[qi:022] Microsoft Mac BU had promised Microsoft Office 2008 in the second half of 2007. Technically we are in the 2H 2007. There is no sign of even a beta release, which doesn’t bode well for the release of a much-needed upgrade to the long-in-the-tooth Microsoft Office 2004. “The team is heads down getting Office 2008 ready to ship,” Craig Eisler, General Manager of Microsoft’s Mac BU writes on the official blog for the division. Still, no ship date!
Perhaps they have gotten a clue and are working on VB scripting for the mac version. I know many mac users won’t be able to upgrade without it.
Basically they are complete and utter fools for contemplating the removal of such a huge feature from the Mac Version. Basically making many many Excel spreadsheets unusable in Office Mac ’08.
i agree – some kind of ship date would be nice…assumed they’d time it out with leopard and just release one version that works both ways, though suspect that given the scope of the suite that might entail quite a bit more work for the mac bu…personally, i still feel that it’s the best offering out there…yeah. neo and open are nifty, but they’re not practical for power users…a few hundred bucks for a suite of core productivity applications is a small price to pay…
NOW what would be super cool: dual platform licensing – you pay a small premium to have a version/s that runs on both mac and windows (via parallels) for all of those users (including boot camp)…that’d be a way to grow some share, collect great incremental revenue from those running vista via parallels or bootcamp wondering which version to invest in…
Who cares about MS Office 2008 when you’ve got free NEOOFFICE that already blows it away.
I’ve been weening my wife from Office. I’m hesitant to put 2004 on the mac b/c why would I stoop to anything non-Intel native, right? So I showed her Google docs for its excel capabilities yesterday and she was blown away with it. (actually the hosted-ness of it, and not having to schlep the laptop everywhere).
The real question is what would I do if I had to write a paper that required Word on the mac? I’d probably try to use iWork first, and if not I’d find a PC.
I maintain that the Office Suite is excellent, but certainly not irreplaceable.
My biggest disappointment with 2008 is the lack of improvement to Entourage for Exchange. Yeah, I know Exchange sucks, but the fact that Entourage 2004 has such pathetic support for so many features of Exchange (i.e. Public Folders, no task or memo syncing), is ridiculous. From the sound of it, Office 2008 is still going to use WebDAV.
I MS Office 2004 on my MacBook, and I have to say it is a poor substitute for the Windows version. I always get frustrated and end up using NeoOffice, which I feel is a must easier to use and less buggy solution. Not counting it’s Presentation app which is not very stable.
i’m waiting for office2008. neoffice is ok for light work, but can’t substiture for real office.
I now depend upon the dynamic referencing tool in Word 2007, and unfortunately, NeoOffice does not offer this to me, so I have to wait for ’08, and use ’07 via Parallels until then 🙁
I happen to be a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Small Business Speciallist and Microsoft Business Solutions with competencies on Dynamics GP, CRM and RMS.
I am also a Mac User at heart.
I currently use a MacBook Pro at my office and get along fine with most very service our full tilt SBs 2003 R2 offers to us, however I deeply resent the fact that Office 2008 will not have VB.
I can understand why and the technical hurdles that would be involved in delivering a 1:1 version for Mac OS X, however at least a minimalist VB version (runtime) should be delivered to assure basic compatibility.
For NOT doing that… i am pissed of at MacBU folks.
Also, I have repeatedly requested to participate in Beta since our office scenario of 10 PCs and 3 macs i believe does represent what the product will face o file exchange, calendaring, mail, etc and have not even received a note from them.
Also, there is no mention of Office 2008 mac anywhere on MSDN…
From what it looks, this beast will be nothing they will be proud of.. so much so, they are afraid of showing it.
I deeply hope I am proved wrong…
Excel without VBA? Incredible! This is what poor project management and flawed leadership can accomplish!
The “marketing” people have way to much say on when and what a product should be when delivered.
With Intel Macs taking more market share, you would think, MS would strive to unify Office for the two platforms…
I personally would love to have Outlook and Access on a Mac…
Mac Office 2008 Delayed:
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3692536
Hey! So Office 2008 will now really come out in 2008!
=)