Comments on: Mac Office 2008 Slips to 2008. Should We Care?

By: Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive Can Mac Web Workers iWork with Pages ‘08? «

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 15:30:38 +0000

[...] Workers iWork with Pages ‘08? While we’re sitting here moaning about the fact that Microsoft won’t be releasing the next version of Office for the Mac until early next year, Apple throws their hat into the ring with iWork, their suite of [...]

By: Justin Pease

Justin Pease — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 17:25:55 +0000

I use NeoOffice when TextEdit won’t cut it.

By: Eric Nentrup

Eric Nentrup — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 03:17:18 +0000

I’m (mostly) Microsoft Office free and LOVING it. I NEVER need Word, and only occasionally need to open an Excel document–but that’s changing thanx to Google Apps…In fact, I’m pitching HARD that our whole office ditch our Exchange Server 2003 in favor of Google Apps NPO Edition.

But I digress. Regarding “MS WORD,” I have a workflow using the right tool for the job. Here’s my “kit”:

• When someone sends me a .DOC I simply need to review, from within GMail (in Firefox) I click the “Open attachment as a Google Doc” link.

• If I am getting the .DOC file off of our server, I open it in APPLE TEXTEDIT, or maybe directly import it into APPLE PAGES

• When I need to start a document from scratch, I use GOOGLE DOCS as the starting point.

• IF that document has a “migration path” towards something I would be printing for distribution (i.e. newsletter on our office color laser or sending out of house to a print shop), then I use APPLE PAGES. I might bypass Google Docs altogether if the document is fairly short. It’s INSANELY powerful.

• Also on my harddrive, is a copy of MELLEL, the Israeli produced Word Processor that was the first Cocoa WP with any amount of muscle. It still has a dear place in my heart, but I really haven’t used it much.

That’s about it. TextEdit, Pages, and Google Docs do all the heavy lifting and are a THRILL to use (in comparison to the crufty MS Word).

By: Luis

Luis — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 00:11:14 +0000

Treeorc, the answer is ubiquity and features. Most people in business have copies of MS Office and while the applications you mention implement most of the features of Office, it is still ‘only most’ of them. I do share with colleagues documents with embedded VBA code (mostly spreadsheets), equations, versioning, comments, etc.

If one is only scratching the surface on terms of features and writing letters and todo lists, then changing is easy: one never needed Office in the first place. However, for power users the alternatives fall short of being really useful. And don’t get me started on mickey mouse web wordprocessors…

By: George

George — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 20:09:44 +0000

Maybe the reason for the delay is simpler: MS is losing market share from the Macs and doesn’t want to offer one more reason to switch…

By: treeorc

treeorc — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 14:38:44 +0000

I am not sure what the attraction to Microsoft Office really is. Like Windows, those applications are really inferior to other alternatives. Is it the deceiving look like Office 2007 for example?

My suggestion is to try Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, Sunbird, Thunderbird, and/or other alternatives for just one month. You might be startled and pleasantly surprised. Let’s face it, Redmond is going down hill as we speak and they simply can not produce what they seem to say they will produce. Until extreme changes are made at the company and at the highest of levels, Microsoft will continue to tumble.

By: Robin

Robin — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 16:27:50 +0000

I’m unhappy about not having Outlook 2007 for Mac. My small business uses a hosted Exchange because none of us will give up the Blackberrys because of their battery life and dependability (we’ve all used Blackberrys since 1998). Interestingly, each of us have iPhones but for personal use (read: geeks who have to have them for the gadget and AnythingApple factors). Just give me Outlook 2007 that runs on Intel Mac and I will be the happiest person. Anyone have any news on the Outlook release?

By: mossman

mossman — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 13:23:13 +0000

Interesting – I’m managing not to use Office at the moment, but with a career change imminent, this may not be the case in the near future. I have Neoffice on all the Intel Macs and that seems pretty darn good (One caveat is that I am not really pushing it as yet).

It’s a shame, but not surprising that the slip has happened – they COULD redeem themselves somewhat, by getting a beta out soon…. will this happen though? I am not holding my breath.

By: Adam Teece

Adam Teece — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 07:17:08 +0000

I switched from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org a few years ago before I ever thought about using a Mac. Then when I bought my MacBook Pro I automatically went and started using OpenOffice.org. I am heavily contemplating the use of ThinkFree Offline Premium if I can get an invite, or I might try NeoOffice since it is more aqua. Any way you look at it, there are plenty of alternatives to Microsoft. Not saying they are a bad company, I just personally have no use for the software.

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 02:00:29 +0000

Word is a real PITA sometimes but I’m not thrilled by the alternatives. iWork is a step in the right direction but they really haven’t brought it up to “professional grade” quite yet. I have Parallels and Office 2007 on my Macbook Pro but I find it too inconvenient to have to load Windows and then use Office 2007 only to save and then transfer said files to my Mac. I’ll wait for Office 2008 and deal with the slowness of Office 2004 in the mean time. After all, I hardly notice a little slow loading when running 25 applications at a time.