New Version of Microsoft Office for Mac Slated for 2014 Release

[mbagnall]

microsoft word and excel are miles above apples iwork though

windows 7 and 8 are also not bad at all... the gap between mac and windows is definitely pretty much closed now..

This is a joke right? 7 is alright but 8 is abysmal. And for what iWork does, it does it very well. I don't need a bunch of stuff I'll never use and if I want to just buy a word processor, I can and not have to pay $250 (or a subscription) for the whole thing. I use Numbers to do my family finances and Page for all envelope and mailing printing for those odd times I have to send a payment instead of being able to do it online.

Feature-wise you are likely right with word and excel but I'm done with Google Docs and Microsoft. I'm done.

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I use Excel and Visio all the time. I've not found a good viable alternative to Excel and Visio is the standard for process mapping (although not technically part of the Office bundle).

Visio is likely Microsoft's best office product... and it isn't part of office.

 

[Lara F]

Just make the apps available through the MAS and price then nicely.

My bet is that Excel will become very popular, Word not so, and PowerPoint will cease to exist.
And, oh yeah.. make Outlook free.

Serious question - can you honestly make a presentation in Keynote, save it to a USB stick and trust it to open exactly as formatted on the business/hospital/etc Windows computer with PowerPoint?

 

[koban4max]

Dont know about you guys but im SO tired of Microsoft's products...

#msannoying

sure, you may be tired of the products..but it will keep going because it's the most used app out there.

 

[HenryDJP]

wish my past workplace wasnt so microsoft centric.

what do you use instead?

Curious as to what you are using in it's place? We moved from Corel (yes I know) to microsoft starting late last year.

I mainly use pages and pdf but if it is a document that needs to go around for corrections etc, I use the Mac version of Word. An improvement is always welcome!

Well here's the thing. I didn't know the power of the Apple ecosystem until my office began to become iPad-centric. I've been on Mac for 15 years but had to live in a Windows world. Now that our insurance office is iPad-centric everything is done using Pages. Now before this latest Pages update I only used Pages for creating banners but now it's fantastic for creating and handling office documents. Numbers is much better now as well. So if a different office sends us an Excel spreadsheet it's no longer an issue. It's easy for us now to share documents from Mac to iPad using iCloud.

I hear people mentioning about having to share a document for modification which might be in Word. I can count on one hand in a year's time how often that truly happens. Hardly. It's mostly about sending documents from one office to another for people to consume the information from. It's very easy to convert to a PDF as this is what would be done in MS Word anyway so that's why MS Office isn't nearly as necessary as it used to be and I will not be purchasing Office for Mac.

 

[DavidG328]

IMHO Nothing beats Excel for serious business use.

I prefer Word to Pages, although I can see the merits of both.

Keynote is better than PowerPoint, but PowerPoint is better for compatibility with Windows.

A new office would be great, although Office 2013 via Microsoft Remote Desktop on my iPad works surprisingly well.

Keynote is the only thing in iWork that beats anything from MS Office. We can't expect this thread to be full of people who have positive opinions of this because:

1) It's not an Apple product.
2) It's a MS product.

I don't see why I'd upgrade to this new one though, especially when older versions work perfectly well for anything I need them for.

 

[apolloa]

Brilliant! MS Office, and especially Outlook, is great, always has been and particularly for business. So configurable.
It's kinda like having an anti Apple product on your Mac because it's so un Apple!

 

[roadbloc]

Cool. I look forward to trying this out.

 

[weckart]

I just hope they include OneNote and Access.

Access is NEVER going to happen on OSX. Its underpinnings are deeply embedded in the Windows OS. There is no straightforward way to port it to OSX. You would have to code from scratch and create all the functionalities and APIs it relies on in Windows in OSX. Trying to match development of Windows into OSX when you don't control OSX is a nightmare.

Given that Access is very much a niche product compared with the Office applications already available on OSX, there really is not a business case for Microsoft to fund writing Access for OSX and Microsoft does not love Apple enough to do charity work.

 

[HenryDJP]

microsoft word and excel are miles above apples iwork though

windows 7 and 8 are also not bad at all... the gap between mac and windows is definitely pretty much closed now..

Whether or not MS Office is miles above iWork is subjective because it depends on how one is going to use it. I worked at a banking institution for 3 years and all the bank did was pass around spreadsheets and Word docs over email for employee info consumption only. There was nothing the bank was using MS Office for that couldn't be done in Google Docs or any other free office software.

As far as Windows 7 & 8 being so close to Mac that the gap is pretty much closed? Heck no. Windows is hardly close. The Mac OS is Unix-based. Microsoft has done nothing to actually remake Windows other than to give it a prettier face. Apple remade the Mac OS. Windows still has that awful Registry since W95. Keep telling yourself that, sorry, there's no way Windows is close to Mac other than the fact you can accomplish a lot of the same things since they each have similar software.

 

[Bibbler]

I can't imagine anyone NOT using Office today in a modern business setting. Some of the posts here are funny though. Numbers?? LOL!

MS Office is a fine program and has been the de-facto standard for business for years. Apple users ought to thank God that MS supports Mac users.

 

[D.T.]

If you need [mostly] no hassle interoperability with people using MSO products, there’s basically no alternative.

If you’re:

- Generating documents for yourself
- Working in a company not on MSO products
- Effective just exporting to less collaborative, for-consumption-only formats (like PDF)
- Minimizing the feature portability (like RTF)

... then there are some nice options, some even free.

 

[HenryDJP]

Serious question - can you honestly make a presentation in Keynote, save it to a USB stick and trust it to open exactly as formatted on the business/hospital/etc Windows computer with PowerPoint?

You do realize that even a person with MS Office may not be able to open that PPT with correct formatting unless it's the same version of Office receiving it right? Many times someone would create a PPT/Word/ from Office 2003 and I would be running a more recent version of Office so the Compatibility message appeared saying it may not show exactly as the original.

You also realize that a person creating a Keynote Presentation can easily export it to a Quicktime movie and share amongst an entire corporation and the chances of them having Quicktime on the receiving computer are far greater than them having the same version of Office as the person sending the original Powerpoint from right?

 

[Tiger8]

who even buys this junk ?

worst software on the planet

Not worse than iWorks or whatever the heck Apple attempt at productivity suite is called

Office is still the #1 office package worldwide, by far. No serious business lives without it.

 

[HenryDJP]

I can't imagine anyone NOT using Office today in a modern business setting. Some of the posts here are funny though. Numbers?? LOL!

MS Office is a fine program and has been the de-facto standard for business for years. Apple users ought to thank God that MS supports Mac users.

Your close-mindedness is what keeps innovation from happening. You're exactly the customer Microsoft wants, one that wants to keep them on top. In today's world MS Office is much less relevant. What made Office so relevant over the years was because Windows was the "defacto" standard. Now with the Mac, iOS and Android and corporations adopting these technologies it takes Microsoft off it's monopoly wagon.

 

[Mac2004]

Thank god because the new version Apple Pages really, really sucks and is so buggy!

 

[HenryDJP]

Thank god because the new version Apple Pages really, really sucks and is so buggy!

Explain how? I use it every single day for business. Haven't had a single problem with it.

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Not worse than iWorks or whatever the heck Apple attempt at productivity suite is called

Office is still the #1 office package worldwide, by far. No serious business lives without it.

You've never really used it so just quit.

 

[latestmonkey]

Sometimes the fanboyism on this site gets a little silly. Just because microsoft makes office doesn't mean it automatically sucks.

There are some of us professionals who have to use excel. There's no alternative that is as fast, flexible or useful. That being said, the Mac version of excel is dreadful. The only reason I even use a pc is because excel pc is that much better.

What we need is not the end of office because you don't think it's useful. What we need is mac office to be as good as windows office, specifically excel.

 

[HenryDJP]

Thank god because the new version Apple Pages really, really sucks and is so buggy!

Sometimes the fanboyism on this site gets a little silly. Just because microsoft makes office doesn't mean it automatically sucks.

Oh, you didn't see the above post before you made that comment? There's more MS fans over here shaking the pompoms while seriously putting down iWork and chances are they really never used it.

 

[mr.bee]

I use Excel and Visio all the time. I've not found a good viable alternative to Excel and Visio is the standard for process mapping (although not technically part of the Office bundle).

true. If someone creates professional alternatives for these apps, I ditch MS in a second!
pages and powerpoint are viable for most professional requirements. there are some usages you don't have in pages like a compare, but still

people that don't need Excel nor Visio, really don't know what they are talking about when they just trash it. It's like saying MS paint can substitute illustrator or something like that.

 

[swingerofbirch]

I love Word for long papers that I write. It just has a "feel" I like for a word processor. For shorter documents, I always use TextEdit. It feels way more like a word processor than Pages does.

I think Pages is really good for page-layout. It reminds me more of what Pagemaker was. I liked the feel and look of Pages 09 more, but the new Pages is still good. Keynote has always been really intuitive. Haven't tried the new version—I'm kind of worried it'll be awful. I really liked the Inspector.

 

[teknikal90]

Whether or not MS Office is miles above iWork is subjective because it depends on how one is going to use it. I worked at a banking institution for 3 years and all the bank did was pass around spreadsheets and Word docs over email for employee info consumption only. There was nothing the bank was using MS Office for that couldn't be done in Google Docs or any other free office software.

As far as Windows 7 & 8 being so close to Mac that the gap is pretty much closed? Heck no. Windows is hardly close. The Mac OS is Unix-based. Microsoft has done nothing to actually remake Windows other than to give it a prettier face. Apple remade the Mac OS. Windows still has that awful Registry since W95. Keep telling yourself that, sorry, there's no way Windows is close to Mac other than the fact you can accomplish a lot of the same things since they each have similar software.

isnt that all that matters? lol


EDIT: "I worked at a banking institution for 3 years and all the bank did was pass around spreadsheets and Word docs over email for employee info consumption only. There was nothing the bank was using MS Office for that couldn't be done in Google Docs or any other free office software. "

Okay come on that's just a laughable statement in multiple ways!

 

[HenryDJP]

isnt that all that matters? lol

Nope. Because I can accomplish so much more effectively on a Mac even if both systems were using Adobe CS. That's the problem with Windows 7&8 it's more of a struggle using them.

 

[teknikal90]

Nope. Because I can accomplish so much more effectively on a Mac even if both systems were using Adobe CS. That's the problem with Windows 7&8 it's more of a struggle using them.

That's not true at all. I use a Mac yes, but that's because on my music side I'm entrenched in the Logic ecosystem. but adobe out of all software vendors I argue would benefit on a PC given that PCs have a wider (and more powerful) range of graphics cards available that will be VERY beneficial for photoshop, lightroom and ESPECIALLY premier........

on the music side Mac os X benefits by way of coreaudio, that a lot of people, including myself, prefer over ASIO... but on the visual media side? nada.

back on topic: MS gets a lot of crap it doesnt deserve

 

[HenryDJP]

That's not true at all. I use a Mac yes, but that's because on my music side I'm entrenched in the Logic ecosystem. but adobe out of all software vendors I argue would benefit on a PC given that PCs have a wider (and more powerful) range of graphics cards available that will be VERY beneficial for photoshop, lightroom and ESPECIALLY premier........

on the music side Mac os X benefits by way of coreaudio, that a lot of people, including myself, prefer over ASIO... but on the visual media side? nada.

back on topic: MS gets a lot of crap it doesnt deserve

Don't tell me what I'm saying is not true because you're way off on what I was even talking about. I said nothing about Adobe CS running better on the Mac. I used Adobe as an example in terms of Windows in general being much more of a struggle to deal with vs. a Mac even if they were running the same software. And Adobe running better on PCs (according to you) has nothing to do with Windows being on par with the Mac OS in terms of intuitiveness and efficiency of operation because it's just isn't.

 

[teknikal90]

Don't tell me what I'm saying is not true because you're way off on what I was even talking about. I said nothing about Adobe CS running better on the Mac. I used Adobe as an example in terms of Windows in general being much more of a struggle to deal with vs. a Mac even if they were running the same software. And Adobe running better on PCs (according to you) has nothing to do with Windows being on par with the Mac OS in terms of intuitiveness and efficiency of operation because it's just isn't.

But i am saying it's not true because it isnt lol. in what way is adobe on windows less intuitive than on macs?
all keystrokes are the same - shortcuts are the same. plugins like Visual supply co. are all multiplatform... vsco keys are multiplatform.....

or okay, if you want to retract your comments with regards to adobe CS.... Windows 7 and 8 both have very good UI designs. neither of them are sluggish and I would even argue that for some tasks, windows is more efficient than mac os x. it is by design more suited to doing more than one thing at once (snap view, the fact that the taskbars are isolated to each window as opposed to a universal contextual task bar, hover to preview etc etc)

I'm not knocking Mac OS x... I prefer it. hence why I'm a macrumors member, but I do believe the days of Mac OS X is superior to windows ala. Vista and XP days are long gone.

Microsoft makes good software nowadays. Office is one outstanding example.

again, support your claim before you lay crap on something on the world wide web, readily misleading other people when they research and stumble on this thread.