So far we’ve had to sit back and watch while Office 2010 news for PC users rolled in, but the MacBU over at Microsoft has finally come through with details of when and what Mac users can expect regarding the industry-dominating productivity suite, announced at a press conference this morning. They also detailed some changes to the existing Office 2008, or at least to the way it’s sold, to tide us over.

First, the changes to 2008 will include a reduction in retail SKUs from three to two, a Home/Student Edition and a Business Edition. The new Business Edition will include Entourage Web Services Edition, MS Document Connection, additional templates and clip art, and some Lynda.com training sessions. This new pack will cost $399 and be available September 15, while the Home/Student Edition will continue to retail for $149.

Not much was revealed about the next version of Office, which has a target launch date of 2010′s holiday season, but the MacBU did drop one major bomb on Apple users. Entourage, the email application currently bundled with Mac Office, will be replaced by Outlook, a move which probably has IT departments everywhere who support a Mac/PC hybrid work environment jumping for joy. It still wont’ be exactly the same as Outlook for the PC, but it will support a greater range of Exchange features, including public calendars.

The new Outlook will also be a native Cocoa application, which should bode well for Mac integration, and sport a brand new database that includes support for Spotlight indexing and Time Machine backup. Outlook for Mac will also sport Information Rights Management, which should make sure that only recipients who have permission to access rights-managed content actually get to see or use it. Finally, it’ll also be able to sync tasks and notes.

Developers and advanced Office users will also be pleased to learn that Visual Basic for Applications, which wasn’t included in Office 2008. Microsoft received harsh criticism for the omission of VBA, which makes it relatively easy to add customization options such as menus and dialogs, and create macros to simplify tasks. MacBU group product manager Kurt Schmucker explained that user response factored heavily in their decision to re-introduce VBA support, saying “we know [VBA] is important to a section of our user base who needs cross platform compatibility, and we’re bringing that back.” VBA was left out of Office 2008 because of the difficulty in upgrading the software for Intel-based machines.

No word yet on any prospective pricing, naming or specific release dates for the next version of Office for Mac. I imagine some kind of upgrade pricing will be available, and it’s probably safe to assume that the pricing structure will closely resemble that of the 2008 suites. That is, if they’re allowed to sell it at all.

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Even though Apple builds great products for the consumer, the company often misses the boat with business users. Snow Leopard stands to make serious inroads with Mac users in wingtips and pinstripes with native support for Microsoft Exchange Server. Mail, iCal, and Address Book will all be updated to talk directly with your Exchange account and in some cases, may work better than Entourage.

The Long & Winding Road

It’s taken a long time to get to this point, but the Mac has a long history of working with Microsoft. I think a little history is interesting here to show how we’ve arrived at Snow Leopard.

The Mac has had Microsoft Office almost from the beginning (Word and Excel for Mac were first released in 1985). Jaguar added LDAP access to Address Book. Panther introduced Windows Printer Sharing and Active Directory support so that you could log into a Windows Domain from a Macintosh. Tiger introduced Exchange accounts in Mail (though with IMAP access only) along with much improved support for Samba and Windows file sharing. The move to Intel gave us virtualization of Windows apps.

Leopard brought Boot Camp, of course, but this did nothing to help integrate Mac OS X itself into a Windows environment. But under the hood some exciting things were happening. The Address Book and Calendar stores were updated to offer better programmatic access and the Sync Services framework was updated. The result was that Mail and iCal were better at sharing data with each other and we got to-do items that were shared between those two apps. iCal was updated to access outside CalDAV accounts and Mail got Notes that (eventually) were able to sync with the iPhone.

The iPhone OS 2.0 firmware update pushed Exchange integration to new heights because Apple chose to license the ActiveSync technology from Microsoft. This put the iPhone on a level playing field with Windows Mobile devices and Outlook when accessing information stored in Exchange.

Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard brings all of this together: integrated email, calendar, and address book (with to-do’s and notes) with access to outside accounts and the ActiveSync technology used in the iPhone. In fact, Apple is touting that the Mac will now have out-of-the-box support for “Exchange Server 2007, something that Windows PC’s don’t have.” The requirement to use Exchange Server 2007 might disappoint some that are still on 2003, but it makes good sense when you consider that 2007 has the new Business Logic Layer that provides a consistent view of your mailboxes from any device and takes a lot of work out of writing client software. In fact, Entourage has been testing a beta version that also requires Exchange 2007 in order to take advantage of this technology to make Entourage behave more like Outlook does on a Windows PC.

Entourage?

Personally, I hope for Entourage to die a slow and horrible death. Having been on the support end of things, I have seen how hard it is to make Entourage work reliably. And when it fails? Look out, because all of your email messages, contact info, tasks, calendar items, etc. are stored in one big database file. Lose that file, and you’ve lost everything. And backing it up with Time Machine means you have copied a multigigabyte file to your backup drive every hour.

Recovering from errors in Mail, where each message is an individual file, is much simpler and it works beautifully with Time Machine and Spotlight because of this file structure. I know there are people that like the consolidated view of all information in one application, but I suspect that this preference comes more from force of habit after using Outlook than any real advantage.

So can Mail, iCal, and Address Book replace Entourage? I think so.

Mail

Mail provides access to your Exchange account right along any other IMAP or POP3 accounts. As a Mac user, you get all the cool Mac features like data detectors, Spotlight, and Quick Look. I’m impressed that Quick Look can display previews of Office documents even if you don’t have Microsoft Office for Mac installed on your machine. This might be a good reason to give iWork another look.

Quick Look

iCal

iCal will seamlessly blend your personal local calendars and your Exchange calendars in one view. I liked how the WWDC Keynote demo showed how iCal could intelligently schedule meetings to avoid conflicts, just like Outlook. And of course it’s still integrated with Mail and Address Book so you can see your to-do’s here or in Mail, and you can auto-fill addresses from Exchange.

Address Book

OK, contacts are not very sexy, but I do like how you can access the Global Address List from within any app that can talk to Address Book. That means Mail will auto-complete addresses as you type messages and iCal will auto-complete names as you create meeting invitations. I suppose it might mean that other apps like Delicious Library that integrate with Address Book will let you keep track of DVDs that you loan to people at work, even if they aren’t in your personal contact list. I also like how smart groups can blend your personal address book with the Exchange contacts. Very slick.

The Future of Microsoft Office

I see a big problem coming for the MacBU at Microsoft. One of the primary reasons to purchase the full version of Microsoft Office (the only reason?) was to get Exchange support. Now that Snow Leopard will include Exchange support natively, I suspect a lot of people will choose to purchase the Home & Student Edition, despite the language in the license that prevents you from using it for work-related activities. A decrease in revenue would naturally lead to a decrease in funding for future development. Despite my feelings about Entourage, Office is pretty useful. I hope that Apple pushes them a little hard (iWork updates will help too), but I hope they don’t push so hard that Office is abandoned. I have felt like Entourage has languished along for a few years now and if I don’t get my wish for it to just curl up and die, then maybe we can get a better, more reliable Entourage for people who want to use it.

The Future of the Mac at Work

I suspect that despite my enthusiasm, the initial support for Exchange in the first release of Snow Leopard is going to blow. I would advise caution about committing to abandoning Entourage, or a large-scale migration from Windows PCs and Outlook in 2009. The bugs, and there will be bugs, will get worked out though, and 2010 could be a very exciting year for the Mac in the business segment.

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And compete it does, when it comes to hardware specifications. The Open(3)’s base configuration includes a 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo E7400 processor, 2GB DDR2 800 RAM, a 500GB 7200RPM SATA HD, and a GeForce 8400GS 256MB graphics card. All of which nicely one-ups the Mac mini’s specifications at the same price point of $599. Of course, you don’t get the same small form factor that you do with the mini, but you do get the ability to upgrade to a 1TB HD, add in an extra HD, and choose from a bevy of other options.

It seems like quite the package, considering the price, but if you take a closer look at what isn’t there, it starts to look a little fishy. No FireWire, no Bluetooth, and no networking (Ethernet or wireless) are included at all at the $599 price point, and all are fairly costly add-ons. Plus, integrated Bluetooth isn’t available, and instead you get a USB dongle for your extra 40 bucks.

Psystar seems to be keeping the general price tag low by nickel and diming you on basic extras that should be included to begin with. Even if you still end up getting more muscle for your money in the end, I’m not tempted in the least by this offering. How future-proof is a Psystar machine, after all, even leaving aside the issue of their legal battle with Apple? Who’s to say that Snow Leopard, when it comes out, will be completely and permanently incompatible with Psystar hardware? You get what you pay for, and I think this is especially the case with these clone machines. That said, if anyone actually takes the plunge and decides to buy one of these, I’d love to hear about your experiences.

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This might just be incredibly coincidental timing, but Apple is announcing that they’ve finally brought the Windows side of their MobileMe personal data syncing service up to snuff, only shortly after it’s come to light that Microsoft in working on their own similar service, currently dubbed “My Phone.” Either way, Windows users who are also MobileMe subscribers (like myself, via BootCamp and netbook) should be well pleased with the new feature additions.

The improvements were made to MobileMe’s syncing service for Outlook, which until now was pretty dismal, and not very Push-y at all. In fact, I never actually considered Windows syncing to be a big part of my MobileMe purchase, and rarely used it when running Windows, preferring to just check my email, calendar, etc. via the web interface or on my iPhone.

Apple now promises that changes you make to your Outlook calendar and/or contacts list will automatically update the information stored on MobileMe, and vice versa. To get the new auto-syncing features working, all you have to do is make sure you are running iTunes 8.0.2 and have downloaded and installed the latest update for MobileMe Control Panel, version 1.3. Once that’s done, you just have to set the “Sync With MobileMe” option to “Automatically.”

It’s something the service should have launched with, honestly, if they really wanted to appeal to the Windows market. Personally, I suspect that most, if not all, Windows users of MobileMe are also OS X users. I find it highly unlikely that Window-only people would buy an Apple-branded personal data syncing solution. If you’re out there, speak up and prove me wrong!

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You see my friend and I work in a place – like many, many places – that uses Microsoft’s Exchange server for email, thus Outlook is the tool of choice for email, contacts, calendars, etc. The issue my co-worker faces is that he syncs his iPhone with his Mac at home, not his work PC. Thus, his work-based calendar items (which don’t exactly translate on the poor IMAP/Exchange integration) aren’t loaded onto his iPhone. (And between you and me, He misses enough meetings as it is…) So what to do?

As most of my friends do when they have an Apple related question, he came bugging me (which was only fair given the love affair I’ve had with his iPhone). I should mention also that he’s a senior engineer (hence the missed skipped meetings) and doesn’t like to do a lot of ‘heavy lifting’, so the process of exporting a CSV from Outlook each day to mangle into iCal was out of the question – Can you blame him?

So we did some digging. Finally, we came to a solution in the form of Plaxo. Plaxo is the plugin for Outlook that many of you may have gotten invites to a few years back when it came on the scene, and all your co-workers and friends wanted you to jump off a bridge join up too. Well in its current manifestation it’s a much more full-featured (and free!) plugin, which in the Beta 3.0 version rocks a pretty slick web-based hub. This web-hub acts as a one-stop-shop for all your calendar and contact needs (as well as much more) and imports from Outlook of course. But the real magic comes in to play with the ability to sync several different services to this one-stop web-hub. iCal, Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar, and on and on and on can all share their info to the website, which syncs it between all the sources, in effect unifying your contacts and scheduled appearances. Brilliant!

So now you’ve got Plaxo keeping all parties up to date – a new item in iCal updates to Plaxo, which then updates to Outlook (and Google Calendar, and Yahoo, and so on) and vis versa. So no matter where a new item is added, all apps from end to end get the memo. Thus, the end game of getting Outlook calendar items onto a Mac-based/sync’d iPhone is a success.

A footnote to this, is that obviously those appointments are only made available to the iPhone when a sync to iTunes (and in turn, iCal) is performed. As Plaxo plays so nicely with all these other services, Google Calendar (which got a nice iPhone/Safari makeover) for instance, is updated on the fly and immediately available for calendar updates in between hard syncs with the Mac!

So there you have it. All you Mac and iPhone users stuck trying to integrate with the world of Microsoft can hopefully get on a little easier now. Many thanks to my buddy for letting me spend so much quality time with his iPhone, and having a fun and interesting story to show for it. Hopefully he doesn’t pummel me for all the slacker references…

As I’ve been typing this, the thought occurred that it may be possible to sync the iPhone with multiple iTunes – hence grabbing Outlook calendar entries from a Windows-based iTunes, and syncing music and everything else from an OS X-based iTunes. Does anyone know if that’s possible? If you’ve got a different (more elegant?) solution to the problem, lets hear it!

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Unfortunately, as with most web applications, when you’re disconnected from the internet (whether traveling or just having trouble finding a connection), it becomes unusable for obvious reasons.

Enter PackRat.

PackRat is a desktop client for Backpack that lets you use your Backpack data, as well as create new data, without ever visiting your Backpack page. You then can do a simple sync to keep everything together on both the website and the application.

You can do just about everything in PackRat as you can on your Backpack page. I actually prefer the desktop client to the web client. Everything just seems more straight forward and it’s one less tab I have to keep open in Safari.

The interface seems a bit rough around the edges, but that hasn’t had any noticeable effect on performance. A lot of things that tend to make the Backpack pages feel cluttered have been removed in PackRat so you really are shown just the tools needed to do the job.

PackRat is a great tool and certainly worth checking out if you’re a Backpack user. You can try it out (with a 5 page limit) right now. It costs around $25 for the full version. The price is arguably a tad steep for a program that just piggybacks off a real app…but I definitely think the program is still worth checking out to get a feel for if it’s right for you.

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Today’s report is about the “iPhone Launch Crisis,” and ThinkSecret’s sources “report Apple will announce an official ship date for the iPhone at WWDC—some time in the second half of June—and the company is expected to start accepting pre-orders for the hotly anticipated item following the keynote on June 11.”

Wow, Apple originally said the iPhone would be available in June and now ThinkSecret has brought us the scoop of the year by noting it will ship in the second half of June! (which contradicts ThinkSecret’s note in January that the iPhone might launch sooner than June)

But what about that launch crisis? See, my Tiger-supplied Oxford English dictionary defines crisis as “a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger.” But ThinkSecret’s report says Cingular expects the iPhone to create “the biggest selling period seen in a few years.”

It was only Monday that ThinkSecret hinted at “an iPod update as early as tomorrow, with a touch-screen iPod taking center stage.” Guess what? It didn’t happen Tuesday (nor as of this writing). And what about ThinkSecret’s January report that iWork ’07 (with new spreadsheet app) was near release or that there was a 95 percent chance Leopard would be previewed at the Macworld Expo keynote?

So PC Magazine editors, if you’re going to hire someone to write about Apple, maybe get someone less laughable. (My prices are reasonable)

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