New Office Versions and Virtual PC 6.1

[leicaman]

Originally posted by Squire
Wait a minute. Your school kicked people out for copyright infringement? What about downloading mp3 files? Underage drinking? Hitchhiking? (BTW, I don't know if all of the above are illegal in your area.) That has "appeal" written all over it.

No, they kicked them out for pliagiarism. There was no such thing as MP3s back then. They were still stealing music with Reel to Reel and cassette tapes.

Dishonest behavior of any kind was hard on the grades if you got caught. And yes, underage driking and hijacking a railroad hand-car once got three students at my school federal charges and probation. It's amazing half the teen population isn't in jail for the things they do.

And our culture keeps telling teens to do more outrageous things than their parents did. I shudder to think what teens will be like 50 years hence. Maybe a backlash to the 1950s? Leave it to Beaver!

 

[AppleMatt]

Goto www.apple.com, hopefully Microsoft won't get on Apple's case about poor advertising being the cause of poor Office v.X sales.

LOL.

AppleMatt

 

[Snowy_River]

Originally posted by applekid
What I want to see: a souped up version of AppleWorks that would be comparable to the Office suite packaged with a cheap under $600 G4 or G5 mini-tower with minimal upgradability (a little more than an iMac) plus a very low end processor speed. You have a cheap office machine that will blow all of the office PCs out of the water.

G5 for <$600? You're seriously dreaming. The hardware alone costs more than that. Apple would loose money on every sale. I know, but they'd make it up with volume!


[Edit] Honestly, though, I think that this is a great thing to hope for, but until we see something like an IBM made G4, I doubt we'll see such a thing. The old iMac was starting to decend into this range, so I could see them pulling it off if they were to use a cheap enough chip that would still draw the right attention (i.e. not a G3). [/Edit]

 

[BrandonRP0123]

Installed the VPC 6.1 update.

Windows XP wants to cry home to mama because I've changed the underlying hardware, for one.

For two, my serial number didn't work
after I installed it. (no, it's not a Juarez copy). I went to fill out the chingus when I first started it up, entered my serial and it still wouldn't let me click the right arrow. After e-mailing back n forth to M$ AND faxing them a copy of the receipt, serial number and all that crap, I got issued a new serial number.

All of this for a .1 update too. Hello, Microsoft.

 

[Snowy_River]

You know, Apple has always liked rearranging the order of the letters for the components of Office. Normally, they're presented as 'W X P E' for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage, respectively. Some time back Apple arranged them in a way that seemed to be commenting on Apple's opinion of Windows XP, as they used the order 'E W X P', or 'Ew, XP'.

Now, it seems that they've changed the order again, and I'm wondering if there's a hidden message in this one:

So far, I've been unable to detect it...

 

[BrandonRP0123]

Originally posted by pagemap
I think the reason people are reacting negatively is because MS basically repackaged the same old product and are selling it to us again in a new box. Who cares if it has VPC. I for one am not going to pay for the same product twice. It would be like Apple re-releasing Jaguar in a pretty new box and asking us all to pay $129 for it. Not gonna happen.

Goto the Apple Store right now and buy Jaguar.

It's 10.2.6.

 

[Squire]

Originally posted by leicaman
No, they kicked them out for pliagiarism. There was no such thing as MP3s back then. They were still stealing music with Reel to Reel and cassette tapes.

Copying MS Office isn't plagiarism. It's illegal, yes, but I believe it would fall under the category of copyright infringement, NOT plagiarism.

Squire

 

[GregA]

Windows compatibility

Originally posted by Squire
Worst-case scenario: Apple develops their own Windows emulator. Actually, that would probably never happen, would it?

Would there be a reason to? MS has their source code and hardware emulator - it would be hard to do a better job than they do (assuming MS put any effort into it).

Maybe Apple could make it really easy for people to port MS apps to the Mac - kind of like porting "Classic" apps to "Carbon". When developers write in Carbon now, it runs on the classic OS as well as MacOS X. So create an API on the Mac so that developers can port Windows apps to Mac and still run on Windows (just compile for the processor?).

edit: just clarified "Apple"

 

[xtekdiver]

Originally posted by applekid
What I want to see: a souped up version of AppleWorks that would be comparable to the Office suite packaged with a cheap under $600 G4 or G5 mini-tower with minimal upgradability (a little more than an iMac) plus a very low end processor speed. You have a cheap office machine that will blow all of the office PCs out of the water.

Admittedly, anything offered by Apple will be compared to Appleworks, but I think for marketing reasons Apple should distance itself from Appleworks and create something new. I agree that a sub $600 office machine makes sense, but Apple still has a lot of work to do to give corporate buyers a reason to try it. Not that I want to get off on this tangent, but, the key to getting Apples into the office space is porting OS X to intel. Let people use it on their Dell first, once they discover how good it is, buying macs all around won't seem too extreme. Very few companies will buy all new systems accross the board, especially if it is an entirely new platform. One might argue why buy Apple if I can buy Dell, and I would counter why not? Cube your cube! It is better, more stable, price pointed the same, ect. Our company buys Dell because Dell is the best and cheapest for what we do. It is really just a matter of price, stability, an support. The real hang up for a lot of companies is can it run on the hardware we have and work with MS Office documents? If I could answer yes to those two questions I could get my company to go with Apple's OS X tomorrow with one simple argument: it is more secure! Agree with me or not, one thing is certain, port OS X to Intel with an Office suite and Apple will send shockwaves through this industry. OS X was not ready two years ago, but it is now. The issue should not be Intel vrs G5, but Microsoft vrs Apple. As Gimli says, "Oooh, we can take em!"

 

[GregA]

Originally posted by xtekdiver
Admittedly, anything offered by Apple will be compared to Appleworks, but I think for marketing reasons Apple should distance itself from Appleworks and create something new.

At the moment Microsofts ".doc" is almost a standard... except that other applications can't read it perfectly.

Forgetting the argument of whether Apple should improve Appleworks, develop on OpenOffice, or co-develop Lotus-WordPro - is there a good quality, open format that ALL the other office suites out there could share, good enough that it could be the preferred format for them all? (Or is XML far enough along to fully achieve that?)

 

[xtekdiver]

Originally posted by GregAussie
At the moment Microsofts ".doc" is almost a standard... except that other applications can't read it perfectly.

Forgetting the argument of whether Apple should improve Appleworks, develop on OpenOffice, or co-develop Lotus-WordPro - is there a good quality, open format that ALL the other office suites out there could share, good enough that it could be the preferred format for them all? (Or is XML far enough along to fully achieve that?)

I don't know the answer to your question, but I doubt that, even if there were a standard, Microsoft would adopt it. I mean, why would they? They arguably own the market as far as office apps go. Every time MS touches some "open" standard they try to change it and make it their own. (do we say Java or J#) It goes without saying that any office suite put out by Apple or anyone else needs to be compatible with MS Office. For example, if my company were to adopt some other office suite, be it OpenOffice, Lotus, AppleWorks, ect, we still recieve documents from our business partners that are using MS Office; we must have the ability to exchange and work with those documents. At the moment, the easiest solution is to use MS Office too, but it's not like my company hasn't asked me about other products. MS Office is expensive! They would love nothing more than to dump it for something cheaper and even better. But back to your question, I think that XML will help other suites to be much more compatible with less work. So for now, MS call the shots. This is why I religiously beleive in the need for someone to take on MS and reduce their market share. It is bad for one company to dominate like this; of course, I believe Apple to be the best company for this.

 

[leicaman]

Originally posted by Snowy_River

Now, it seems that they've changed the order again, and I'm wondering if there's a hidden message in this one:

So far, I've been unable to detect it... [/B]

EX Window People

 

[Snowy_River]

Originally posted by xtekdiver
... the key to getting Apples into the office space is porting OS X to intel....

Oh no, here we go again...

... one thing is certain, port OS X to Intel with an Office suite and Apple will send shockwaves through this industry...

And probably put a nail in their own coffin...

 

[Doctor Q]

Originally posted by GregAussie
At the moment Microsofts ".doc" is almost a standard... except that other applications can't read it perfectly.

Forgetting the argument of whether Apple should improve Appleworks, develop on OpenOffice, or co-develop Lotus-WordPro - is there a good quality, open format that ALL the other office suites out there could share, good enough that it could be the preferred format for them all? (Or is XML far enough along to fully achieve that?)

What I'd like to see:

1. Everyone but Microsoft agrees on an office-document document-format standard. XML would be fine, with an agreed-upon schema, but something else would be fine too - the format doesn't matter as long as everyone agrees.

2. An open standards group develops and maintains source code to convert MS Office documents to/from the new standard. With Microsoft increasingly using HTML and XML document formats, I imagine that this will be possible.

3. All non-Microsoft vendors use these conversion routines to allow their products to open and save MS Office documents.

The advantage would be that the open source community would take care of all the details that would lead to conversion quirks if each vendor had written its own conversion routines. Open source coders work 24/7 and don't worry about when the next version of a commercial product will come out. Instead, they will make it work and keep it up to date across all versions of MS Office, at least from now on. I'd depend on that code more than I would the import/export facilities of a single vendor.

 

[BrandonRP0123]

Originally posted by Snowy_River
G5 for <$600? You're seriously dreaming. The hardware alone costs more than that. Apple would loose money on every sale. I know, but they'd make it up with volume!

[/Edit]

Honestly, if they did this with the current G4 that wouldn't be such a bad idea.
(think celeron versus pentium inteland)

Then of course, the argument could be the ``i'' line versus the ``Power'' line. An iBook could be had for 799 right now - and I remember the original iMac went for $999. The current high-end Power-series machines can be had for around $3000. Dell has the same setup with their notebooks - but there's a happy medium (a decently equipped Inspiron has similar features as their Latitude line, for example). This could also be said between Dell's Dimension line and their (Optoplex?) line of machines. While, perhaps, storage is an exception (as you can get the same drives in both the powerbooks and ibooks), the fact that the iBook is still on a 100Mhz bus (66Mhz on my model - the rev A snowbook), and lacks a super drive really sucks.

The problem in the past was the limited upgrade potential of the i series. This is also attributed to the fact that Apple makes the i-line of products visually stimulating to your ``average'' user.

The eMac, however, offers a 1Ghz G4, 60GB drive and combo drive for $999.

Yet, the eMac is arguably the old iMac on steroids (or would the iMac would have looked like if they didn't go with the half watermelon screen on a stick setup as they have now). While the educational market is a prime target for this machine (mainly cost) - why is Apple stopping there? It IS their lowest price desktop machine (starting at $799).

The 12" powerbook appears to be an attempt to bridge the feature gap, but there's still work to be done on it. Within a revision or two, it should be fully-featured but still significantly less ($) than the flagship (now 17") PowerBook.

It appears Apple is in transition in the Power-series notebooks (a 12" with not enough feature, a 15" with yesterday's feature, and a 17" that has everything the user wants in the smaller PowerBooks (to quote from Full Metal Jacket, the 17" is ``too boku'' for some of us). Trickle, trickle, trickle those features down.

 

[BrandonRP0123]

Originally posted by BrandonRP0123
Honestly, if they did this with the current G4 that wouldn't be such a bad idea.
(think celeron versus pentium inteland).

This would also help the education market greatly with the transition to OS X. The eMac today is the iMac of yesterday, is the Macintosh LC of yesteryear. It's an affordable Mac, sure, but, as always it lacks some of the features of the other available Macs (LCD screen, blue tooth, mainly expandability).

Apple also is a bit ahead of the game. The PC makers that offer a $599 machine offer it with a CRT. Dell's cheapest PC comes with a 5400RPM ``value'' hard drive. Barf. It's arguable that Apple went right where they should have went left when phasing out their line of CRTs, as they cost NOTHING to make nowadays, and could be offered with a Power Mac G4 for next to nothing. Instead, the CRT is in the eMac, and as I said before, not the lower-cost fully-functional/expandable machine we're used to with the Power Mac. Sigh.

 

[GregA]

Originally posted by Doctor Q
What I'd like to see:
1. Everyone but Microsoft agrees on an office-document document-format standard.
2. An open standards group develops and maintains source code to convert MS Office documents to/from the new standard.
3. All non-Microsoft vendors use these conversion routines to allow their products to open and save MS Office documents.

Ahh.. worded better than my attempt, and some better ideas!

If every Office competitor uses one standard it makes it possible to offer an alternative. An open-source "standard" format, AND standard conversions for Office would be great.

 

[Doctor Q]

Originally posted by GregAussie
If every Office competitor uses one standard it makes it possible to offer an alternative. An open-source "standard" format, AND standard conversions for Office would be great.

And the coup de grâce would be when, eventually, widespread use of and demand for the standard causes Microsoft to add direct support for it!

 

[Capt Underpants]

I am excited about this.... When I get my first mac, I wouldn't want to pay 400.00 for an office suite when I am a student and can get the same thing on the PC side for 150.00. I think the prices are very reasonable.

 

[QCassidy352]

Originally posted by leicaman
Funny thing those thieves are going to find out is that only one copy can run on the network at a time. Hope they don't find out on finals night.

Where I went to school, such theft was considered equal to plaigiarism. And they got the boot from school.

Contrary to popular opinion, stealing from Microsoft is still stealing.

also contrary to popular opinion, one copy of MS office can in fact run on several computers on the same network at the same time. I've tried it, just to see if it worked, and it did.

 

[leicaman]

Originally posted by QCassidy352
also contrary to popular opinion, one copy of MS office can in fact run on several computers on the same network at the same time. I've tried it, just to see if it worked, and it did.

Every time I try it, it says there is already a copy with that serial number on the network, and then it shuts down. Are you using the same serial number? (i.e. legal?)

The new education verison lets you legally install 3 copies at home.