Microsoft Details Office 2008 for Mac
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Microsoft began offering a few details of its upcoming release of the Office 2008 suite for the Mac platform, by first listing work to Entourage to further support Exchange services and features.
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Microsoft Corp. plans to hold its first-ever conference for Microsoft Office software developers, the company announced Monday.
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The OpenOffice.org development team on Tuesday released the first alpha test version of OpenOffice Aqua, which is built specifically for Apple's Mac OS X operating system. The previous Mac port of OpenOffice required the use of the X11 system, making the software slow and difficult to run.
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Microsoft Corp. temporarily had Mac amnesia this week when it omitted mention of the Mac edition of Office in a write-up that accompanied one of Tuesday's security updates.
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Recently posted document throws a little light on a key feature of the next edition of Mac OS X.
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Microsoft's latest version of Office for Mac adds some nifty interface improvements and a bunch of new features. Should you switch?
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Blog: Microsoft revises one of its critical security bulletins from patch Tuesday, now including a fix for Microsoft Office 2004 for the Mac.
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Microsoft has released software that combs through PCs and reports back on the Office files installed on the systems, completing a free tool kit designed to aid corporate users in migrating to Office 2007.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft is inviting approximately 800 specially selected developers to attend the first-ever Microsoft Office System Developer Conference from Feb. 2 through Feb. 4 in Redmond, Wash.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft may be having trouble selling Windows Vista in retail, but its Office line is going like gangbusters, according to market research firm NPD Group. Part of the reason: People who switch from PCs to Macs. Office 2007 on Windows is selling at roughly double the rate its predecessor, Office 2003, did in its first months after release, NPD analyst Chris Swenson said Wednesday. "Any way you cut it, the first six months, or a similar January-through-July period, or the first week or even the first month [of sales], no matter how you slice it, Office 2007 is selling much better than Office 2003 did," said Swenson. And even though Office 2004 for Mac is far from new, Swenson said, it's also contributing to Microsoft's suite success. "Mac Office represents about 20 percent of all Office sales in U.S. retail. At first, that seemed really surprising, but if I'm switching to Mac, there are a few key [software] products I'm going to buy, and Office is one of them." In other words, even though they're leaving the PC behind and abandoning Windows, newly-minted Mac owners are still shoveling money at Microsoft, Swenson said. "Microsoft's still making the Office sale," he said. Swenson's data comes from NPD's monthly reports of software sold at major U.S. retailers such as Best Buy and CompUSA as well as data from the more than 180 Apple retail stores and a few online sellers, including Amazon.com and Buy.com. Mac switchers aside, Microsoft's unheralded success selling Office -- Swenson noted that it typically gets buried by the bad news about Vista's retail performance -- stems from smart pricing. "The most important thing is the pricing of Home and Student 2007," he said, talking about the $149 package that lets customers install the software on up to three PCs. "Eighty percent of all copies sold at retail are this edition," said Swenson. "When Microsoft came out with version 2.0 of [this package], it started seeing increases not only in unit volume, but also in dollars." Swenson was referring to the licensing changes Microsoft made to the student-priced edition in 2003 that bumped up the number of allowed installs in the same household from one to three. Second on Swenson's list of reasons for Office 2007's success is something Microsoft has little control over. "Part of it is clearly installed base," he said. "There are roughly 100 million more PCs now than there were in 2001, so even if the same percentage of users buy Office, sales go up." But if Office 2007 is outselling its forerunner, why did the company just roll out a $59.95 promotional price to students? "I think they want to drive demand for [Office 2007] Ultimate," said Swenson. "It's just not doing as well as Ultimate on Vista." The Microsoft promotion, which runs through April 30, 2008, is available immediately to enrolled students in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. who have a matching educational institution e-mail address. Next week, the program will expand to France, Italy, and Spain. Office Ultimate 2007, which lists for $679.95, includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, OneNote, Groove, and InfoPath. Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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Software giant tailors new version of office suite for small-business users.
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Service Pack 1 for Office 2004 for Mac is now available via AutoUpdate, Microsoft announced Tuesday. The update delivers security and bug fixes, which were reported by customers since the suite's release last May. To this end, SP1 bundles the Microsoft Error Reporting Protocol (MERP) to allow users to send bug data anonymously to Microsoft. Office 2004 for Mac SP1 will also soon be available on Microsoft's Mactopia.
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Microsoft has exposed a little more information as to what&#39;s inside Office 2008 for Mac, this time looking at user-focused Excel Ledger Sheets.Ledger Sheets use Excel but are designed to make it simple to handle common budget management tasks using pre-formulated cells.Ledger Sheets are accessible from the Elements Gallery and are designed to be useful for people who don&#39;t necessarily make great use of Excel. There&#39;s templates for checks, accounts, and investment portfolios, all pre-populated with appropriate formulas.It&#39;s the third update to the company&#39;s Office-focused Web site as&#160;Microsoft engages in its campaign to generate interest&#160;in the&#160;Jan. 15, 2008, release&#160;of its suite of productivity tools.Most recently the company confirmed better Exchange support in the future version of Entourage, particularly in terms of calendar event syncing in workgroups.Microsoft also recently explained Toolbox, a collection of tools for Office for Mac which combines the original Toolbox and Formatting Palettes.Office 2008 for Mac will also offer better document handling and formatting and more powerful publishing tools for users.The company also recently revealed My Day, a stand-alone application that provides an at-a-glance view of daily schedule and tasks to help users stay on top of priorities.Office 2008 for Mac will support the Office Open XML file format and the package will be a Universal Binary that runs on both Power PC and Intel-based Macs.Three versions of the suite will be available: the basic package includes all the Office applications. The Home and Student Edition is targeted at consumers and includes a three-user license. The Special Media Edition comes with all Office software and the Expression Media for Mac image-management application.Macworld.co.uk is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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InfoWorld - For business users who want Microsoft Office on their cell phones, Windows Mobile 6, the upcoming version of Redmond's mobile operating system to be unveiled next week, will be a must-have upgrade.
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Blog: Support for Acrobat and Reader has arrived for Microsoft Vista and Office 2007.
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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said Monday that the Windows application platform is to be fitted with "Fluent UI" ribbon capabilities now offered in Office 2007.The ribbon UI presents a new interface in Office 2007. "We usability-tested it massively, and fortunatel, it has had a very strong positive reaction," Gates said during a keynote presentation the 2008 Office System Developer Conference in San Jose, Calif. "We in the next version of Windows will be using this Fluent UI quite a bit across a number of applications," he said. "It turns out it's a user interface that works very well for the pen and touch [interfaces] as well as being a better way of revealing application functionality."The Fluent UI represented "a major risk that Microsoft took," Gates said. But the older interface with its dropdown menus was hiding so much functionality that the company was being asked for features that were already there but were concealed, he said.At the conference, Microsoft is promoting Office as a development platform with users able to write extensions. During Gates's presentation, third party applications were shown that extended Office with custom development, such as the MindJet MindManager planning application and FedEx's QuickShip for processing FedEx shipments from within Microsoft Outlook.During a subsequent question-and-answer session with the audience, Gates was asked to compare and contrast opportunities for developers working with platforms like Microsoft's with platforms like open source. Gates responded, "Our platform is a commercial platform where customers expect a very high level of service, a very high level of integration, but the nice thing about it is they are willing to pay for software."Free software has always been around, he said. "We've always had free software out there, it's not really a new thing. In fact, I'd say in some ways it's less of a factor than it's ever been," Gates said.Everyone has the same business model, he said: Software developers have free versions of their software, inexpensive software, and robust commercial versions of their software. "The commercial environment, I think, will always be the pre-eminent thing in terms of providing business productivity," said Gates.He advised those who want to develop free software to be careful which licensing model they choose and to select an option that does not restrict commercial versions of their software.Asked about Yahoo, which has rejected Microsoft's $44.6 billion acquisition offer, Gates said the question was whether Yahoo should be a media company or focus on engineering. In an ad model, scale is needed, he said. Yahoo's engineering could be combined with what Microsoft has done, he said.Gates's overall presentation did not impress one attendee, who nonetheless was impressed with Gates himself."Bill is definitely a visionary, and he's one of the greatest men in the 20th century, but I have to wonder how much of that was just reading from a script," said Aaron Alanen, senior consultant at Sogeti."I did see in his questions later on that he really had some deeper knowledge," Alanen said.During Gates's presentation, he also played a tongue-in-cheek video about what he would do during his upcoming semi-retirement from Microsoft. Included were possibilities such as getting into politics, joining the rock band U2, and becoming a rapper or actor. Guests featured in the video included, among others, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Bono from U2, and George Clooney.
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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.