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Office for Mac 2011 to Be 32-Bit Only

lunarworks said:
Yes, Apple is behind on that. It's inexcusable.

But, I still think Microsoft, and Adobe, should have gotten on the Cocoa track long ago. The writing was clearly on the wall, but they chose to ignore it.
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You can say that all you want but apple gave them no dead line or even hint that it was going to be forced.

If apple had stated that they would not of made a 64 bit back in 2007 then the move would of happen. Instead apple said it was coming and a year later pulled out from under them. At that point for both Adobe and MS they were to far invested in the next release of their suites to go back and make the changed so the result was 32 bit only.

Also Apple has zero excuse for this as well because you have apps like iTunes that have yet to make the changed and that in itself is sad based on pushing everyone else.

For microsoft and Adobe the rewriting comes down to this. What to they have to gain from making the switch. Minor speed improvements for huge cost of money and time or betteriImprovements they can make elsewere in the code for less money and less time. I would choose the other one.

They were promised 64 bit carbon and apple broke it. That means 64 bit version by apple doing got delayed years.
 
I think people are missing the most important thing about 64 bit processing - and it's not at all the amount of memory you can address (although that can make a massive difference for some apps). The biggest thing is that when you compile your application in 64 bit, your compiler has access to twice as many general purpose registers, which can lead to some significant optimisations, as you can keep a lot more data in registers instead of on the stack.

But not being 64 bit is nowhere near as big a deal as it not being Cocoa yet... I mean, even Adobe brought their apps to Cocoa for CS5, and they're one of the slowest developers I know of (remember it took them 16 months to release native Intel versions of the Creative Suite)... The fact that it's not Cocoa pretty much eliminates any chance of me buying it...

I'll just keep using LaTeX, OpenOffice and MySQL. It's surprising how much of my work I can get done even in Bean, which is a really great, lightweight and free word processor.
 
iWork is more equivalent to the old Microsoft Works app than a real replacement for Office. Its adequate but nowhere near MS Office.

That said, I can't see the 32/64 bit issue being an issue for anyone but the tippity-top .0001% of all Office users out there. Soooo....meh.
 
Drag'nGT said:
Why can't they write this in Cocoa? Seriously?
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Probably for the same reason Apple put off converting from Carbon to Cocoa for the Finder. It's a non-trivial change.

There are other Apple apps that are still waiting to be updated....
 
Queso said:
You don't need Microsoft SQL to have a SQL database. MySQL runs on OSX just fine.
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Yeah, there are databases for OS X (although Oracle's dropping support), but none of them are produced by Microsoft. Which was the original claim:

Ummmm last time I looked, Microsoft produced a SQL database, isn't that were this should be?
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Neither of Microsoft's currently-supported (and none of their myriad no-longer-supported) SQL database systems runs on OS X.
 
AppleFan1984 said:
Probably for the same reason Apple put off converting from Carbon to Cocoa for the Finder. It's a non-trivial change.

There are other Apple apps that are still waiting to be updated....
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On top of that a question has to be ask. What is there to legitimately gained by doing that. It cost a fair amount of time and money to make the switch for more than likely less than minor gains. That money could be put elsewhere in the the same app to get better gains with fair less time and money spent.
 
justflie said:
I'm pretty sure Dylan was being sarcastic.

64-bit is one of those buzz words that people like to throw around without any real understanding of what it means. VERY few people would actually derive any significant benefit from 64-bit office at this point. Almost certainly, more people would benefit from increased compatibility between Mac/Windows Office.

I make some pretty big ppt/xls files from time to time but I don't even approach the RAM limit from 32bit.
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I know nobody on these forums wants to talk about security, but, there is a significant advantage to having programs such as Office, which do process data received from other people, run in 64-bit. (There is also a 10-20% speed advantage when handing some operations -- as 100's of people have pointed out, this is hardly a reason for bothering with 64-bits when working on small documents on an overpowered machine.) For better security, every program which reads files that are handled by a lot of other people/machines or files obtained from unknown sources on the internet should be 64-bits. And yes, I suppose there are a few people who actually need 4 GB spreadsheets, but, that is not most of us.

Bottom line: they should have done the full-up 64-bit Cocoa version -- otherwise, what point is there in releasing the product? I will wait until the Cocoa version comes out in 2014.
 
Don't flog me for returning to the 32b-t vs 64 bit debate; but I'll keep it simple.

Security: how does a WinXP/Win7 64-bit OS with MS Word/Excel 2003/2007 Professional running either and locking with a secure pw affect either document to open in OS X's MS Office 2011 32-bit? If the characters of the password are longer than 10/12/16/24 characters or more will this affect ability to unlock said documents with same password & case sensitivity within OS X??
 
milo said:
Because the installer isn't universal. The app itself doesn't require rosetta to run, just the installer.

So sure, the performance of the installer may be pokey. But that makes zero difference when running the app itself.

Simple enough for you?
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it does. No need to be an ass about it. No reason for the installer to run in Rosetta either. And as I said, universal or not. It runs as slow as it does on PCC when running on Intel.

As such, I'm happy any part of office 2011 won't need rosetta.
 
From the first to the current beta, this runs beautifully. No need for 64bit. Those of you who think you need that, rethink your argument. VERY few of you have, or have posted a legitimate reason for this. Ditched iWork a while ago, and every revisit reminds me why I went with OpenOffice for so long. Version 3.x has been especially nice but Office 2011 has so far been faster, stable, and Outlook is very close to the PC version, which is THE Gold Standard in E-mail...... like it or not. Great job so far Microsoft.
 
AidenShaw said:
And you are underestimating the acumen of development managers.

When the question is "if we spend X man-years of development porting Office to x64 Cocoa - what is the benefit to the actual users of the product".

When the answer is "almost nothing", it's clear that sticking with Carbon32 is the right answer.

Before Apple starts calling everyone else "lazy" - Apple should update every Apple product to x64 Cocoa.

(And, why the hell didn't Apple make Snow Leopard x64-only? They killed PowerPC - they should have killed Core Solo and Core Duo at the same time.)
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And I agree with the wise people saying here that "it doesn't matter if Office is x86 or x64". It really doesn't matter. Office app launch times are IO limited, not CPU limited. How many people have spreadsheets that exceed 2 GiB virtual memory?

x64 might help Excel by a few percent on really big, complicated files - but for Word, Powerpoint and the others - no significant benefit.

Would I like the few percent on my big spreadsheets? Yes.

If I were a development manager considering the costs of dealing with Apple's backtracking on Carbon64, would I decide to port? No.




And you've just explained why Microsoft has about 95% market share. ;)
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I'm assuming you don't use OSX often if at all. Compare the performance of a 32 bit Cocoa App and a 32-bit Carbon App. Launch times, overall responsiveness, and resource management are greatly improved from Carbon to Cocoa. For example, iTunes is still Carbon. It takes much longer than most other Carbon apps to launch, and is somewhat laggy while other Cocoa apps of higher complexity run with the upmost fluidity.
Most apps have moved over to Cocoa for a reason, even CS5 will finally be full Cocoa. There's clearly a benefit to Cocoa besides 64-bit on the Mac.
 
Maserati7200 said:
I'm assuming you don't use OSX often if at all. Compare the performance of a 32 bit Cocoa App and a 32-bit Carbon App. Launch times, overall responsiveness, and resource management are greatly improved from Carbon to Cocoa. For example, iTunes is still Carbon. It takes much longer than most other Carbon apps to launch, and is somewhat laggy while other Cocoa apps of higher complexity run with the upmost fluidity.
Most apps have moved over to Cocoa for a reason, even CS5 will finally be full Cocoa. There's clearly a benefit to Cocoa besides 64-bit on the Mac.
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+1 here. iTunes sometimes takes more time to open than CS5 Photoshop.
 
Meh. I'm honestly not that bothered. While I can work on some pretty big documents, I don't think any of them are big enough for 64-bit to really make a difference, unlike with Photoshop CS5. 64-bit probably would deliver some benefits but since I'm still using Office 2004 on my Core i7 iMac it isn't my highest priority and Office 2011 will no doubt seem unbelievably quick to me compared to what I am used to.

Frankly, I'm more concerned about Outlook and hope that it'll be nothing like the PC version that I hate with a fiery passion for being bloated, slow and bloody irritating.
 
Basically Micro$oft doesn't want the Mac version of Office to be seen as better than the Windows version, they don't want the majority of Windows users to all be stuck in the past using 32-bit while Mac users are all soaking up chocolaty 64-bit Cocoa goodness. :p

We'll already be on Office 2011 while PC users are still on Office 2010.

Same reason the new Xbox was called Xbox360 instead of Xbox2. They don't want you thinking the PS3 is better than an Xbox2.
 
miles01110 said:
Can't wait to watch the chorus of "OMG this is 2010... why can't I type my essay in 64-bit????" make themselves look foolish.
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It's not 64 bit that really irks people, it's the fact that Microsoft, like Adobe, has had ten years to migrate to cocoa and they have chosen to sit on their ass.
 
SPUY767 said:
It's not 64 bit that really irks people, it's the fact that Microsoft, like Adobe, has had ten years to migrate to cocoa and they have chosen to sit on their ass.
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Why is it a problem when MS and Adobe don't prioritize the expensive transition from Carbon to Cocoa above adding features, but not when Apple does the same thing with the Finder, Final Cut Pro, and others?

Heck, FCP could benefit from being 64-bit far more than Word.
 
AppleFan1984 said:
Why is it a problem when MS and Adobe don't prioritize the expensive transition from Carbon to Cocoa above adding features, but not when Apple does the same thing with the Finder, Final Cut Pro, and others?

Heck, FCP could benefit from being 64-bit far more than Word.
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+1 Insightful
 
the program opens up on a dime anyways unless you're on a 5 year old comp. with hardly any ram. If you rig is fast to begin with and can do whatever it doesn't matter if it supports 64bit anyways.
 
joost538 said:
But on second thought: it's pretty pathetic after eight years of OSX, MS still can't make the jump to 64 bit. I mean come on! It's been soooooo many years already! Put a little effort in it. Stuff like this isn't hard.
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Well it must be, because even in the Windoze world true 64-bit apps are few and far between. Even products that advertise themselves as 64-bit quite often have several parts or processes that still execute in 32-bit. :rolleyes:
 
I've been using the beta 4 of 2011 and I see no problem with speed. I also use the 64 bit of Office 2010 on windows and between the programs there really is no notifiable speed difference. I suppose if you are working on HUGE files it could help, but that's not the usual office workload.
 
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