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Microsoft Announces Mac Office 2008

Kinda useless now with NeoOffice and all.

I've been running Neo Office for the last 2 years or so and the latest Aqua Beta they are running has yet to crash on me once.

I use Spreadsheet and Word Processor and have never had any issues with a Mac or PC running M$ Office opening a file that was made in NeoOffice.
 
Macrumors said:
Office 2008 will also gain new interface features from Office for Windows 2007 like the Ribbon.
Click to expand...

I wonder how this will work on a Mac. Look at the interface. It appears each "menu" item is actually a tab that reveals some controls.

This would work fine on Windows, because they just "remove" the standard menu bar, but on Mac OS X there is always a menu bar present.

Would this integrate into the OS X menu bar, meaning each set of controls pops down from it? This would almost certainly break OS X guidelines.

On the other hand, if they put the ribbons in a floating toolbar, the OS X menu bar would be completely empty!

Anyone with more insight into how "Ribbons" work care to explain?
 
I hope they improve powerpoint for mac...

for me, it lacks a lot of features that the windows version has...

Microsoft word, and excel seem to be decent enough... I like work's look and feel a lot more than the windows version!
 
Usefulness

It's definitely useful, and good news. Some people/businesses won't use NeoOffice simply because of the potential for document incompatibility. For some tasks, it may work great. But the one time when it screws up would be troublesome.

If someone is pitching Macs to a company, they can say, "Not only is it compatible with Office, it runs Office!"
 
For those of us not satisfied with MS Office, this seems like a generally good announcement. For everyone else, what do you care if someone updates an app you don't plan on using? :p And of course no one has to upgrade from 2004 anyway. It's not like the corporate world is going to be using either Vista or Office 07/08 anytime soon. So in short, the uptake is another show of confidence in the MacBU by MS.
 
stephenmckeague said:
Any chance of Access being included in this??
Click to expand...
Nope. Access is not unicode friendly nor is it easy to port. Plus Access is not a good database. The only reason for it's success so far, IMHO, is that it has been tied to Office Professional which is what the Government and DoD purchase. And since it is very difficult for Government and DoD personnel to purchase a different database this has become the defacto standard...unfortunately.

FWIW, in Japan, Microsoft markets office this way:
- Personal: Word and Excel.
- Professional: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

I sure wish that some upstart would create and office suite that would run and look identical on all three platforms; Windows, Mac and Linux. One purchase would include multiple licenses and versions on a DVD. Easy to market. Complete file level compatibility! Oh well. Guess I might as well quit dreaming! ;)
 
Office 2008 will share the same graphics engine as Office for Windows...

Wow, now that's a selling point. :rolleyes: Will it crash just like the Windows version does, too?

Honestly though, the open XML is just another way M$ is going to force everyone to upgrade, regardless of it supposedly being "open source."

Sorry to be so cynical, but it's just pathetic what bloatware Office has become.
 
Openoffice.org 2.1 is available NOW for intel and ppc.

http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/x11-104.html

It runs in X11. But starts in about 2 seconds. It's a nice improvement over the previous release with speed. Drag/drop install to your applications folder. On initial start, it picks up all of your OS X fonts, etc. and you are ready to go.

Oo_O folks are planing on making a native port for OS X, it looks like:
http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/faq/aqua-prerelease/index.html

------

Openoffice/Neooffice is very good. I did my entire master's thesis from beginning to the end (making pdfs from openoffice to take to the binding company) in Openoffice. It can do very complicated charts and such very nicely. I can understand where some companies and law offices may need some particular advanced features of MS Word, but for 99% of the rest of the world, openoffice or neooffice is more than adequate.
 
macEfan said:
I hope they improve powerpoint for mac...
Click to expand...

I agree. I'm often forced to use PowerPoint when giving a lecture, and sometimes graphics and movies don't transfer well between the Windows and Mac versions. The graphics in the last PPT presentation I used (that was created on a PC) were replaced with a big red "X" when I tried to open them in the Mac version--these were simple jpeg files!
 
I actually like Word. Excel is a necessary evil (until someone makes something better...) and Powerpoint is garbage.

I'll buy, just don't make it as buggy as MSO2004
 
FoxyKaye said:
Office 2008 will share the same graphics engine as Office for Windows...

Wow, now that's a selling point. :rolleyes: Will it crash just like the Windows version does, too?

Honestly though, the open XML is just another way M$ is going to force everyone to upgrade, regardless of it supposedly being "open source."

Sorry to be so cynical, but it's just pathetic what bloatware Office has become.
Click to expand...

It does look a bit better, though I wasn't impressed with IE version 7 when I used it on WinXP. If the interface is as confusing with buttons scattered about the window, I'd be thinking that Macromedia knew more user interfaces and integration than Microsoft.

If it works better and makes people more productive, all the better, but the Page Layout View make give Pages some competition.
 
backdraft said:
I hate the ribbon, its a moving target.
Click to expand...

In Office:Win 2007, you can go back to the previous interface style, right? I hope so in Office:Mac also... I like the palettes much better than the past Windows interfaces, and I also do not like the ribbon. But usually MS lets you keep the old interface when they create a new, irritating interface. ;)
 
cal6n said:
It's a sad, sad day when Micro$oft's Macworld announcement is more exciting than Apple's!
Click to expand...

My thoughts, too. Glad to see someone offer something like this since
iWork 07 seems to be, um, nowhere on the horizon.
 
Why do they still think we want "Mac first, Mac only features"????

I'd much rather they give us feature parity with the Windows version. For starters, a real Exchange client would be nice.
 
reubs said:
My thoughts, too. Glad to see someone offer something like this since
iWork 07 seems to be, um, nowhere on the horizon.
Click to expand...

Actually, we don't know that. I watched the keynote, and after getting fed up with Steve talking about the phone, closed out. He did mention Mac and software upgrades coming about in the later weeks, so...
 
This is the best piece of news today, no contest.

I think MS Office 2004 is an excellent piece of software, better than the Windows version in some cases (although in the case of Entourage - definitely not!) But a UB and a hopeful long awaited update to Entourage to make it more compatible with Exchange servers will make it great :)

Thanks, MS. I'll definitely upgrade.
 
Spanky Deluxe said:
For once I've found a Microsoft announcement more important to me than the Apple one!!
Click to expand...

Speak for yourself.

The iPhone made headline news around the world, about twenty minutes after announcement.

People will buy whatever Office is available when they need it.

So this is bad news for me, as I can't wait six months for Office.
 
The 2004/2008 typo is still there on the main article page, only fixed in the forum.

Oh, and I've used 2007 on Windows, and I absolutely abhor the ribbon. Yet another reason why I won't be buying this, I guess.
 
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