Apple, and in fact the computing world, has to somehow escape the Office jail. Business is addicted to Office.Unless someone breaks this addiction Microsoft will be able to direct the future of mobile computing by limiting the real Office to Windows phones, tablets and computers. Perhaps there is no escape from jail. Eventually, Microsoft will get the OS and hardware right and there will be quite a few Netscapes floating about.
philip
Microsoft ~is~ in the Office jail. For mobile and tablet thank goodness finally people have come to their senses and are exploring decent alternatives (at least a different way of thinking, because, lo and behold, Microsoft has utterly failed to deliver Office for iOS or Android even after 5 years). Windows and Office is left to the "workplace". But to me if a corporation has to use Word and Excel then it has already failed.
Microsoft is game over. Don't even waste your time.
Microsoft ~is~ in the Office jail. For mobile and tablet thank goodness finally people have come to their senses and are exploring decent alternatives (at least a different way of thinking, because, lo and behold, Microsoft has utterly failed to deliver Office for iOS or Android even after 5 years). Windows and Office is left to the "workplace". But to me if a corporation has to use Word and Excel then it has already failed.
Microsoft is game over. Don't even waste your time.
Well what do you think will happen if there is no Office of the iPad, Android tablets/phones but Microsoft puts out a mobile solution to working with Office on its mobile solutions? Will business buy iPads? Don't think so. Same with Macs. Then there's the education market. There are a lot of "failed" companies around as most use Office. You are seriously underestimating the threat. Wishful thinking in fact.
Well what do you think will happen if there is no Office of the iPad, Android tablets/phones but Microsoft puts out a mobile solution to working with Office on its mobile solutions? Will business buy iPads? Don't think so. Same with Macs. Then there's the education market. There are a lot of "failed" companies around as most use Office. You are seriously underestimating the threat. Wishful thinking in fact.
philip
"Failed" in my view. Office on Microsoft's mobile solutions? Microsoft DON'T even have a mobile solution. It's like being in a flooding pit. Sure, you can still get out, but the water's rising fast.
When you need macros or visual basic in a spreadsheet, your doing something wrong.
Numbers is excellent as it is now,but could use more functions and more flexibility of some functions.
J.
Oh right, prepping Excel file contents for export to an RDBMS using a process where some business logic is involved is useless.
Look, they're just different tools. There's nothing wrong with having good, potentially overlapping tools. vba makes Office more useful for many of us -- I can do whatever I want inside of a spreadsheet with tools I already know inside and out pretty quickly without being an Excel power user.
And gosh, please heavens, don't even stick me with AppleScript again. I took a short detour through Excel 2008 and wow, idiosyncratic, slow, and painful.
But the bottom line is Dan Knight's -- this is a non story. Mac always gets Office on a different schedule. The last concurrent release (versioning?) was, what, 6.0?
I understand that iWork probably can't break into the enterprise market. However, since Apple is making a product, why don't they make it suitable for business. It just seems odd to me that Apple would purposely keep selling an inferior product. It isn't that iWork is a bad product...it is an incomplete product. Why won't Apple finish it off? Give us features like reviewing and compare documents and better paragraph numbering...etc.
They've got 100 billion dollars, why not spend 10 million on office software?
Totally agreed. iWork is incomplete - why cant Apple put in a simple function like "iteration" for example.
Apple could spend $10m funding an existing open source office software project and really lift the game. I just don't get it.
Since 1977 I've never bought a PC anything except for Office '08' for my wife, her only choice for work and she was used to it. Office for Mac '08' was crap "her words". PC's/Microsoft is worse than crap or a system for idiots.
I should confess, I use a friends PC to hack/crack because it so f...... easy and they have the market share on PC'sOS. Keeping on rolling out out new OS's. They give me something something to do when I'm bored.
Because of some major data corruption issues that I couldn't fix having to do with the system generating each calendar event up to 15x (which I think had to do with synching issues between Office, Calendar and my iPhone, creating some kind of loop), I recently had to upgrade from Office 2008 to Office 2011 on the Mac. I really thought that Outlook for the Mac was going to be far better than Entourage, but it's really a piece of crap (although still better, IMO, than Apple Mail). It doesn't even have the navigation options so that if you have your mail sorted latest first, but you first look at the earliest message in the day, it would then go to the next earliest message. Instead, it goes to the item below it in the list, which is an already read item. Even the web version of Outlook for Windows gets this right and the Windows version of Outlook gives you preferences, so it can work any way that you want it to. Also, you can't navigate from open message to open message. You have to choose the next message from the list. Entourage got all of this right. Outlook 2011 gets this wrong.
Because I manage a large number of websites, each of which have to have their own email addresses, I have many email accounts. If I clicked "Send/Receive ALL", Entourage used to clearly access all accounts. Outlook for Mac doesn't - it arbitrarily chose one account out of the list and not even my default account. In order to receive from all accounts, I have to go to Tools>Run Schedule>Receive All. That's a pain.
The other thing I find is that the rules that I've set up, which worked fine under Entourage, don't work as well under Outlook. It frequently puts things in the wrong folders, in violation of the rule, for no apparent reason.
Did the people at Microsoft who designed this ever actually use it in real world situations? I think they corrupted the UI on purpose so that people would think the Windows versions were better.
And yesterday, I had some issue and couldn't even open Outlook. I fixed it by removing four Microsoft files from the Library, but I had to reconfigure a ton of settings. It did preserve all my accounts and mail though. Since I did not have a computer or application crash, nothing should have gotten corrupted IMO.
So if Microsoft fixes these issues, I would look forward to a reasonably priced upgrade in 2013 (although considering I only recently purchased, I feel like I should get it for free). If not, I probably will wind up finally switching to Apple Mail. And obviously, if Microsoft decides NOT to release Office 2013, a scenario that I can't really imagine considering that more people and more businesses are switching to Macs all the time, I'd have to eventually phase it out. IMO, Microsoft has to release Office 2013 for Mac if only to fend off accusations of monopoly (even though one could argue that Office for Mac increases their monopoly).
I have mixed feelings about the rest of Office. Sometimes the ribbon is better and frequently it's not - especially when it comes to customization. That's why I had put off upgrading to Office 2011 for so long. Office 2008 worked fine for me. In the office, where we have Windows-based machines, I'm able to pretty intuitively switch back and forth between older and newer versions of Office. But I do prefer Excel to Numbers, even though Numbers has a few nice features that Excel doesn't have. There's simply too much that you can't do easily in Numbers (at least the version I have, which is not the newest).
I have mixed feelings about the rest of Office. Sometimes the ribbon is better and frequently it's not - especially when it comes to customization. That's why I had put off upgrading to Office 2011 for so long. Office 2008 worked fine for me. In the office, where we have Windows-based machines, I'm able to pretty intuitively switch back and forth between older and newer versions of Office. But I do prefer Excel to Numbers, even though Numbers has a few nice features that Excel doesn't have. There's simply too much that you can't do easily in Numbers (at least the version I have, which is not the newest).
Good post. I agree that Office for Mac 2008 was in many ways better than Office 2011. I particularly liked the floating palettes which allowed you to easily access frequently used functions and position them conveniently. The point is that Office in its present incarnation is far from ideal. It's good, but it's bloated and the interface is overloaded. Similarly, iWork isn't exactly fantastic either. I like the elegant simplicity of Pages and Keynote but agree that both are still incomplete.
Sure, Apple is doing well in terms of capturing the Home market, but I see the biggest lever of growth as catching the Corporate market. Apple is definitely starting to attract large businesses. First it was Ad and Design agencies, then it was Law firms, and now Banks and Accountancy firms are starting to to bite. Apple surely wants to go on feeding this migration?
Maybe the secret of eating Microsoft's lunch is getting iWork to run PCs as well as iTunes does? I'd like to see a killer suite of new iWork programs with superb functionality to wow and suck-in longtime Windows users.
A lot of people seem to agree with this. So what is Apple doing? What was the last big project that Craig Fed. demoed at an Apple event? iMovie or GarageBand? The fact is that it is quite sometime since Apple updated iWork. iWork matters to everyone. iWork is a major source of additional incremental revenue for Apple. Every extra dollar in Apple's pocket is another nail in the Windows coffin. So my bet is that Apple is quietly reworking iWork to make it even better. My bet is a major announcement at the Apple 2013 Developers Conference.
Get to it Apple, I for one can't wait to junk Office.
Comments
Microsoft ~is~ in the Office jail. For mobile and tablet thank goodness finally people have come to their senses and are exploring decent alternatives (at least a different way of thinking, because, lo and behold, Microsoft has utterly failed to deliver Office for iOS or Android even after 5 years). Windows and Office is left to the "workplace". But to me if a corporation has to use Word and Excel then it has already failed.
Microsoft is game over. Don't even waste your time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sr2012
Microsoft ~is~ in the Office jail. For mobile and tablet thank goodness finally people have come to their senses and are exploring decent alternatives (at least a different way of thinking, because, lo and behold, Microsoft has utterly failed to deliver Office for iOS or Android even after 5 years). Windows and Office is left to the "workplace". But to me if a corporation has to use Word and Excel then it has already failed.
Microsoft is game over. Don't even waste your time.
Well what do you think will happen if there is no Office of the iPad, Android tablets/phones but Microsoft puts out a mobile solution to working with Office on its mobile solutions? Will business buy iPads? Don't think so. Same with Macs. Then there's the education market. There are a lot of "failed" companies around as most use Office. You are seriously underestimating the threat. Wishful thinking in fact.
philip
"Failed" in my view. Office on Microsoft's mobile solutions? Microsoft DON'T even have a mobile solution. It's like being in a flooding pit. Sure, you can still get out, but the water's rising fast.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jnjnjn
When you need macros or visual basic in a spreadsheet, your doing something wrong.
Numbers is excellent as it is now,but could use more functions and more flexibility of some functions.
J.
Oh right, prepping Excel file contents for export to an RDBMS using a process where some business logic is involved is useless.
Look, they're just different tools. There's nothing wrong with having good, potentially overlapping tools. vba makes Office more useful for many of us -- I can do whatever I want inside of a spreadsheet with tools I already know inside and out pretty quickly without being an Excel power user.
And gosh, please heavens, don't even stick me with AppleScript again. I took a short detour through Excel 2008 and wow, idiosyncratic, slow, and painful.
But the bottom line is Dan Knight's -- this is a non story. Mac always gets Office on a different schedule. The last concurrent release (versioning?) was, what, 6.0?
Totally agreed. iWork is incomplete - why cant Apple put in a simple function like "iteration" for example.
Apple could spend $10m funding an existing open source office software project and really lift the game. I just don't get it.
I should confess, I use a friends PC to hack/crack because it so f...... easy and they have the market share on PC'sOS. Keeping on rolling out out new OS's. They give me something something to do when I'm bored.
Because of some major data corruption issues that I couldn't fix having to do with the system generating each calendar event up to 15x (which I think had to do with synching issues between Office, Calendar and my iPhone, creating some kind of loop), I recently had to upgrade from Office 2008 to Office 2011 on the Mac. I really thought that Outlook for the Mac was going to be far better than Entourage, but it's really a piece of crap (although still better, IMO, than Apple Mail). It doesn't even have the navigation options so that if you have your mail sorted latest first, but you first look at the earliest message in the day, it would then go to the next earliest message. Instead, it goes to the item below it in the list, which is an already read item. Even the web version of Outlook for Windows gets this right and the Windows version of Outlook gives you preferences, so it can work any way that you want it to. Also, you can't navigate from open message to open message. You have to choose the next message from the list. Entourage got all of this right. Outlook 2011 gets this wrong.
Because I manage a large number of websites, each of which have to have their own email addresses, I have many email accounts. If I clicked "Send/Receive ALL", Entourage used to clearly access all accounts. Outlook for Mac doesn't - it arbitrarily chose one account out of the list and not even my default account. In order to receive from all accounts, I have to go to Tools>Run Schedule>Receive All. That's a pain.
The other thing I find is that the rules that I've set up, which worked fine under Entourage, don't work as well under Outlook. It frequently puts things in the wrong folders, in violation of the rule, for no apparent reason.
Did the people at Microsoft who designed this ever actually use it in real world situations? I think they corrupted the UI on purpose so that people would think the Windows versions were better.
And yesterday, I had some issue and couldn't even open Outlook. I fixed it by removing four Microsoft files from the Library, but I had to reconfigure a ton of settings. It did preserve all my accounts and mail though. Since I did not have a computer or application crash, nothing should have gotten corrupted IMO.
So if Microsoft fixes these issues, I would look forward to a reasonably priced upgrade in 2013 (although considering I only recently purchased, I feel like I should get it for free). If not, I probably will wind up finally switching to Apple Mail. And obviously, if Microsoft decides NOT to release Office 2013, a scenario that I can't really imagine considering that more people and more businesses are switching to Macs all the time, I'd have to eventually phase it out. IMO, Microsoft has to release Office 2013 for Mac if only to fend off accusations of monopoly (even though one could argue that Office for Mac increases their monopoly).
I have mixed feelings about the rest of Office. Sometimes the ribbon is better and frequently it's not - especially when it comes to customization. That's why I had put off upgrading to Office 2011 for so long. Office 2008 worked fine for me. In the office, where we have Windows-based machines, I'm able to pretty intuitively switch back and forth between older and newer versions of Office. But I do prefer Excel to Numbers, even though Numbers has a few nice features that Excel doesn't have. There's simply too much that you can't do easily in Numbers (at least the version I have, which is not the newest).
Quote:
Originally Posted by zoetmb
I have mixed feelings about the rest of Office. Sometimes the ribbon is better and frequently it's not - especially when it comes to customization. That's why I had put off upgrading to Office 2011 for so long. Office 2008 worked fine for me. In the office, where we have Windows-based machines, I'm able to pretty intuitively switch back and forth between older and newer versions of Office. But I do prefer Excel to Numbers, even though Numbers has a few nice features that Excel doesn't have. There's simply too much that you can't do easily in Numbers (at least the version I have, which is not the newest).
Good post. I agree that Office for Mac 2008 was in many ways better than Office 2011. I particularly liked the floating palettes which allowed you to easily access frequently used functions and position them conveniently. The point is that Office in its present incarnation is far from ideal. It's good, but it's bloated and the interface is overloaded. Similarly, iWork isn't exactly fantastic either. I like the elegant simplicity of Pages and Keynote but agree that both are still incomplete.
Sure, Apple is doing well in terms of capturing the Home market, but I see the biggest lever of growth as catching the Corporate market. Apple is definitely starting to attract large businesses. First it was Ad and Design agencies, then it was Law firms, and now Banks and Accountancy firms are starting to to bite. Apple surely wants to go on feeding this migration?
Maybe the secret of eating Microsoft's lunch is getting iWork to run PCs as well as iTunes does? I'd like to see a killer suite of new iWork programs with superb functionality to wow and suck-in longtime Windows users.
A lot of people seem to agree with this. So what is Apple doing? What was the last big project that Craig Fed. demoed at an Apple event? iMovie or GarageBand? The fact is that it is quite sometime since Apple updated iWork. iWork matters to everyone. iWork is a major source of additional incremental revenue for Apple. Every extra dollar in Apple's pocket is another nail in the Windows coffin. So my bet is that Apple is quietly reworking iWork to make it even better. My bet is a major announcement at the Apple 2013 Developers Conference.
Get to it Apple, I for one can't wait to junk Office.