Wouldn't surprise me if iWork will have it even before that.
Anybody that has tried to use the Tiger support for Office document formats will realize that Apple's promise for the Office 2007 file formats is not all that it's cracked up to be. Pages chokes on fairly simple Word documents. Embedded line art, complex tables or even a table of contents in a Word document can render Pages hopelessly confused. When I tried it last month on a document a co-worker gave me, it showed an entire paragraph as raw RTF escape sequences.
The Office 2007 file format is a huge 5000+ page behometh of a standard that has only now (this month) been ratified. It would take Apple a LONG time to fully implement it. Even Microsoft's Mac BU has admitted the standard is so complex they aren't even going to implement it (they're porting the Office code from the PC product).
In short, don't count on Leopard being able to import any type of complex (read: actual business-world) document anytime.
Anybody that has tried to use the Tiger support for Office document formats will realize that Apple's promise for the Office 2007 file formats is not all that it's cracked up to be. Pages chokes on fairly simple Word documents. Embedded line art, complex tables or even a table of contents in a Word document can render Pages hopelessly confused. When I tried it last month on a document a co-worker gave me, it showed an entire paragraph as raw RTF escape sequences.
The Office 2007 file format is a huge 5000+ page behometh of a standard that has only now (this month) been ratified. It would take Apple a LONG time to fully implement it. Even Microsoft's Mac BU has admitted the standard is so complex they aren't even going to implement it (they're porting the Office code from the PC product).
In short, don't count on Leopard being able to import any type of complex (read: actual business-world) document anytime.
The technical committee that developed the new standard included Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, The British Library, Essilor, Intel, Microsoft, NextPage, Novell, Statoil, Toshiba, and the U.S. Library of Congress.
Quote:
Standardizing Open XML will aid interoperability between Office, the most widely used productivity suite among consumers and businesses, and other competing software, such as WordPerfect from Corel and OpenOffice, an open source suite available through OpenOffice.org, Ecma said in a statement. Document standards like Open XML and OpenDocument, which has already earned ISO approval, are also important in the creation of digital archives.
I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that Office 2007 (Mac/Win), iWork 2007, and Leopard will fully support Open XML. Given the status of the Office suite (quote above), Wordperfect, OpenOffice, et. al., WILL have to comply with our Microsoft overlords.
And boogedy boogedy boo to the 6,000+ page Open XML documentation argument, what standard doesn't add up to thousands of pages anyway? I MIGHT be concerned if it were 6,000,000,000+ pages!
Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit (MBU) will likely ship the next version of Office for Mac in the third quarter of 2007, adding support for Intel processors as well as the same XML file format support that will be found in Office 2007 for Windows.
Be it resolved: The Mac BU WILL issue free, downloadable file format converters that allow users to read the new Microsoft Office Open XML Format. We announced that publicly at WWDC, and nothing has changed.
.
.
.
There will be a delta between general availability of Win Office (January) and converters from MacBU (expected late March/early April.) We realize this will be an inconvenience for some of you (trust me, we know - 90% of Microsoft has been dogfooding Office 2007 for many months, and we in the MacBU are well used to asking for down-reved versions ourselves). For now, we recommend that Mac users advise their friends and colleagues using Office 2007 to save their documents as a “Word/Excel/PowerPoint 97-2003 Document” (.doc, .xls, .ppt) to ensure the documents can be shared across platforms.
That last link is dated December 5, 2006, like 4 days ago!
So I estimate the probability of Open XML support on the Mac platform at EXACTLY 100%!
I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that Office 2007 (Mac/Win), iWork 2007, and Leopard will fully support Open XML. Given the status of the Office suite (quote above), Wordperfect, OpenOffice, et. al., WILL have comply with our Microsoft overlords.
...
So I estimate the probability of Open XML support on the Mac platform at EXACTLY 100%!
So what? There are literally hundreds of standards that are partially implemented. Safari doesn't implement most of CSS 3 and only "most" of CSS 2. Heck, Office 2006 and lower are actually RTF documetns, which is itself a standard. Apple just chose to not inplement the entire standard since Microsoft took the standard, chewed it up and shoved it up everybody's collective ass. And there's nothing stopping them from doing the same thing with OpenXML. This is Microsoft; there's what the standard says, and what Microsoft implements. Notice how 90% of the WWW is coded to Internet Explorer's standards, NOT the W3C's standards? If Office 2007 has a bug that defies the standard, that will BECOME the new standard by sheer numbers.
Oh and the OpenDocument format which is supported by OpenOffice is only 1000 pages, or 1/10th the size of the OpenXML format. And the standard that defines HTML is only a couple hundred pages. The CSS standard is even less. So yes, there are MANY standards that are less than 6000 pages. I wrote that to prove my point: Apple does NOT have to implement the entire standard in order to get Pages to read Office 2007 documents. They just have to implement it "well enough". There's nothing stopping them from making Pages ignore 90% of the attributes in the document like your formatting and tables (which is kinda how they implemented the current Office support in Pages).
As for the rest, I never said the format wouldn't be coming to the Mac. I just said that Apple's implementation of the standard may not be complete judging by their past attempts. I'm sure Office 2007 for the Mac (when it arrives in "spring 2007") will have complete support.
So what? There are literally hundreds of standards that are partially implemented. Safari doesn't implement most of CSS 3 and only "most" of CSS 2. Heck, Office 2006 and lower are actually RTF documetns, which is itself a standard. Apple just chose to not inplement the entire standard since Microsoft took the standard, chewed it up and shoved it up everybody's collective ass. And there's nothing stopping them from doing the same thing with OpenXML. This is Microsoft; there's what the standard says, and what Microsoft implements. Notice how 90% of the WWW is coded to Internet Explorer's standards, NOT the W3C's standards? If Office 2007 has a bug that defies the standard, that will BECOME the new standard by sheer numbers.
Oh and the OpenDocument format which is supported by OpenOffice is only 1000 pages, or 1/10th the size of the OpenXML format. And the standard that defines HTML is only a couple hundred pages. The CSS standard is even less. So yes, there are MANY standards that are less than 6000 pages. I wrote that to prove my point: Apple does NOT have to implement the entire standard in order to get Pages to read Office 2007 documents. They just have to implement it "well enough". There's nothing stopping them from making Pages ignore 90% of the attributes in the document like your formatting and tables (which is kinda how they implemented the current Office support in Pages).
As for the rest, I never said the format wouldn't be coming to the Mac. I just said that Apple's implementation of the standard may not be complete judging by their past attempts. I'm sure Office 2007 for the Mac (when it arrives in "spring 2007") will have complete support.
IMHO, not a very good counterargument. I don't have the time, but I'm sure that I could find thousands of specifications that are greater than 6,000+ pages. Also, your argument only supports my argument, basically that if you want 100% compatibility with the Office suite, GET THE OFFICE SUITE! And considering that Apple AND Microsoft are on the Open XML standards body, that it will eventually be an ISO standard, I think I know which horse to bet on, complete Open XML support on the Mac platform.
If you can't afford the Office suite, or don't like our Microsoft overlords, think it's too complex, too user hostile, too proprietary, etcetera, than roll your own, whatever, but as a business person who MUST communicate with the Windows user base on a daily basis, I know what I will do, get something fully compliant with the Office suite!
EDIT
Finally, suppose Open XML doesn't gain ISO approval, and that govenrment bodies require the OpenDocument OASIS ISO standards, guess what? Microsoft will fully support the ISO/governmant standards (i. e. OASIS) in a heartbeat, to protect their market share and their flagship Office suite. They'll drop Open XML faster than they can say boogedy boogedy boo if they have to!
I was just wondering if it would be in iWork 07, but if it's going to be used in any Cocoa App in Leopard then that is even better because by default, .docx will be the default standard for well, any business or even home user as the default in Office. By Default Office 07 will be the Standard office suite due to it having one of the largest User bases of any market.
I believe .docx implements itself like a Zip file saving pieces of a document into a "group" and combines it into one document. I forgot most of the details but I think that's pretty much the outline of it, with poor choice of words of course.
Quote:
Finally, suppose Open XML doesn't gain ISO approval, and that govenrment bodies require the OpenDocument OASIS ISO standards, guess what? Microsoft will fully support the ISO/governmant standards (i. e. OASIS) in a heartbeat, to protect their market share and their flagship Office suite. They'll drop Open XML faster than they can say boogedy boogedy boo if they have to!
I believe Office 2007 already supports ODF and I believe Microsoft openly supports it as well. .docx will likely be used more though, so they won't need to drop it faster then you can say "boogedy boogedy boo"
Unless you absolutley need to get a Mac now you should wait until after MWSF2007 so you will get the newest iLife suite.
Based on iWork's history (Keynote - 2003, Pages - 2005) a spreadsheet will likely be in iWork '07. I do not expect version 1.0 to have ODBC support even though that is needed to be a contender in the office.
Pages is supposed to get modes with one focusing on word processing, the other on page layout, and it would not surprise me if one of the modes gets broken off and becomes a separate application.
Pages is supposed to get modes with one focusing on word processing, the other on page layout, and it would not surprise me if one of the modes gets broken off and becomes a separate application.
Actually I hope not. Pages strength, IMO, is how word processing and page layout are so nicely married. I love Pages and would only use Word if forced to. Pages works for me 90% of the time.
Apple owns Filemaker. It's only natural to wonder what role it will play if Apple delves further into the office productivity market.
I only raised the Xcode issue because I think Steve likes to have one app in a suite leverage the other apps. Like the way the iLife apps can access work done in each other.
If Apple debuts a standalone spreadsheet that can be embedded into Pages documents or feed data into Keynote, one would think adding a database would be the next step forward for the suite.
Yes, but in all years of FileMaker, Inc.'s existence, Apple has had absolutely zero externally visible influence on their decisions. They promote each other every now and then, and that's about it.
Quote:
It's only natural to wonder what role it will play if Apple delves further into the office productivity market.
Since FileMaker doesn't have a consumer database, and Apple doesn't have business productivity software (nor ever did), I think you're jumping to conclusions. It would essentially either take a wholly additional suite of "Apple Work Pro" or whatever, or a FileMaker Consumer Edition.
Quote:
I only raised the Xcode issue because I think Steve likes to have one app in a suite leverage the other apps. Like the way the iLife apps can access work done in each other.
Sure, but that doesn't require the same IDE or compiler.
Quote:
If Apple debuts a standalone spreadsheet that can be embedded into Pages documents or feed data into Keynote, one would think adding a database would be the next step forward for the suite.
I'm with you, but I'm not sure if FileMaker has much to offer in this regard beyond their engine. The front-end would end up completely different.
If you want to do real work that involves interacting with others in the workplace or interacting with any other business, get Microsoft Office for the Mac. Nothing sucks more than being stuck at the 11th hour of a deadline due to incompatibilities in your office tools.
If you don't want to do that, you can ALWAYS run the GNU ports on OS-X. X11 isn't necessarily evil though it lacks the UI of the Mac.
Comments
In Leopard, any Cocoa app will support them.
Wouldn't surprise me if iWork will have it even before that.
Anybody that has tried to use the Tiger support for Office document formats will realize that Apple's promise for the Office 2007 file formats is not all that it's cracked up to be. Pages chokes on fairly simple Word documents. Embedded line art, complex tables or even a table of contents in a Word document can render Pages hopelessly confused. When I tried it last month on a document a co-worker gave me, it showed an entire paragraph as raw RTF escape sequences.
The Office 2007 file format is a huge 5000+ page behometh of a standard that has only now (this month) been ratified. It would take Apple a LONG time to fully implement it. Even Microsoft's Mac BU has admitted the standard is so complex they aren't even going to implement it (they're porting the Office code from the PC product).
In short, don't count on Leopard being able to import any type of complex (read: actual business-world) document anytime.
Anybody that has tried to use the Tiger support for Office document formats will realize that Apple's promise for the Office 2007 file formats is not all that it's cracked up to be. Pages chokes on fairly simple Word documents. Embedded line art, complex tables or even a table of contents in a Word document can render Pages hopelessly confused. When I tried it last month on a document a co-worker gave me, it showed an entire paragraph as raw RTF escape sequences.
The Office 2007 file format is a huge 5000+ page behometh of a standard that has only now (this month) been ratified. It would take Apple a LONG time to fully implement it. Even Microsoft's Mac BU has admitted the standard is so complex they aren't even going to implement it (they're porting the Office code from the PC product).
In short, don't count on Leopard being able to import any type of complex (read: actual business-world) document anytime.
Ecma Approves Microsoft's Open XML
The technical committee that developed the new standard included Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, The British Library, Essilor, Intel, Microsoft, NextPage, Novell, Statoil, Toshiba, and the U.S. Library of Congress.
Standardizing Open XML will aid interoperability between Office, the most widely used productivity suite among consumers and businesses, and other competing software, such as WordPerfect from Corel and OpenOffice, an open source suite available through OpenOffice.org, Ecma said in a statement. Document standards like Open XML and OpenDocument, which has already earned ISO approval, are also important in the creation of digital archives.
I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that Office 2007 (Mac/Win), iWork 2007, and Leopard will fully support Open XML. Given the status of the Office suite (quote above), Wordperfect, OpenOffice, et. al., WILL have to comply with our Microsoft overlords.
And boogedy boogedy boo to the 6,000+ page Open XML documentation argument, what standard doesn't add up to thousands of pages anyway? I MIGHT be concerned if it were 6,000,000,000+ pages!
EDIT
See also;
Microsoft's Mac BU Talks Next Version of Office
Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit (MBU) will likely ship the next version of Office for Mac in the third quarter of 2007, adding support for Intel processors as well as the same XML file format support that will be found in Office 2007 for Windows.
and,
Converters Coming! Free and (Fairly) Fast.
Be it resolved: The Mac BU WILL issue free, downloadable file format converters that allow users to read the new Microsoft Office Open XML Format. We announced that publicly at WWDC, and nothing has changed.
.
.
.
There will be a delta between general availability of Win Office (January) and converters from MacBU (expected late March/early April.) We realize this will be an inconvenience for some of you (trust me, we know - 90% of Microsoft has been dogfooding Office 2007 for many months, and we in the MacBU are well used to asking for down-reved versions ourselves). For now, we recommend that Mac users advise their friends and colleagues using Office 2007 to save their documents as a “Word/Excel/PowerPoint 97-2003 Document” (.doc, .xls, .ppt) to ensure the documents can be shared across platforms.
That last link is dated December 5, 2006, like 4 days ago!
So I estimate the probability of Open XML support on the Mac platform at EXACTLY 100%!
Ecma Approves Microsoft's Open XML
I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that Office 2007 (Mac/Win), iWork 2007, and Leopard will fully support Open XML. Given the status of the Office suite (quote above), Wordperfect, OpenOffice, et. al., WILL have comply with our Microsoft overlords.
...
So I estimate the probability of Open XML support on the Mac platform at EXACTLY 100%!
So what? There are literally hundreds of standards that are partially implemented. Safari doesn't implement most of CSS 3 and only "most" of CSS 2. Heck, Office 2006 and lower are actually RTF documetns, which is itself a standard. Apple just chose to not inplement the entire standard since Microsoft took the standard, chewed it up and shoved it up everybody's collective ass. And there's nothing stopping them from doing the same thing with OpenXML. This is Microsoft; there's what the standard says, and what Microsoft implements. Notice how 90% of the WWW is coded to Internet Explorer's standards, NOT the W3C's standards? If Office 2007 has a bug that defies the standard, that will BECOME the new standard by sheer numbers.
Oh and the OpenDocument format which is supported by OpenOffice is only 1000 pages, or 1/10th the size of the OpenXML format. And the standard that defines HTML is only a couple hundred pages. The CSS standard is even less. So yes, there are MANY standards that are less than 6000 pages. I wrote that to prove my point: Apple does NOT have to implement the entire standard in order to get Pages to read Office 2007 documents. They just have to implement it "well enough". There's nothing stopping them from making Pages ignore 90% of the attributes in the document like your formatting and tables (which is kinda how they implemented the current Office support in Pages).
As for the rest, I never said the format wouldn't be coming to the Mac. I just said that Apple's implementation of the standard may not be complete judging by their past attempts. I'm sure Office 2007 for the Mac (when it arrives in "spring 2007") will have complete support.
So what? There are literally hundreds of standards that are partially implemented. Safari doesn't implement most of CSS 3 and only "most" of CSS 2. Heck, Office 2006 and lower are actually RTF documetns, which is itself a standard. Apple just chose to not inplement the entire standard since Microsoft took the standard, chewed it up and shoved it up everybody's collective ass. And there's nothing stopping them from doing the same thing with OpenXML. This is Microsoft; there's what the standard says, and what Microsoft implements. Notice how 90% of the WWW is coded to Internet Explorer's standards, NOT the W3C's standards? If Office 2007 has a bug that defies the standard, that will BECOME the new standard by sheer numbers.
Oh and the OpenDocument format which is supported by OpenOffice is only 1000 pages, or 1/10th the size of the OpenXML format. And the standard that defines HTML is only a couple hundred pages. The CSS standard is even less. So yes, there are MANY standards that are less than 6000 pages. I wrote that to prove my point: Apple does NOT have to implement the entire standard in order to get Pages to read Office 2007 documents. They just have to implement it "well enough". There's nothing stopping them from making Pages ignore 90% of the attributes in the document like your formatting and tables (which is kinda how they implemented the current Office support in Pages).
As for the rest, I never said the format wouldn't be coming to the Mac. I just said that Apple's implementation of the standard may not be complete judging by their past attempts. I'm sure Office 2007 for the Mac (when it arrives in "spring 2007") will have complete support.
IMHO, not a very good counterargument. I don't have the time, but I'm sure that I could find thousands of specifications that are greater than 6,000+ pages. Also, your argument only supports my argument, basically that if you want 100% compatibility with the Office suite, GET THE OFFICE SUITE! And considering that Apple AND Microsoft are on the Open XML standards body, that it will eventually be an ISO standard, I think I know which horse to bet on, complete Open XML support on the Mac platform.
If you can't afford the Office suite, or don't like our Microsoft overlords, think it's too complex, too user hostile, too proprietary, etcetera, than roll your own, whatever, but as a business person who MUST communicate with the Windows user base on a daily basis, I know what I will do, get something fully compliant with the Office suite!
EDIT
Finally, suppose Open XML doesn't gain ISO approval, and that govenrment bodies require the OpenDocument OASIS ISO standards, guess what? Microsoft will fully support the ISO/governmant standards (i. e. OASIS) in a heartbeat, to protect their market share and their flagship Office suite. They'll drop Open XML faster than they can say boogedy boogedy boo if they have to!
I believe .docx implements itself like a Zip file saving pieces of a document into a "group" and combines it into one document. I forgot most of the details but I think that's pretty much the outline of it, with poor choice of words of course.
Finally, suppose Open XML doesn't gain ISO approval, and that govenrment bodies require the OpenDocument OASIS ISO standards, guess what? Microsoft will fully support the ISO/governmant standards (i. e. OASIS) in a heartbeat, to protect their market share and their flagship Office suite. They'll drop Open XML faster than they can say boogedy boogedy boo if they have to!
I believe Office 2007 already supports ODF and I believe Microsoft openly supports it as well. .docx will likely be used more though, so they won't need to drop it faster then you can say "boogedy boogedy boo"
Sebastian
I believe Office 2007 already supports ODF and I believe Microsoft openly supports it as well.
Office 2007 does not support ODF, but Microsoft is funding an extension project for Office 2007 that adds ODF support.
Based on iWork's history (Keynote - 2003, Pages - 2005) a spreadsheet will likely be in iWork '07. I do not expect version 1.0 to have ODBC support even though that is needed to be a contender in the office.
Pages is supposed to get modes with one focusing on word processing, the other on page layout, and it would not surprise me if one of the modes gets broken off and becomes a separate application.
Pages is supposed to get modes with one focusing on word processing, the other on page layout, and it would not surprise me if one of the modes gets broken off and becomes a separate application.
Actually I hope not. Pages strength, IMO, is how word processing and page layout are so nicely married. I love Pages and would only use Word if forced to. Pages works for me 90% of the time.
I do not expect version 1.0 to have ODBC support even though that is needed to be a contender in the office.
iWork is, always has been, and always will be, a consumer productivity suite, not a business one.
iWork is, always has been, and always will be, a consumer productivity suite, not a business one.
True for Pages but Keynote works well in both environments IMO.
Office 2007 does not support ODF, but Microsoft is funding an extension project for Office 2007 that adds ODF support.
Oh...
Well then they are at least "Openly" supporting it I guess.
For a free office suite for Mac, try NeoOffice.
http://www.neooffice.org/
I haven't tried it, but it looks pretty complete. THere si a slight, indirect warning about its stability, though...
I use it its really good. I haven't had any stablility problems at all I really suggest it
It's got a different feel to the other iWork apps, and a much longer history.
I have no idea whether it's built in Xcode, but I doubt it.
That said, it could be useful for businesses if linked with Keynote, and these days a spreadsheet and database are two sides of the same coin.
Since Redmond does not make Access for the Mac, there's probably little downside to making it a part of an "iWork Pro" suite.
It will be interesting to see what Apple does with it.
Having recently gone to Filemaker 8.5, I can't help wondering where it fits in the iWork puzzle.
It's got a different feel to the other iWork apps
That's because it's not an iWork app. It's not even from the same company.
I have no idea whether it's built in Xcode, but I doubt it.
Most Universal Binaries are. That said, it doesn't matter in the least to an end user, so I'm not sure what you're trying to get at anyway.
I only raised the Xcode issue because I think Steve likes to have one app in a suite leverage the other apps. Like the way the iLife apps can access work done in each other.
If Apple debuts a standalone spreadsheet that can be embedded into Pages documents or feed data into Keynote, one would think adding a database would be the next step forward for the suite.
Apple owns Filemaker.
Yes, but in all years of FileMaker, Inc.'s existence, Apple has had absolutely zero externally visible influence on their decisions. They promote each other every now and then, and that's about it.
It's only natural to wonder what role it will play if Apple delves further into the office productivity market.
Since FileMaker doesn't have a consumer database, and Apple doesn't have business productivity software (nor ever did), I think you're jumping to conclusions. It would essentially either take a wholly additional suite of "Apple Work Pro" or whatever, or a FileMaker Consumer Edition.
I only raised the Xcode issue because I think Steve likes to have one app in a suite leverage the other apps. Like the way the iLife apps can access work done in each other.
Sure, but that doesn't require the same IDE or compiler.
If Apple debuts a standalone spreadsheet that can be embedded into Pages documents or feed data into Keynote, one would think adding a database would be the next step forward for the suite.
I'm with you, but I'm not sure if FileMaker has much to offer in this regard beyond their engine. The front-end would end up completely different.
If you don't want to do that, you can ALWAYS run the GNU ports on OS-X. X11 isn't necessarily evil though it lacks the UI of the Mac.