I am not waiting for that to happen : I am progressively migrating from Office 2004 to OpenOffice. Granted, the appearance is less nice, but the files it creates are 50-75 % smaller, the app virtually never crashes, it allows me to do everything I did in Word and Excel (I never used macros) and the final printed result is identical.
Instead of creating YAWP (Yet Another Word Processor), Apple should work with the OO community and bring its ability to create nice interfaces and optimize the port of OO on the Mac. Apple has nothing to lose doing this (iWork is certainly not the reason Apple made so much money this year) and everything to gain : seeing OO gaining market share would weaken Microsoft pull towards its closed (and enclosing) Windows platform. Ensuring the best performance on the Mac would mean a pleasant experience for the Mac users at the same time knowing that they exchange all their files freely with everybody else.
Pages & Numbers are a different approach to handling documents and spreadsheets. Keynote is a better solution than PowerPoint for many people. Openoffice works fine on the Mac as it is. Why would Apple be curtailed by the legacy mindset of a tool that mimics Microsoft office except for the document format? It is a community driven effort, let it remain so. One thing Apple can do is to ensure that the document formats are published and provide full support for open office documents.
Innovation is required for all of the applications you find in today's office suites. If people stopped re-inventing text editors, you wouldn't have TextMate or any of the other successful and relatively new text editors.
Talking about YAWP, have you tried IBM Lotus Symphony? It is based on the OO core code base and it is built on top of Eclipse (the popular developer IDE). Lacks some of the nice features of OO, but the UI is much better and polished.
I hate anything MS, so I was really interested in Open Office. Unfortunately, it crashed more than any OS X application I've ever seen. Nine times out of ten, it locked up right on launch.
Just installed the update. I'm unsure what people's expectations of "snappy load time"s are but just timed Word and it must have taken 20 seconds from clicking the icon to opening up. Word on my old PC at work launches in about 5 seconds? So much for progress.
Is there any report of improvements using Entourage with Exchange Server?
What sort of improvements were you looking for? I've not experienced any reliability issues myself. It would be great if they finally offered more than limited, rudimentary HTML formatting, but alas nothing has changed there...
What sort of improvements were you looking for? I've not experienced any reliability issues myself. It would be great if they finally offered more than limited, rudimentary HTML formatting, but alas nothing has changed there...
It's hard to tell whether the problems we've experienced at my company are the fault of Entourage or with our IT department's implementation of Exchange Server, but Entourage users have experienced lost or delayed emails that Outlook users don't experience (they have other problems).
Be careful with this update if you use a site-licensed version of Office.
My installation came from a University site-licence CD, and since applying SP2 I can no longer run any of my office apps.
I just get a pop-up message saying "Office for Mac has determined that your product key is not valid. To use Office for Mac, you must enter a valid product key."
The install disc I used had they key pre-filled, and I don't have it written down anywhere. Now I need to wait for tech services to get back to me, but they'll just have the same key, unless Microsoft has sent a new one.
It's hard to tell whether the problems we've experienced at my company are the fault of Entourage or with our IT department's implementation of Exchange Server, but Entourage users have experienced lost or delayed emails that Outlook users don't experience (they have other problems).
FWIW, I've never experienced that myself, not with Entourage 2004 or 2008. My messages don't always come in instantaneously the way they do in Outlook (although the lag is usually no more than a minute or two at most), but that's a symptom of Entourage's Exchange connectivity.
Comments
I am not waiting for that to happen : I am progressively migrating from Office 2004 to OpenOffice. Granted, the appearance is less nice, but the files it creates are 50-75 % smaller, the app virtually never crashes, it allows me to do everything I did in Word and Excel (I never used macros) and the final printed result is identical.
Instead of creating YAWP (Yet Another Word Processor), Apple should work with the OO community and bring its ability to create nice interfaces and optimize the port of OO on the Mac. Apple has nothing to lose doing this (iWork is certainly not the reason Apple made so much money this year) and everything to gain : seeing OO gaining market share would weaken Microsoft pull towards its closed (and enclosing) Windows platform. Ensuring the best performance on the Mac would mean a pleasant experience for the Mac users at the same time knowing that they exchange all their files freely with everybody else.
Pages & Numbers are a different approach to handling documents and spreadsheets. Keynote is a better solution than PowerPoint for many people. Openoffice works fine on the Mac as it is. Why would Apple be curtailed by the legacy mindset of a tool that mimics Microsoft office except for the document format? It is a community driven effort, let it remain so. One thing Apple can do is to ensure that the document formats are published and provide full support for open office documents.
Innovation is required for all of the applications you find in today's office suites. If people stopped re-inventing text editors, you wouldn't have TextMate or any of the other successful and relatively new text editors.
Talking about YAWP, have you tried IBM Lotus Symphony? It is based on the OO core code base and it is built on top of Eclipse (the popular developer IDE). Lacks some of the nice features of OO, but the UI is much better and polished.
I hate anything MS, so I was really interested in Open Office. Unfortunately, it crashed more than any OS X application I've ever seen. Nine times out of ten, it locked up right on launch.
IMHO, NeoOffice works better than Open Office.
2) Opened three files in Word.
3) Word mixed the text and figures of the third file with the other two. And saved it.
4) <sigh>
5) Check Mozy backup.
6) Realize Mozy's backup for some reason didn't back up the file for the past few months even though daily/weekly backups were made.
7) Thank the Lord that Apple makes Timemachine and restored file.
Well, at least the SP2 makes Word open and scroll faster.
Is there any report of improvements using Entourage with Exchange Server?
What sort of improvements were you looking for? I've not experienced any reliability issues myself. It would be great if they finally offered more than limited, rudimentary HTML formatting, but alas nothing has changed there...
What sort of improvements were you looking for? I've not experienced any reliability issues myself. It would be great if they finally offered more than limited, rudimentary HTML formatting, but alas nothing has changed there...
It's hard to tell whether the problems we've experienced at my company are the fault of Entourage or with our IT department's implementation of Exchange Server, but Entourage users have experienced lost or delayed emails that Outlook users don't experience (they have other problems).
I'm still sticking with iWork. When I share documents with others, I send PDFs.
Two things keeping me from iWork
My installation came from a University site-licence CD, and since applying SP2 I can no longer run any of my office apps.
I just get a pop-up message saying "Office for Mac has determined that your product key is not valid. To use Office for Mac, you must enter a valid product key."
The install disc I used had they key pre-filled, and I don't have it written down anywhere. Now I need to wait for tech services to get back to me, but they'll just have the same key, unless Microsoft has sent a new one.
Pain in the arse!
Microsoft dang you! I want a messenger that will let me do video chats with other Windows Live users.
* And no guys, there's no chance I'll get the other people to use a different messaging application.
It's hard to tell whether the problems we've experienced at my company are the fault of Entourage or with our IT department's implementation of Exchange Server, but Entourage users have experienced lost or delayed emails that Outlook users don't experience (they have other problems).
FWIW, I've never experienced that myself, not with Entourage 2004 or 2008. My messages don't always come in instantaneously the way they do in Outlook (although the lag is usually no more than a minute or two at most), but that's a symptom of Entourage's Exchange connectivity.