it as wysiwig as Word, no need for long setups/high learning curves. LaTeX comes to mind. The fact that you didn't know this just tells me that you use Word because you don't know any better, not because it's really "fine no issue at all". You've just learned to live with the issues.

Skipping over the points in my post and jumping to conclusions

Yes I have used LaTeX and MacTex and some others. The best tool for collaboration with other people who do not know how to use those tools or working on systems where you can't install applications. Even having to have the output file as a word document. Yeah that sounds like LaTeX is the best tool for the job.

Can I embed excel spreadsheets into LaTeX so I can easily edit an update them?

Please tell me what issues I faced with my documents?

 

[FloatingBones]

Why do students need MS office?

Office still does what I need it to do when I go back to class, but I was hoping to have these features around August or September.

I've never understood why students think that MS Office is a good fit for their classwork. For writing, the most important thing is a tool that helps you organize your writing: gathering research, outlining in sections and then fleshing them out, publishing your paper in a fluid fashion. Tools like Scrivener seem to be far superior to MS Word for students to research and write papers.

I can't imagine how some spiffy feature of any layout software should have an impact on a grade. The main exception I see is if students are receiving a bunch of MS Word documents and and/or are expected to generate documents using some arbitrary MS Word format.

Could someone please explain? Have any students who are Office users tried Scrivener or one of the true writing tools? TY.

 

[winston1236]

ill just get open office then

 

[winston1236]

I've never understood why students think that MS Office is a good fit for their classwork. For writing, the most important thing is a tool that helps you organize your writing: gathering research, outlining in sections and then fleshing them out, publishing your paper in a fluid fashion. Tools like Scrivener seem to be far superior to MS Word for students to research and write papers.

I can't imagine how some spiffy feature of any layout software should have an impact on a grade. The main exception I see is if students are receiving a bunch of MS Word documents and and/or are expected to generate documents using some arbitrary MS Word format.

Could someone please explain? Have any students who are Office users tried Scrivener or one of the true writing tools? TY.

1. no i've never heard of it
2. students use it because its what they were brought up using "the standard" if you will.
3.personally i think office sucks for papers, even worse for adding an image

 

[Eric Best]

One of the few things I regret about moving over to Macs a few years back is the loss of WordPerfect. For word processing, it allows me to simply and transparently control everything and produce exactly what I want. I'm still waiting in hope Corel will grasp the nettle and return to making WordPerfect for Mac. Then I can wave the rest goodbye (perhaps)!
Eric.

 

[FloatingBones]

1. no i've never heard of it
2. students use it because its what they were brought up using "the standard" if you will.
3.personally i think office sucks for papers, even worse for adding an image

Scrivener has been around for many years and is now available in the MAS. It has a solid rating and is usually in the top-10 grossing productivity apps list. Apple featured Scrivener as one of the dozen "study" apps in their $100 back-to-school MAS promotion. Apple created an 8-word pitch for Scrivener for that promo: "Organize and write research papers, screenplays, and more."

A 30-day trial is available from the product's website. The product comes with tutorials and the developer sponsored a ScreenCastsOnline video of the product (list of videos here). If you like the software, you can buy directly from the developer, but I would recommend getting through the MAS to automate the updates.

Scrivener is a complex product. The developer maintains his own phpBB forum on his website. Reading those discussions helps to understand the product and the developer's philosophy.

You are right: students will choose MS Office for no rational reason. Apple's choice of a gift card for the MAS creates an interesting opening, since MS hasn't put any products in the MAS yet. Students can roll their own software suite -- they can make a pretty cool one for $100. The combination of Scrivener and Pages should be pretty good for writing papers.

 

[FroMann]

I've never understood why students think that MS Office is a good fit for their classwork. For writing, the most important thing is a tool that helps you organize your writing: gathering research, outlining in sections and then fleshing them out, publishing your paper in a fluid fashion. Tools like Scrivener seem to be far superior to MS Word for students to research and write papers.

I can't imagine how some spiffy feature of any layout software should have an impact on a grade. The main exception I see is if students are receiving a bunch of MS Word documents and and/or are expected to generate documents using some arbitrary MS Word format.

Could someone please explain? Have any students who are Office users tried Scrivener or one of the true writing tools? TY.

I have been using Word for years and have gotten use to the interface. The main reason I still use Office however is full compatibility with Office for Windows so I can easily turn in papers online or do presentations in class. I don't want to use an alternative and spend time learning the software when I am already comfortable with Word.

 

[FloatingBones]

I have been using Word for years and have gotten use to the interface. The main reason I still use Office however is full compatibility with Office for Windows so I can easily turn in papers online or do presentations in class. I don't want to use an alternative and spend time learning the software when I am already comfortable with Word.

The short summary of your reasons: the momentum of the legacy software and legacy platform. That's why I'm somewhat surprised that MS has been absent from the MAS: if students buy word-processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software there, they will get momentum -- away from the MS world.

Any sort of paper-submission system should be vendor-neutral. Why not have students submit papers as a PDF file? If I were cynical, I would wonder if instructors or schools were getting a kickback from MS for requiring papers to be submitted compatible with an OS and an application from a single vendor. Apple sales are around 20% for incoming students at many institutions; it's time to stop any preferential treatment for any particular computer.

Presentations should not be a problem, either. Presentations can be submitted as PDF files, too. Or just provide students with a VGA-compatible plug to connect their own laptops (or tablet computers) to the classroom projection system.

 

[KnightWRX]

That's why I'm somewhat surprised that MS has been absent from the MAS

What's to be surprised about ? The MAS has some requirements that most big software packages do not meet and to meet these, some modifications will be required.

For one : Software on the MAS needs to be in the form of a self-contained bundle, IE, an application you can just drag to /Applications to install. No application that ships with an installer or as an mpkg can be put on the MAS.

Apple bends the rules somewhat for their own offerings, but 3rd parties don't have that luxury.

 

[cozmot]

Guess they don't have an Mac OS Dev. account

They've probably got bigger fish to fry. Frankly, I'm surprised that Microsoft is going to update it at all. Remember Microsoft Internet Explorer for Mac?

 

[walnuts]

Any sort of paper-submission system should be vendor-neutral. Why not have students submit papers as a PDF file? If I were cynical, I would wonder if instructors or schools were getting a kickback from MS for requiring papers to be submitted compatible with an OS and an application from a single vendor. Apple sales are around 20% for incoming students at many institutions; it's time to stop any preferential treatment for any particular computer.

Presentations should not be a problem, either. Presentations can be submitted as PDF files, too. Or just provide students with a VGA-compatible plug to connect their own laptops (or tablet computers) to the classroom projection system.

What "should" be and what actually occurs is unfortunately very different. Its been my experience that an MS office file is "safe". No one would ever fault anyone for submitting an office file. It is considered a reasonable expectation to be able to provide and accept office files. All bets are off for any other file type. It may not be right, and it may afford microsoft a sort of monopoly, but it appears to be a reality. And, whatever compatibility issues exist in an education setting are worse in a business setting. If you are one of many working on a document, woe be tied to you if you screwed up the formatting by using some "other" office software.

PDF could be an exception, but there are limitations there too. Presentations would lose any sort of transitions and any sort of action that occurs on a single slide. PDF files are also uneditable- its no good when you need to work on a group project.

I also think students who can submit electronically at all are lucky in their own right. There are still professors who won't accept electronic submissions at all. How many of us had to go the whole way back to school a day or so after their last final just to hand in a physical copy of their paper because their professor doesn't believe in email? I guess it doesn't matter what software you use in that case...

 

[revelated]

Microsoft....always one step behind

It's not like Lion came out last week with these features without warnings. MS had access to the new builds long in advance to make sure they could deliver an update in a timely manner

Let me tell you a secret.

Office 2011 is an unfinished suite. Some think it's intentionally nerfed so that the Apple version does not surpass the Windows version. I don't know about that conspiracy theory; but what I do know is that Exchange 2003 still dominates the business space, and their refusal to support it via WebDAV or CalDAV is absolute nonsense. Nevermind the fact that some features just plain don't work.

Office 2011 exists because Microsoft wants PC converts to stick with what they know, even if under the hood it's incomplete. But there's no real incentive to make it the best product.

That's why it will take "months, not days".

 

[John.B]

Scrivener is a complex product. The developer maintains his own phpBB forum on his website. Reading those discussions helps to understand the product and the developer's philosophy.

You are right: students will choose MS Office for no rational reason. Apple's choice of a gift card for the MAS creates an interesting opening, since MS hasn't put any products in the MAS yet. Students can roll their own software suite -- they can make a pretty cool one for $100. The combination of Scrivener and Pages should be pretty good for writing papers.

Scrivener seems like a great niche product, but a lot of people are going to seek out Word because it's widely used in the job market or because they may not be confident investing time and energy in an "complex" application they may never have heard of, with limited support options. I don't think that's irrational at all. Some people will opt for Scrivener, sure, but I doubt the masses will. They'll do what they think is right for them, not to support one geek cause over another.

 

[FloatingBones]

What's to be surprised about ? The MAS has some requirements that most big software packages do not meet and to meet these, some modifications will be required.

The surprise is that MS is allowing students using Apple's Back to School to create their own suite. Those students are getting an early education: nothing from MS Office is necessary for them to do their schooling. Each one of those student machines is an example that MS software is somehow essential to a college education.

For one : Software on the MAS needs to be in the form of a self-contained bundle, IE, an application you can just drag to /Applications to install. No application that ships with an installer or as an mpkg can be put on the MAS.

Why exactly shouldn't an office suite be able to live with that limitation?

 

[FloatingBones]

Scrivener seems like a great niche product

The niche we've been discussing in this part of the thread is students participating in Apple's Back to School program. In that part of the market, Scrivener -- a writer's tool -- is decidedly superior to Word in the MS Office suite.

but a lot of people are going to seek out Word because it's widely used in the job market or because they may not be confident investing time and energy in an "complex" application they may never have heard of, with limited support options.

Scrivener's support is just dandy. The training materials (tutorial, screencast) are very good, and support via the forums is outstanding. Support questions usually get answered within hours and are often answered by the developer. It is a complex tool because it's solving a complex problem. Some of the complex stuff is in the conditional-printing templates, but newbies don't have to use any of that to get 98% of the value of Scrivener. I personally found that the learning curve is far easier with the 2.0 version that came out earlier this year.

Why did you highlight the word complexity in my message? Are you a user? Did you download the 30-day trial? Did you have actual problems using the software, or is your pronouncement of "limited support options" just FUD?

I don't think that's irrational at all.

The rational decision for a student is to purchase software that will have him be successful in his studies. If you think that MS Word will do a better job, you haven't made the case yet.

Further, there is no certainty whatsoever what tools will be used by office workers when today's freshman graduates.

Some people will opt for Scrivener, sure, but I doubt the masses will.

"The masses" still buy PCs and will argue endlessly over the "added expense" of Apple computers.

They'll do what they think is right for them, not to support one geek cause over another.

I'll be happy if folks make informed decisions about their hardware and software purchases.

In the writing front, the first part of making an informed decision is realizing that there are choices -- superior choices -- for research and writing.

 

[cozmot]

Scrivener has been around for many years and is now available in the MAS. It has a solid rating and is usually in the top-10 grossing productivity apps list. Apple featured Scrivener as one of the dozen "study" apps in their $100 back-to-school MAS promotion. Apple created an 8-word pitch for Scrivener for that promo: "Organize and write research papers, screenplays, and more."

A 30-day trial is available from the product's website. The product comes with tutorials and the developer sponsored a ScreenCastsOnline video of the product (list of videos here). If you like the software, you can buy directly from the developer, but I would recommend getting through the MAS to automate the updates.

Scrivener is a complex product. The developer maintains his own phpBB forum on his website. Reading those discussions helps to understand the product and the developer's philosophy.

You are right: students will choose MS Office for no rational reason. Apple's choice of a gift card for the MAS creates an interesting opening, since MS hasn't put any products in the MAS yet. Students can roll their own software suite -- they can make a pretty cool one for $100. The combination of Scrivener and Pages should be pretty good for writing papers.

You know, just hearing and reading about Scrivener wears me out. Why would a student want to try to harness a complicated product like that just to write a paper? I taught high school and college students, yet never heard one of them complain when instructed to write a paper, "Oh, no, does that mean I have to type words into Word? How do I get started?"

 

[cozmot]

One of the few things I regret about moving over to Macs a few years back is the loss of WordPerfect. For word processing, it allows me to simply and transparently control everything and produce exactly what I want. I'm still waiting in hope Corel will grasp the nettle and return to making WordPerfect for Mac. Then I can wave the rest goodbye (perhaps)!
Eric.

I miss WordStar.

 

[FloatingBones]

You know, just hearing and reading about Scrivener wears me out. Why would a student want to try to harness a complicated product like that just to write a paper?

You said it! Actually, you didn't go far enough: why would a student want to harness any sort of complicated products to do their editing? MS Word is a pretty damn complicated product, too. Why not just fire up up a terminal window on your Mac and use cat(1) to write your papers?

I taught high school and college students, yet never heard one of them complain when instructed to write a paper, "Oh, no, does that mean I have to type words into Word? How do I get started?"

Never mind complaints. How much do students comment at all about systematic methods to organize, research, draft, and polish their writing? How often do students contemplate what impact the tools they use have on their writing? How often do such questions even arise to the level of consciousness? What do instructors do to inform their students of alternatives?

One of the great things about the MAS is that it challenges traditional thinking. It gives users a way to find high-quality software from very small companies. With the $100 that Apple is offering in their Back to School program, students can create a suite tailored to their needs as a student—distinct from the needs of some office worker.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Yeah, why waste time using the best tool for the best job.

TeX has many front-ends that make it as wysiwig as Word, no need for long setups/high learning curves. LaTeX comes to mind. The fact that you didn't know this just tells me that you use Word because you don't know any better, not because it's really "fine no issue at all". You've just learned to live with the issues.

Chances are his 250 page engineering document was based off a template from the his company so it is not that hard to do and word is a great tool for it.

Microsoft office has one thing that makes it really great and has huge advantages over other tools. That is you can brute force just about anything. Something that can not be said about other tools. The other tools can do it more elegantly and quicker if you know how but on the same token if you do not know how it is a fight the entire way. Compared to MS word which you can just well force it threw and make it work.

Also office is the business standard so if you need to share a document it is either going to be sent PDF or word depending on what it will be used for on the other side. A .doc/docx files is going to open pretty much anywhere. The same can not be said about Tex.

 

[KnightWRX]

The surprise is that MS is allowing students using Apple's Back to School to create their own suite. Those students are getting an early education: nothing from MS Office is necessary for them to do their schooling. Each one of those student machines is an example that MS software is somehow essential to a college education.

Allowing ? How exactly are they allowing it ? By not having guessed the rules to the MAS ahead of time when they were making Office 2011 ?

Gee, if only it were that easy...

Why exactly shouldn't an office suite be able to live with that limitation?

It should, but it still requires MS to rewrite the Office applications to be like that. Hence : Not happening anytime soon. How do you know the next version of Office won't be compliant to this ?

Heck, even Apple software isn't like that mostly, using packages/installers. Except Apple can bypass their own rules...

 

[Rodimus Prime]

The surprise is that MS is allowing students using Apple's Back to School to create their own suite. Those students are getting an early education: nothing from MS Office is necessary for them to do their schooling. Each one of those student machines is an example that MS software is somehow essential to a college education.

Office is kind of needed for college. Yes you can get around it with Open office but you run into a lot of the little problems of trying to get things to work.
It is more or less the standard in school.

Why exactly shouldn't an office suite be able to live with that limitation?

In theory yes but Office has a lot of tools in it that right to the fact make not able to live in a sand box.
For example the Macros are a a great example of that fact. Have that in the program requires the program not live in a sand box and is a huge part of the power of the program.
Have the ablity to link multiple files together and access data from other files in one document or excel sheet also hurts that. Then of course you have things like Access which is a data base program which again can not be trapped in a sand box.

Lastly I would not be surprised in the least if Apple software they put in the store breaks the rules of the MAS but since the dev is Apple the same rules do not apply to them. Correct that it is a fact Apple software breaks the rules of the App store. I have to look no father than Lion to prove that but I am willing to bet good money that several of Apples Apps break the rules.

 

[FloatingBones]

Allowing ? How exactly are they allowing it ? By not having guessed the rules to the MAS ahead of time when they were making Office 2011 ?

It would have been in Apple's best interest to have Microsoft products in the MAS from the beginning. I would guess that Apple discussed the MAS with Microsoft months if not years in advance of the public announcement of the store.

The tea-leaf readers at Microsoft could have guessed that such changes were in process: the huge success of the iOS App Store, Apple's strategy to have their Mac and iOS programs work in a similar fashion, Apple's support of online streaming instead of Blu-Ray for movies, the development of the vast online facility in Maiden, NC, etc.

It should, but it still requires MS to rewrite the Office applications to be like that. Hence : Not happening anytime soon. How do you know the next version of Office won't be compliant to this ?

Nobody here has ever said that MS won't eventually be in the MAS. OTOH, if we have to wait until the next version of MS office, we've got a rather long wait on our hands. 2004 ... 2008 .... 2011. I don't really think that Microsoft can afford to wait until 2014 to be in the MAS.

Heck, even Apple software isn't like that mostly, using packages/installers. Except Apple can bypass their own rules...

Given the long-term win-win relationship between MS Office and Apple (including the crucial 1997 MS investment), it's likely that Apple would have granted some MAS exceptions to Microsoft.

I think the problem is that MS is way too stodgy and slow with its product updates. The 3-4 year cycles for updated products just don't cut it any more. Physical media for applications is expensive, cumbersome, and not green. An absence of product in the MAS hurts Microsoft -- especially when Apple gives out MAS gift cards in their back to school program.

Microsoft needs to learn how to be nimble with its applications.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

It would have been in Apple's best interest to have Microsoft products in the MAS from the beginning. I would guess that Apple discussed the MAS with Microsoft months if not years in advance of the public announcement of the store.

The tea-leaf readers at Microsoft could have guessed that such changes were in process: the huge success of the iOS App Store, Apple's strategy to have their Mac and iOS programs work in a similar fashion, Apple's support of online streaming instead of Blu-Ray for movies, the development of the vast online facility in Maiden, NC, etc.

Come on you really believe that?
Apple has a long history of blind siding big companies it works with and not telling them anything ahead of time.

Best MS would of gotten the info early might of been weeks but chances are very little early info. It requires a huge change and might not even be possible for MS to do it for office.

 

[KnightWRX]

It would have been in Apple's best interest to have Microsoft products in the MAS from the beginning. I would guess that Apple discussed the MAS with Microsoft months if not years in advance of the public announcement of the store.

Your guess is probably wrong then, considering Apple's history of secrecy even with other big vendors and partners.

Apple just doesn't discuss this stuff. Since your whole premise is based on this, might want to review your conclusions a bit. Unfortunately for both Apple and Microsoft, Apple announced the rules of the MAS too late for them to be taken into consideration for Office 2011.

No need to discuss the rest of your comment, since it's based on this flawed premise to begin with.

Except... :

I don't really think that Microsoft can afford to wait until 2014 to be in the MAS.

I think they can. The MAS is mostly a spec of dust and quite irrelevant right now. It's just not gaining the traction the iOS App Store did (thanks to being the only source of software for iOS). Seriously, Apple is trying hard to force it into relevance, but I think the fact that they pretty much skipped over gloating about its numbers of downloads and registered users at the WWDC keynote says a lot of the lack of success the MAS is getting.