No M$-Office for Mac anymore?

[groovebuster]

Yesterday I read on a german news-site, that MS is considering to end the support of the Mac-platform. Since Office v. X was introduced November last year, they only sold 300,000 copies and therefore will fail their goal to reach 750,000 copies during the first year.

MS is blaming Apple for that, because they don't make enough Mac-users switching to Mac OS X. Now they have to think about it, if there will be any development of Office-Applications in the future, since the costs are not covered anymore by the sales.

For anyone who's capable of German or wants to translate the article, here is the link:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/db-15.07.02-000/

If Entourage would finally communicate with an Outlook Server, I am pretty sure that a lot morte people would buy Office. But half-finished products for about 650.- € ??? No thanks!

groovebuster

 

[ponyboy]

Booh Hoo no skin off of my back. I am sure that there are those out the that use this everyday but I really could care less about typing a doc or doing a powerpoint presentation. I have Office X and have opened it only a couple of times. And most of what I need to do can be done just fine in appleworks besides if MS did give up Office X support I see apple beefing up appleworks to compensate nothing lost

 

[groovebuster]

Originally posted by ponyboy
Booh Hoo no skin off of my back. I am sure that there are those out the that use this everyday but I really could care less about typing a doc or doing a powerpoint presentation. I have Office X and have opened it only a couple of times. And most of what I need to do can be done just fine in appleworks besides if MS did give up Office X support I see apple beefing up appleworks to compensate nothing lost

You don't get the point I guess...

A big concern of companies who are willing to switch maybe to the Mac is the availability of MS Office. Even Apple was using that as a "no problem" for switchers. Since MS still doesn't provide a version of Outlook (or better Entourage) that collborates with an Outlook server under MacOS X, there is no real reason to switch to a Mac.

I have the impression that MS is doing that on purpose to make it harder for Apple to get into the normal offices again. As a result they do't sell enough copies of Office which gives them the excuse to not support the Mac platform anymore.

It is nice if you don't care about Office for Mac, but you should try to see the big picture! Apple needs badly to increase their market-share and they can't only do that with artists and home-users...

groovebuster

 

[iGav]

It won't affect me in the slightest... even though I have Office X on my machine... I don't really use it...... although occasionally I do use word....... I can't stand PowerPoint it's just a totally mind numbing package that makes corporate presentation even more boring......

If Apple could sort out AppleWorks as a complete replacement for Office in everyway, and market it that it completely integrates with Office...... then really there wouldn't be much of a problem......... but obviously they need to educate further prospective mac buyers that AppleWorks can do everything and more and is 100% compatible with MS Office......

It's going to take companies realising that MS peddles second rate technology, and to follow in the shoes of a couple of European Governments who have decided that MS isn't the best choice for their needs and that there are other options available....... once people see that there is life beyond MS and there so called innovative and best software...... things will start to change.......

 

[barkmonster]

It's the file formats Office uses than are so widely used, office mearly loads and saves them, it could be argued that microsoft are using monopolistic tactics to force people to use only their software due to it's widespread use.

Office started it's life on the mac, around the time windoze looked like this as far as I know :

The file formats should be licenced the same way JPEG, TIFF, PDF and countless other formats are licenced and any application should be able to use the format. Appleworks could be adapted to work with the office file formats and then that's one less microsoft application mac users need.

All we need is mozilla to reach a more speedy compatable level and then we can ditch IE aswell. Screw M$ if they're going to do that, they're just asking for more trouble in the monopoly lawsuits they're forever entangled in.

 

[drastik]

unfotunately, M$ isnot afriad of Government suit. I may be off base here, its been awhile since I used AppleWorks, but I think that office files are compatible, that you can open them with Apple works, I mean.

 

[szark]

Unfortunately, the problem is not just file formats. Several other programs, such as AppleWorks, OpenOffice, etc., can read and write to M$ file formats (with varying degress of success).

Most businesses don't want to invest time and money to train people to use a new software program unless it's absolutely necessary.

 

[MacUser1]

M$ Office

Although I use Office v.X every day at school and at home, I could always use an improved AppleWorks if Office wouldn't be available to the Mac. However, Office on the Mac is a big purchasing factor with people that I know who want to buy a Mac. If Office wasn't available, they simply wouldn't buy a Mac.

However, maybe with the release of 10.2, Mac OS X users will go up and this could all be put behind us.