Microsoft Office for Mac 2008.  Verdict?  It's exceptional
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Microsoft did something right with its new Office for Mac 2008 suite.
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InfoWorld - Apple's desktop Macs are incomparably well suited for the full range of uses from general productivity to technical and creative design, with the entire user skill and requirements spectrum covered by a rich, engaging, intuitive platform.
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Mac users seem quite excited about Microsoft's long-awaited-but-little-anticipated Vista. The new Intel Macs are great machines for running it. In Cult of Mac.
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ThinkFree's got happy users, a familiar interface, hooks into the blazing Web 2.0 space, and a price point far below its main competitor. But if your main competitor is Microsoft Office, all those advantages count for less market share than you'd think.
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Microsoft on Thursday updated a security bulletin issued Tuesday to include the Mac version of its ubiquitous Office suite. Three Excel vulnerabilities that affect Windows also pose a risk to Office 2004 for Mac, and the company has issued a downloadable patch.
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The long wait for a new version of Microsoft Office for the Mac OS X platform is just about over, with development of the suite completed.
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âReluctant to switch to a Macintosh because so much of your favorite software requires Microsoft Windows?â asks Edward C. Baig of USA Today. âNow you don't have to hold back.â
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MacCentral - Microsoft Corp.'s Mac Business Unit (MacBU) on Tuesday announced the availability of Office 2004 for Mac Service Pack 1, an update for the latest Macintosh release of the company's popular productivity application software suite. The service pack "addresses potential security issues and bugs that [user] feedback played an important role in identifying," according to Microsoft. What's more, the new version features support for Microsoft Error Reporting Protocol (MERP), which allows customers to send bug reports to Microsoft anonymously.
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(InfoWorld) - As this year's WWDC (Worldwide Developer Conference) approaches, Apple fans are furiously speculating on what kind of news will be dropped on us in San Francisco. We already know about the Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard preview, and no doubt Apple CEO Steve Jobs will have something to say about the iPhone. But from what I know about the players and the IT landscape, I think Jobs has another "just one more thing" up his sleeve. I've been looking at what Apple and its partners need to do to fill gaps in their product line-up. At the moment, I think the Macintosh platform's biggest weakness is its reliance on Microsoft Office for productivity software. Microsoft has always built solid products for Mac -- but they were always just a bit behind or somehow incompatible with their Windows equivalents. Entourage does 90 percent of what Outlook does, but it lacks features right where it hurts: In enterprise settings. Word for Mac doesn't have the same Macro or OOXML support as the PC version. PowerPoint files are still not 100 percent compatible between platforms. Basically, Apple and its customers get the short end of the Microsoft stick. Add to that the industry move toward Web 2.0 applications and Cloud computing -- and a number of other recent shifts in the technology landscape -- and you have a climate for change. I don't think Apple wants to wait on Microsoft to delegate how its business applications will work. In fact, I think Apple would like to move forward with a leading-edge partner like, say, Google and create business rather than follow in it. That's why I think Jobs will take the stage at WWDC next week and announce that Apple and Google are going to team up to bring Google Apps to .Mac customers. Let's connect some dots and see what picture emerges: In a recent stockholder meeting, Jobs admitted that .Mac has hasn't achieved its full potential but said the company is working on it. Eric Schmidt, Google CEO and a member of the Apple Board, has said there are a lot of Apple-Google partnerships to come because both companies have "common competitors." Hmmmm. Microsoft is a common competitor, and its bread and butter -- aside from Windows -- is Office. We've already seen a flurry of Google Applications for Macintosh, plus GMaps and Gmail on the iPhone, so why not Google Docs and Spreadsheets integrated into .Mac? Seems like a perfect fit. Using iChat as a guide, we know that another network -- AOL -- allowed .Mac users to use their own xxx@mac.com address as their AOL Instant Messenger screen name. Google could do the same thing in Apps. Perhaps the whole mac.com domain would be ported to Google Apps. Google has lots of cheap, fast space. It also has the ability and desire to search it and advertise on it (monetize it). Gmail has won the battle against .Mac's mail for most Macintosh users. As for calendar/IM/address book integration, disk space, and spam detection, Google wins most of the battles hands down. Google spends $5 per domain for Apps users through its Adsense subsidiary. It wants more non-paying users, and Apple would be happy to offload its .Mac users. Those users, who pay $100 a year as .Mac members, could get a premium version of Google Apps with desktop backups and larger file space as well as the benefits they currently enjoy. Apple's focus is on hardware and software. It should -- and should want to -- stick with what it does best. We know that iChat in Leopard has a special account preference for GTalk accounts. Of course, you can currently use any Jabber server in iChat -- GTalk is based on Jabber -- but it's interesting that Apple has split off GTalk from the rest of the Jabber servers. It has been 18 months, forever in software development at Apple, since the iWork app was last updated. That is lots of time for Apple to do some pretty interesting things. I would love to see Apple enter the Blog editing game, where MarsEdit, Ecto, and Journaler are sweeping up. Such a move would be a serious game changer for the fight on the Mac platform between Apple's Pages and Microsoft's Word. And for Google, what better way to get into blog editing than with its Writley technology? Google needs a Keynote type of presentation tool; Apple needs a spreadsheet tool to round out their Office competition. Each has what the other needs. Throw Sun's OpenOffice.org into the mix. The first native Alpha release of this software came out this week. Both Apple and Google have been playing very nice with Sun lately. iWork. The most important piece of the puzzle might just be iWork, which could be a caching front end for Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Use it when you are on an airplane, at grandma's house with no Internet, in the subway, or wherever Internet access is spotty. Or how about this curveball: Apple could port its iWork and iLife applications to Windows? Quicktime and iTunes already enjoy a large following in the Windows camp. Woo them with the apps, win them over to the OS. Oh, and one more thing. I realize we're flopping off of the deep end here, but what if Apple were to sell a Leopard virtual machine for Windows that functions like Parallels in Coherence mode (except you'd have the Mac OS running in Windows, not the other way around)? The result: Run Leopard anywhere! You could even boot from a Google hosted OS. This need not be a full version, mind you, but a stripped down, embedded version of the Mac OS like what's being thrown into Apple TV and the iPhone. One of the great things about virtualization is that there's less need for drivers and such, which makes installing small Google or Apple apps on your Windows desktop easier. Okay, that scenario could be years away, or never to be. But I think there is every chance that we'll hear something about .Mac integration with Google Apps next week. It makes sense for all parties and would finally give Microsoft a run for its money. Plus, there's that old saying: the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Seth Weintraub is a global IT management consultant specializing in the technology needs of creative organizations, including The Paris Times, Omnicom and WPP Group. He has set up and managed cross-platform networks on four continents and is an expert in Active Directory/Open Directory PC and Macintosh integration.
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No more X11... soon A version of OpenOffice that will run natively under Mac OS X's Aqua user interface will be demo'd in public at Apple Expo Paris next month, the team behind the software have revealed.â¦
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Ziff Davis - Opinion: Having Microsoft Office available on Mac OS gives Apple needed credibility with customers. But it also gives Microsoft the ability to suddenly pull the plug if it ever so decides.
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âGiven the impressive value of Time Machine and improvements to existing programs such as iCal, iChat, Mail, and the Finder, most active Mac users will find more than enough reasons to consider [the] upgrade cost money well spent,â reports Jason Snell . Leopard delivers, Snell declares, âa major alteration to the Mac interface, a sweeping update to numerous included productivity programs, a serious attempt to improve Mac OS security, and a vast collection of tweaks and fixes scattered throughout every nook and cranny of the operating system.â
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With two new office suites going free, can Microsoft maintain its high price tag on Office?  Don thinks it can -- and will.
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Microsoft is touting its free accounting application, which it debuted last October for small businesses, as a success, announcing that it has been downloaded by 1 million people in just 3 months. Office Accounting Express 2007 is Microsoft's first shot across Intuit's bow.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft has named the date on which Mac OS X users can get their hands on the latest version of its Office suite.
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Office for Mac 2008 has been released to manufacturing, meaning the suite of apps is on track for an official debut at next month's Macworld Expo in San Francisco.
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The newest version of Microsoft Office arrives this week, complete with a tricked-out user interface intended to impress the Windows-weary. By Scott Gilbertson. Plus: Gallery: Office 2007.