Will Office ever come out for UB? The last Office release for mac was 2004. Is that the end of it? What do you use for Power Point, Excel, and Word thats compatible so you can take it to a meeting?
Office 2008, 2007, or whatever is due out later this year. It will be UB. You can take Office to a meeting if you have a laptop. If you are afraid that Microsoft will kill Office, then consult a psychic to be sure. However, Office:mac brings in a buttload of money for the Redmond monopoly. MacBU is one of the few Microsoft units in the black. It is not going to sacrifice profit out of pique.
You can send a PDF file to people, that works great no matter which program you use or they use, they can always display it with the free Adobe Reader.
If you want to create Word, Excel or Powerpoint files you should use Office:mac 2004. Even though its not UB it works fine on intel macs.
Also, Microsoft is preparing a new version for this year, Office:mac 2008 that will be UB.
The bad thing about Office 2008 - no support whatsoever for VBA.
Microsoft is set to drop VBA altogether. Supposedly, it felt that the effort required to port VBA to MacIntel was not worth it for a technology slated for the scrapheap.
That's the reasoning given by the MacBU at MS, and probably so. But the implications are significant. Beginning with Office 2008 on the Macs, even VBA code that could run in 2004 will no longer run in 2008. And there is no plan to support Mac use of the next replacement, VB.net programming for Windows versions of Office.
Granted Schwieb at the MacBU has indicated there will be some kind of programming support (besides AppleScript). But that raises all kinds of questions about how interoperable the programming will be in a cross platform environment. Python/Perl/Ruby have all been mentioned, but translators for use with both Windows and Macs still make it a daunting task.
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Will Office ever come out for UB? ...
Office 2008, 2007, or whatever is due out later this year. It will be UB. You can take Office to a meeting if you have a laptop. If you are afraid that Microsoft will kill Office, then consult a psychic to be sure. However, Office:mac brings in a buttload of money for the Redmond monopoly. MacBU is one of the few Microsoft units in the black. It is not going to sacrifice profit out of pique.
If you want to create Word, Excel or Powerpoint files you should use Office:mac 2004. Even though its not UB it works fine on intel macs.
Also, Microsoft is preparing a new version for this year, Office:mac 2008 that will be UB.
The bad thing about Office 2008 - no support whatsoever for VBA.
Microsoft is set to drop VBA altogether. Supposedly, it felt that the effort required to port VBA to MacIntel was not worth it for a technology slated for the scrapheap.
Granted Schwieb at the MacBU has indicated there will be some kind of programming support (besides AppleScript). But that raises all kinds of questions about how interoperable the programming will be in a cross platform environment. Python/Perl/Ruby have all been mentioned, but translators for use with both Windows and Macs still make it a daunting task.