Swad Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 As a student, if there was ever an application that needed to be universal, it's Microsoft Office for Mac. That's why I was fairly excited (gasp! - excited about Microsoft?) to read about all the goodies coming for the Mac version of Office 2007. Microsoft’s next-gen Office suite for the Mac is being given a top-to-toe refit in readiness for its debut in the third quarter of 2007. On the surface is a revised interface which borrows ideas from the Office 2007 for Windows ‘ribbon’ and has already been radically changed due to user feedback. The new versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint will all adopt the native XML file formats of their Windows siblings. And, the program is of course being rebuilt as an Intel-friendly Universal Binary application. That's the good news. The bad news is that we shouldn't be expecting to buy it at a booth at Macworld 2007 in January. “Typically we release about 6-8 months after Windows Office, and they’ve announced general availability in the January timeframe, so we would be 6-8 months after that.” If her timetable holds firm, the program that will likely be christened as ‘Office 2007? will touch down between July and September of 2007 — around three and a half years since the arrival of Office 2004 in March of that year. Microsoft’s 130-odd Mac developers have already reached the halfway mark in their marathon march, Last month, they completed the transition to Apple’s Xcode, which forms the basis for the Universal binaries that are compatible with new Intel-based Macs as well as older PowerPC machines. Oh, and what about "ribbons" you ask? “We will be doing a UI refresh” Starman confirms, “but it won’t be exactly like you see in Office 2007. It just wouldn’t make sense. Apple has got their own very specific set of user interface guidelines and we try to first and foremost to follow those guidelines. If we can innovate on top of that and do some interesting things to make sure that the interface is really discoverable for the Mac user, then we’ll look at doing that. We can get some ideas (from the ribbon) but it still has to fit within Apple’s UI guideline, that’s what a Mac user wants to see” Starman says. “There’s also a lot of speculation in the Apple developer community about the UI changes that will come in Leopard, too, and what are we all going to have do when we see those changes.” Design and usability testing on the Office 12 interface is already underway in the MacBU labs at Redmond and Cupertino, and the team has already made one trip back to the drawing board based on user feedback. Thank goodness. While I use Word out of compulsion rather than inspiration, the Windows version just seems much easier to use, if admittedly very un-Mac-like. The Mac buttons look cheesy, the little side "box-o-settings" is a usability disaster, and... well... I'm just not a huge fan. Will 2007 make switchers of many Pages fans? Maybe. We'll see what Macworld has to offer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheQuantumByte Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 Sigh*...Redmond and their delays there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
U.C. Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 Man September is a long time away, But in the mean I just use crossover its faster Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bearcat Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 I have a bad feeling about this. Does it sound like a new version, and anyone with a PPC Office 2004 is going to have to buy an upgrade just to get a Universal version of the office apps? I would have hoped that we would have gotten a universal version of Office 2004, instead of a new one 2.5 years after the dev conference when MS said they would do a universal version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patrix Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 I have a bad feeling about this. Does it sound like a new version, and anyone with a PPC Office 2004 is going to have to buy an upgrade just to get a Universal version of the office apps? I would have hoped that we would have gotten a universal version of Office 2004, instead of a new one 2.5 years after the dev conference when MS said they would do a universal version. sounds like Office 2004 was made in CodeWarrior (Carbon instead of Cocoa I assume?) and contained a lot of PPC assembly code.. Making it impossible to just recompile as a UB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bearcat Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 sounds like Office 2004 was made in CodeWarrior (Carbon instead of Cocoa I assume?) and contained a lot of PPC assembly code.. Making it impossible to just recompile as a UB. No doubt, that's true. I would have expected them to write a UB verstion of 2004, before they moved on to a UB version of 2007. Either way they have to convert their carbon stuff to cocoa. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouch Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 Still no word on them dropping entourage in favour of proper outlook - oh well nevermind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rockett Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 I have a feeling they may name it Office 2008 to make it distinguishable from the windows version. However, I am sad to see them saying: “But BootCamp and Parallels open up a lot of opportunities for people to run some of the applications that we’re not able to port over, if they need Access or Project for example.” Looks like Microsoft will be making no effort to grow the application line of Mac Office. Access would really complete the Mac Office experience IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darwinian Dude Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 Having unfortunately used Word for far too many years I now use a lot of the extra bits that when i first used it seem like irrelivant fluff. So in Pages, i find myself looking for features that aren't there. However, i find pages to be much, much nicer than Publisher (never was a publisher expert) if i have to do something that contains any interesting layouts. As pages matures i'm sure i'll use it more and more. As for the floating feature thing in Office Mac 2004, you can disable it Or atleast go to view|toolbars and engage the standard and formating bars as you'd have it configured on a windows machine. I must say though, much as i despise it, that the floating thing is very good on a 640x480 screen, especially if the dock isn't hidden. I have tiger on a biege G3 with a monitor that will only do 640x480. (this isn't my only computer luickily! ) I sold my 20" iMac Core Duo to await the V2 Macbook Pro 17" as i've deicded i need a laptop. I'm using a G3 900 iBook i got second hand very cheaply, and i'm actually very suprised for snappily it runs in tiger even with only 384 mb ram. Very useable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boyblitz Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 They cant innovate on osx gui lol. but seriously as long as its compatible i dont really care Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rollcage Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 I can't believe that it is going to take them that long, oh well, i'll keep using open office til then. there is no way that i'm going to buy 2004 and get a new version next year too. now if only apple would come out with the itablet and microsoft with onenote for mac. then i'd have the perfect computer for college... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Takuro Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 Great... now Microsoft and Adobe have both announced that their products won't be available as universal binaries until mid-late 2007. Both Office and CS3 are perhaps some of the most important Mac applications, and both are made by companies whose interests don't necessarily lie in the Mac market. Is it coincidence that both were silent for so long and now finally spoke up? NeoOffice and Gimp are ok, but come on already... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgrimes80 Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 I'd rather see apple release a UB Appleworks... All I've got to say is MS better not come up with some new proprietary format that's not compatable with Mac... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Takuro Posted September 21, 2006 Share Posted September 21, 2006 I'd rather see apple release a UB Appleworks... All I've got to say is MS better not come up with some new proprietary format that's not compatable with Mac... Microsoft will stop making software for Macintoshes once their contract expires. Their decision to drop Explorer and Media Player for Mac are signs of their waning interest. Office 2007 is probably the only attempt Microsoft has made in years at making a new version of its software for OS X. Unlike Adobe, they don't even have a alpha preview I think. They're going to do a quick job making Office Mac 2007 after the initial Office 2007 is released for Vista and XP. If AppleWorks did pick up speed again, we wouldn't need Office at all. It hasn't been updated in years, but there's always hope. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
denisvj Posted January 9, 2007 Share Posted January 9, 2007 Microsoft reveals details of Office 2008 for Mac : http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/01/09/msftoffice/index.php Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bofors Posted January 9, 2007 Share Posted January 9, 2007 Having unfortunately used Word for far too many years I now use a lot of the extra bits that when i first used it seem like irrelivant fluff. That's funny, I remember when Word (and Excel) was a decent application, now they are bloated goats. I use TextEdit. :censored2: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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