Office for Mac 2011 to Be 32-Bit Only

[The Mad Kiwi]

Gee, Apple have been selling 64 bit computers for 5 years now and the latest version of office is still 32 bit.

Pathetic, no wonder Apple developed their own competing iWork applications.

 

[Justinf79]

Sounds like M$ is being lazy.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Gee, Apple have been selling 64 bit computers for 5 years now and the latest version of office is still 32 bit.

Pathetic, no wonder Apple developed their own competing iWork applications.

Yet their OS did not fully support 64 bit application until 2007. No way to develop 64 bit apps for OSX until 2007. That means 3 years for it at most.

Mix that with apple screwing over MS by not doing what was promised of making carbon 64 bit.

 

[Stridder44]

Oh Microsoft... you'll never change:

Yeah, selecting the updater and quitting it is such a strain on the wrist.

 

[Lesser Evets]

iWork is brilliant. 99.9% of the consumer base doesn't need the difference that MS OFFULCE provides. And for 3x the price, it's only worth it for the true wonk, since that wonk is probably getting well paid to be wonky.

 

[4miler]

Not really a big deal. The only programs that I could see needing this would be Excel and Outlook.[/QUOTE

Yes, particularly Outlook for emails. Is Apple Mail in Snow Leopard 64 bit? I don't know, but I know, at least for me, Apple Mail SL absolutely flies compared to Leopard.

As for word processor, I'm still using Office 2004 and never seen the need for anything else.

 

[JAT]

iWork is brilliant. 99.9% of the consumer base doesn't need the difference that MS OFFULCE provides. And for 3x the price, it's only worth it for the true wonk, since that wonk is probably getting well paid to be wonky.

Wow, there must be far fewer accountants than I thought. Or your numbers are meaningless hyperbole.

• Keynote is brilliant. (wish I had a reason to use it)
• Pages is close, although some do need the bloat in Word because Pages is missing some features Word offers.
• Numbers is nothing compared to Excel. The current version is almost usable, but it was an afterthought at first and is still catching up.

 

[HLdan]

It seems the same, sane, rational responses by many intelligent forum members are falling on deaf ears.

So, ill repeat it, once more, for all of you who don't get it.

32 bit WORD IS NOT HELPFUL/USEFUL FOR THE AVERAGE USER

With that said; yes, it seems like Microsoft is giving corporate (at least on the mac side) a giant middle finger, but then again, who really uses macs at a corporate level (not many proportionally). It would however be nice for that one user who posted about a giant excel sheet, or for my father, or for me, when I have to look/read through something that's giant ala patents, school, etc. However, regardless of how nice it would be for us random (and in my case inconsistent) high-end users, MS is doing the right thing here by having a 64-bit version available for PC (corporate) and keeping to 32 for compatibility reasons on the mac side. It makes sense. The chances are that you, yes you, random forum poster reading this, do NOT need 64-bit word, ppt, etc.

And if its really that big of a deal, switch to iWork. Oh wait, that's not 64-bit yet either.

Your way of thinking is not only flawed but it's quite poor. Do you honestly think people don't want to use a Mac on the corporate level? When companies refuse to make software for the Mac what do you think is gonna happen? They won't bring a Mac to work, they are forced to use PC's.
I'm not even going there with that ridiculous line you wrote saying that MS did the right thing making the Windows version in 64bit and left the Mac at 32bit. I'd like to know how the PC community would feel if Apple made a whole new revamped and fast 64bit version of iTunes for the Mac and left the PC world with the same slow 32bit version.
iWork 09 is outdated and will soon be updated and I can bet it will be 64bit. So screw MS.

 

[lunarworks]

I really wish Adobe/Microsoft and others who got screwed by that come out and very strongly point the finger back and Apple for breaking the promise and 100% blame Apple for the reason they could not complete it. They did a lot of work to prepare for a Carbon 64 bit and then it does not come.

However, they were still putting all their effort into something that was going to be deprecated in a few years anyway (Carbon), rather than working towards what Apple TOLD them (many times) was the future of the OS (Cocoa).

Yes, Apple pulled the rug out from under them, but the floor was slowly collapsing and they should have moved anyway.

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

The biggest thing you should be getting out of this news is that it's not fully Cocoa. 64-bit is no big deal, but being 100% Cocoa could potentially make more of a difference in day-to-day usage. Though they're promising better performance, so we should all probably wait and let the product speak for itself before complaining.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

However, they were still putting all their effort into something that was going to be deprecated in a few years anyway (Carbon), rather than working towards what Apple TOLD them (many times) was the future of the OS (Cocoa).

Yes, Apple pulled the rug out from under them, but the floor was slowly collapsing and they should have moved anyway.

No matter what Apple stated they needed to head that way. Apple failed to give them a deadline and also promised 64 bit support for carbon. Instead Apple broke its promises and gave no deadline.

My guess is if Apple had kept its promise of Carbon 64 bit. Microsoft would of made the changed to Coca after it got its 64 bit completed.

I blame apple for it completely. Making a promise then breaking it.

 

[PsudoPowerPoint]

A one million cell excel doc... give me a break. Who works with those kind of enormous files, anyway? Nobody. Most people use more proficient database systems in those scenarios. This isn't useful news from a business perspective.

I've used Excel for data analysis and simulation applications that probably exceeded a million cells numerous times. No doubt there are better tools, but being able to share the data, processing, and results in a single file to anybody and their brother (since most people have Office) sometimes outweighs the other difficulties.

Nonetheless, there are a lot of other fixes and features I'd like more than seeing MS MacBU take the time to transition to 64 bit.

 

[PsudoPowerPoint]

Latex - free, lightweight, quick, and very powerful.

Plus beautiful results, superior formatting, and once you get past the learning curve, it's less work to use. But it was on the loosing side of the WYSIWYG war, and there are occasional ease of use issues (like debugging a document that's missing a "}" someplace).

Unfortunately, the business world runs on MS Word, most people know nothing else, and LaTex occupies a small and rarely explored niche.

 

[Maserati7200]

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.

While yes, 64-bit will not be a significant difference for how*most* [that doesn't include you, so don't reply to me telling me about your million cell spreadsheet you need it for] people use it, that's not really the disappointment. The fact that it still remains a Carbon App is truly unfortunate. The transition to Cocoa will surely improve performance a lot more than 64 bit would. The reason they state they didn't move to 64 bit is because you can't build a 64 bit Carbon app, and they weren't willing to move over to Cocoa yet -- it's almost 2011. The fact that they were willing to make it 64 bit (in theory, if Carbon apps could be 64 bit) but weren't willing to move over to Cocoa is ridiculous.

And for those who are going to tell me it doesn't really make a difference with Carbon or Cocoa, let me assure you it does. Compare launch times and overall responsiveness and speed of a Carbon app (say, iTunes or Word) to a Cocoa app like Safari, the finder in 10.6 and many others.

 

[captain kaos]

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.

Well, its actually not about that, its about having a faster more efficient programme. My wife uses Office for mac on her macbook, and whole thing collapses and needs a force quit when a word and excell (small sized) doc is opened at the same time. I upgraded the RAM this week and it will actually manage this and do a SAVE without falling over now. At the last count having a blank word and a small 3 tabbed exell doc opened took about 400-500MB in memory. Office is clunky at best and needs a re write. Or use Open Office which is a much better programme anyway.

 

[macsmurf]

I believe his point was not that doing an FFT in 64 bits on a 32-bit app was impossible (or even hard). It was that drawing in a large set of data from a database can quickly overcome the 32-bit memory limitation. Why would you want to do that? Example: to run FFT processing on it, something which database apps tend to not do very well.

Translated for you.

Running a FFT with data from a database is no problem but you have to implement the algorithm yourself instead of having Excel run it (which isn't hard).

Personally, I would write a script, but I accept that engineers aren't that technically inclined

 

[Data]

Same old Same old, at least they got msn audio video support all worked out, so, thats great after 10 years.

 

[calsci]

and why couldn’t you get your act together to get out a 64bit version.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

No Lies Please!

who cares about the 64-bit issue...

what about the fact that it's been 10 years of OS X and this mainstream program is STILL in carbon???

Carbon is available as a 64-Bit framework (just use lipo on one of the Carbon-frameworks on your startup disk).

Apple says it, and you can find it out for yourself with the help of otool:
Cocoa-frameworks use Carbon-functions in many ways.

Carbon will be in Mac OS X forever. It is necessary to port apps from Windows to Mac OS X. And Carbon is a very mature and efficient API. Just look at FSCatalogSearch!

 

[RMo]

LaTeX - free, lightweight, quick, and very powerful.

Truer words have never been spoken. (Although "lightweight" should not be confused with "small installation size." Still, it's amazing for all it packs in there.)

 

[lunarworks]

My guess is if Apple had kept its promise of Carbon 64 bit. Microsoft would of made the changed to Coca after it got its 64 bit completed.

Microsoft would have made the change to Cocoa when... I don't know when, but not then.

You're underestimating the laziness of developers. Most of them won't change unless they are forced to. The fact that Apple said "No 64 bit Carbon", and they didn't start Cocoa right away is clear that they wouldn't have started with Cocoa even after finishing a 64 bit Carbon version. They just would have said "Oh! Look at all the effort we put into the 64 bit Carbon version!" and kept building on that.

This is one of the ways Apple and Microsoft differs in their OS philosophy. Apple takes stuff out in order to encourage developers to move forward, but some developers resent that. Microsoft never takes anything out, developers keep developing using outdated methods, and all the OS bloat remains.

 

[AidenShaw]

You're underestimating the laziness of developers.

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.)
_______________________

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.

Apple takes stuff out in order to encourage developers to move forward, but some developers resent that. Microsoft never takes anything out...

And you've just explained why Microsoft has about 95% market share.

 

[SandynJosh]

I was formatting a 50 page document of 2008 Office for Mac and it's almost impossible to work. It lags while scrolling (badly) and eats 400 MB RAM (yep) only 3 charts and everything else text only. Finished on Pages in no time.

2008 is not as stable as it should be for such a mature program. I can't insert graphics at all, and sometimes when I drag and drop them the program quits. I also experience thing slowing down with Word at about 35 pages with graphics. It's not enough to be a show stopper, but it's noticeable.

I was wanting to layer some text over graphics in PowerPoint 2008. Something that was easy to do in the earlier version. Not only couldn't I do it in 2008, but the help menu was totally silent on the topic as well.

I could only shake my head in wonder...

 

[lunarworks]

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

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.

 

[Dillenger]

Dear MS Mac Office developers, once you finish Mac Office 2011, will you please work on a Mac version of OneNote?

Thank You.