I personally don't use Office on the Mac, but I can understand it's importance to Apple. Does anyone have any information on the likely direction of the product in future? Or does it even have a future? Also will the special offer for Office with a new Mac be extended?
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The future of Office
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Different people have different answers. Mine is that M$ and all of it's products are on the decline. Office will no longer be the mainstay that is it. Dell and Gateway are going to replace Office with Corel Word. Just Dell alone will hurt M$ Office, if Compaq, HP and IBM follow, then who will care about Office? There are a few choices for mac, ThinkFree, Appleworks and there ae a few for Linux that just need to be complied or ported or whatever and then there would be no worries about M$ pulling office.
For now, Apple needs Office. It is unfortunately the standard. I do like some of the features, but other apps are now getting similar features.
Lets hope that Orfice does decline and we won't have to rely so much on biil, the money grubbing whore.
Lets hope that Orfice does decline and we won't have to rely so much on biil, the money grubbing whore.
it will be a while
It will be a while before Office isn't used or "popular". Too many people use and rely on Word in the business world. Personally I like Entourage over using Apple's ical, Mail and addressbook. One app vs three. I tried to switch to the new apps but it wasn't as easy or organized compared to just using Entourage.
It will be a while before Office isn't used or "popular". Too many people use and rely on Word in the business world. Personally I like Entourage over using Apple's ical, Mail and addressbook. One app vs three. I tried to switch to the new apps but it wasn't as easy or organized compared to just using Entourage.
Ive been trying to use the apps that come with my iBook. I actually like having different apps for some odd reason, call me silly...
I try not to use any M$ products on my Apple. Im not a total M$ hater , I just dont like the direction they are heading. I even feel dirty running VPC...
I try not to use any M$ products on my Apple. Im not a total M$ hater , I just dont like the direction they are heading. I even feel dirty running VPC...
I would love to ditch entourage but apple mail is terrible... I tried to import my entourage mailbox but the folder structure is awful and cluttered beyond belief.
If mail ever actually develops into a "full grown adult" program I could ditch entourage.
Word and Powerpoint are also necessary... standards in corporate communicaion.... but especially with ical's new release it would be nice to ditch entourage and use the apple products
-Doc.
If mail ever actually develops into a "full grown adult" program I could ditch entourage.
Word and Powerpoint are also necessary... standards in corporate communicaion.... but especially with ical's new release it would be nice to ditch entourage and use the apple products
-Doc.
I was an Entourage user since it came out but I recently made the switch after mail.app was last updated and haven't looked back since. The mailboxes are not junked or cluttered, tehy are virtually the same as Entourage, just depends how you set them up. Entourage is also bloated and I like mail's simplicty and expecially their junk filter. My wife uses Entourage still and when I use it I feel releived i switched. She just feels comfortable with it so it may take some time but i will get her to switch.
I'm not bashing you for using VPC at all...but by buying VPC isn't that the exact same a buying a Windows PC in the eyes of Microsoft. You are still purchasing a copy of Windows. I've often wondered if the license for the copy of Windows in VPC was the same as on a new PC...I assume it is.
it is the same. it is just that the little packet that your VPC OS is in is designed to be setup for you. no need to install. just add the package and away you go.
you can hbowever still install an OS of your choice.
you can hbowever still install an OS of your choice.
It seems to me that Apple is taking a very smart route in attacking MS Office. They are doing it piecemeal, not all at once. Why storm the castle when you can disassemble it brick by brick?
They started by going after Entourage, introducing iCal and significantly improving the Address Book and Mail programs in Jaguar.
Now they are taking on Power Point with Keynote. All that's left is Word and Excel, which may be left to the next AppleWorks upgrade ... but maybe Apple has something more clever planned. Maybe they're going to integrate a Word-compatible word processor and Excel-compatible spreadsheet into Panther. Or maybe they'll create inexpensive stand-alone products like Keynote.
I would love to see Apple reinvent the Word processor into something that can be adapted for different writing functions (such as screenwriting, novel writing, business writing, etc.) instead of taking the M$ Swiss Army knife approach. Maybe they can buy Final Draft and use it as the basis for a new word processor.
By moving slowly, Apple gets to string M$ along for awhile while slowly preparing Apple users to do without them.
They started by going after Entourage, introducing iCal and significantly improving the Address Book and Mail programs in Jaguar.
Now they are taking on Power Point with Keynote. All that's left is Word and Excel, which may be left to the next AppleWorks upgrade ... but maybe Apple has something more clever planned. Maybe they're going to integrate a Word-compatible word processor and Excel-compatible spreadsheet into Panther. Or maybe they'll create inexpensive stand-alone products like Keynote.
I would love to see Apple reinvent the Word processor into something that can be adapted for different writing functions (such as screenwriting, novel writing, business writing, etc.) instead of taking the M$ Swiss Army knife approach. Maybe they can buy Final Draft and use it as the basis for a new word processor.
By moving slowly, Apple gets to string M$ along for awhile while slowly preparing Apple users to do without them.
It is very much the same license as if you were buying it with or for a physical machine. They know who is buying the license since it's an OEM license, however, it's still a copy sold in their books.
with mail, ical, addressbook, keynote, and safari, apple has almost eliminated microsoft dependency. mplayerosx even plays windows media files. the next version of nisus writer (cocoa by the way) should sell for it's normal $69 and with apple x11, something like gnumeric can be run right in osx (or you could just bite the bullet and go for openoffice). the total cost of the non-freeware products (nisus writer and keynote) comes out to $170, lower than any office promo package you'll ever find and nisus is a company that depends on apple, not the other way around. chicagdan is dead on about the excellent strategy behind apple's slow approach. with panther, there will be no microsoft products installed on the system and by that time 60% of msoffice functionality will come bundled in the system. ms will have no market on macs no market on dells and no market on gateways.
It seems to me that MS has opened this can of worms, not Apple. From reading around these forums and other sites, and following the news, it looks like MS is trying hard NOT to make its software on the Mac as good the Windows side. Even worse, the applications are not optimized to work best on the platform, because they know that they are "the standard".
What this will hopefully do is make MS more competitive on the Mac side, making their apps earn their spots instead of just being there because of the status-quo.
What this will hopefully do is make MS more competitive on the Mac side, making their apps earn their spots instead of just being there because of the status-quo.
Well, this isn't entirely true. Internet Explorer is definitely inferior, but I think they did a decent job with Office v.X. It looks good, the compatibility is decent.
I'd like to get MS software off my computer out of principle and because I just don't like their cookie cutter approach. But I don't think they're trying to give Mac users inferior goods.
I posted this on another thread, but it seem more appropriate for this one...
"...if Apple is working on an office type app, they could be developing each peice seperatly, ie: word processor, spread sheet, Keynote, Mail, iCal, and Address Book, then bundle them together once they're good enough to compete with M$ Office.
I would like to see tighter integration of Mail, iCal and Address Book, something like M$ Entourage. Not neccessarily one big app, but be able to link contacts with appointments and e-mail. I like that feature in Entourage. I can look up a contact and find when and if I had an appointment with that person, or go right to the e-mail that I either sent to or received from that person. I can also color coordinate contacts, appointments and e-mail, depending on category. An example are my customers; I have a category called "Customers" which is colored green. Any appointment or e-mail that I have with a customer is colored green also.
"...if Apple is working on an office type app, they could be developing each peice seperatly, ie: word processor, spread sheet, Keynote, Mail, iCal, and Address Book, then bundle them together once they're good enough to compete with M$ Office.
I would like to see tighter integration of Mail, iCal and Address Book, something like M$ Entourage. Not neccessarily one big app, but be able to link contacts with appointments and e-mail. I like that feature in Entourage. I can look up a contact and find when and if I had an appointment with that person, or go right to the e-mail that I either sent to or received from that person. I can also color coordinate contacts, appointments and e-mail, depending on category. An example are my customers; I have a category called "Customers" which is colored green. Any appointment or e-mail that I have with a customer is colored green also.