AMEM brotha! our hardware keeps getting better, and the bloatware just keeps getting slooooower. jeez, show me a blank page, already!
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Third Office for Mac 2011 Beta Reveals New Icons, Splash Screens, and More
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AMEM brotha! our hardware keeps getting better, and the bloatware just keeps getting slooooower. jeez, show me a blank page, already!
Icons!
This icon discussion seems like the history of Old Coke - New Coke of several years ago. For some it means nothong for others its fighting words or should we say pictures?
Thank goodness they released another beta so they could get everybody's feedback ON THE FRIGGIN' ICONS!
Good grief.
This icon discussion seems like the history of Old Coke - New Coke of several years ago. For some it means nothong for others its fighting words or should we say pictures?
Nope legal beta. We have an SA. I must have missed the project center part.
And I realize that feature was in Beta 2 as well... I was just simply answering someones question.
For all the Excel buffs, at the MS Office Roadshow they did some extreme Excel examples and Excel was ridiculously faster!
Office X didn't really have much of a feature change from the previous version, just make Mac Office PPC capable. I do agree with you about Ofice 2008, I own it but do not use it. Excel is just a dead dog slow plus other problems with my income tax program.
One of the reasons they change the icons is as a fore-warning so you know in advance what you're getting yourself into. Clicking a familiar old Word 2008 (2004, X, 2001, 98....) icon and being thrown into Word 2011 instead, is not good management of user expectations, when both (and even older) versions can be installed simultaneously. Adobe does the same thing with CS apps for the same reason. iLife, iWork and built-in Mac OS X apps do not install side-by-side, which is why Apple (usually) doesn't change icons very often.
Outlook is an Exchange necessity, not a "high esteem" thing. It's Exchange that the "high esteem" thing because it still does stuff today that other collaboration systems do not, and you need Outlook to take proper advantage of them. Take your Mail.app/iCal/Address Book and try and view multiple calendars. Or see user presence. Or access Public Folders or Shared Calendars. Or Categories.
If your needs are that basic, then fine. But an actual Outlook for Mac has been a long time coming and is an absolute relief to long-suffering Mac-based IT staff, as well as Exchange administrators, because there is now some vague approximation of semi-parity that has been missing for years (and I'm including the Entourage years).
Snow Leopard supports Exchange. But that support lags behind even Entourage's. Snow Leopard's Exchange support is a "check my mail while I'm at home" thing, not live-in-it-all-day-long business collaboration.
So I guess you just deliberately ignored the Word "Welcome to Word 2011" screenshot that's sitting right there on the MR front page?
Too little, too late.
I've moved on to iWork, and while it doesn't have everythingnotably speedI am very pleased with the product. Actually, I love it.
I really hope Apple is taking iWork seriously and enhancing the applications significantly and coming up with a respectable cloud strategy for file storage and syncing. iDisk vs. dropbox is a great example of how Apple just can't execute the cloud well.
I've moved on to iWork, and while it doesn't have everythingnotably speedI am very pleased with the product. Actually, I love it.
I really hope Apple is taking iWork seriously and enhancing the applications significantly and coming up with a respectable cloud strategy for file storage and syncing. iDisk vs. dropbox is a great example of how Apple just can't execute the cloud well.
I just pray it actually runs well. 2008 is so damn slow it's pathetic. I wish Pages was 100% compatible with the Word format.
I'm happy with 2011. I hated 2008 with a passion. I am starting to also like the ribbon.
No doubt. It takes minutes for Outlook 2007 to be ready to use on my PC every morning. Like 3-5 minutes. Meanwhile, if I actually need to do something in email quick, I can pull out my very slow 1st gen iPod Touch and access it faster. The longest time seems to be spent on communicating with the Exchange server, even though the iPod does it in seconds.
I didn't think you could make a communication program worse than Outlook, until I saw Entourage. With the amount of time I spend in email all day, I don't have time for MS crap-- Mail just gets the job done without the clutter.
I only have two uses for Office-- compatibility and Excel. They killed the first one when they dropped macro support. If Numbers ever got going at faster than a crawl, it would eliminate the second. Adding macro support back in, assuming they don't do a half job of it, might be enough to get me to update my copy for emergency use.
I only have two uses for Office-- compatibility and Excel. They killed the first one when they dropped macro support. If Numbers ever got going at faster than a crawl, it would eliminate the second. Adding macro support back in, assuming they don't do a half job of it, might be enough to get me to update my copy for emergency use.
How do you get in on this?
How does someone become part of the beta testing group? Can I sign up to have access?
How does someone become part of the beta testing group? Can I sign up to have access?
I still expect Outlook for Mac to be crippled. Just calling it "Outlook" doesn't make it the same.
Not that I really care-- I won't use it. Just find the constant clamoring for vaporware sad.
The icon is the face of the application, it is important. If they made poor or lazy design decisions wih the icon it has to make you wonder if they made other poor or lazy design decisions in the rest of the app. Plus a lot of people on these MacRumors forums are designers, so it's only natural they would take notice.
Any beta users out there?
Does anyone know if I can strip down the interface so that Word only has an OS X title bar at the top? In other words no toolbars along the top, no glowing buttons (like in 2008). I like my custom toolbox at the side and the useful formatting palette below. Same question for Excel.
As you can guess, I'm still using 2004. You see, my laptop screen is wider than it is tall. And if I needed wordart to be a click away I'd be, like, eight years old.
Does anyone know if I can strip down the interface so that Word only has an OS X title bar at the top? In other words no toolbars along the top, no glowing buttons (like in 2008). I like my custom toolbox at the side and the useful formatting palette below. Same question for Excel.
As you can guess, I'm still using 2004. You see, my laptop screen is wider than it is tall. And if I needed wordart to be a click away I'd be, like, eight years old.
Where do you get this beta from? I have MSDN and it's not in the product list. Do you need to specifically request it somewhere? If so, where?
Also, is any of this documented anywhere? It's like Microsoft is trying to cover up the existence of Mac Office (it wouldn't surprise me!) because I can't find anything on MSDN about it.
Also, is any of this documented anywhere? It's like Microsoft is trying to cover up the existence of Mac Office (it wouldn't surprise me!) because I can't find anything on MSDN about it.
Probably, they try to push all sorts of crap. I'm pretty sure they hate us, same as other IT guys.
Not sure what the beta looks like, but it is based off v2007 on Win. On 2007 you can hide the ribbon so it behaves sorta like menus, popping up on demand. Not quite as small as you probably want, but much better than showing everything.
i'm SO psyched!
The icons aren't great looking - but who cares, the look of office- apps are amazing!!
Can't wait to have it!!
The icons aren't great looking - but who cares, the look of office- apps are amazing!!
Can't wait to have it!!