Microsoft says it will be forced to delay Office 2008 for Mac, the next version of its productivity suite for Apple Inc. computers, until early next year. The company had been planning to release the product this year. But a recent development review showed that “the quality just wasn’t where we wanted it to be,” said Craig Eisler, who became general manager of Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit in June.
Maybe this has to do with Leopard being postponed?
Or maybe is had to do with Microsoft announcing a free version of Works in production?
“Or maybe is had to do with Microsoft announcing a free version of Works in production?”
That would have nothing to do with this…the division in charge of Works is a completely different entity than the group responsible for MS Office for Mac. They aren’t even located in the same state (Works = Seattle, MacBU = Bay Area).
“They aren’t even located in the same state (Works = Seattle, MacBU = Bay Area).”
I don’t buy into Laurence’s speculation regarding this delay being related to a free version of Works, but I don’t think the locations of the divisions aren’t necessarily relevant to that whether there’s any truth to it.
(Edit: Maybe you were questioning the idea of MacBU devs being pulled off Mac Office and onto Works. I agree that the location of the divisions would be relevant to that.)
But anyway, the idea that MacBU == Bay Area is a misconception (I’m not sure how it got started).
Mac Excel and Mac Word == Redmond.
Mac PowerPoint and Entourage == Bay Area.
(Windows PowerPoint is also in the Bay Area)
See various MacBU blogs like
http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo/default.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/default.aspx
http://www.schwieb.com/blog/
http://blogs.msdn.com/nadyne/default.aspx
http://davidweiss.blogspot.com/
http://mactopia.com
I’m not sure about other MacBU products like Mac MSN Messenger and Mac RDC.
Mac IE and Mac Outlook Express were Bay Area before Mac IE was killed off and Entourage subsumed Mac Outlook Express. Maybe that’s where the idea came that MacBU itself was in the Bay Area.
Edited 2007-08-02 21:54
“But anyway, the idea that MacBU == Bay Area is a misconception (I’m not sure how it got started).”
I stand corrected…after doing some research they are indeed HQ’d in Redmond. I’ve been reading Rick Schaut’s blog (which you listed) for a couple of years now, and he always talks about the Bay Area so I assumed that’s where most of the Mac BU devs were located.
“Maybe you were questioning the idea of MacBU devs being pulled off Mac Office and onto Works. I agree that the location of the divisions would be relevant to that.”
That’s exactly what I meant. It also would be an extremely poor decision of MS pulled developers who were Mac BU over to work on a Windows based product for a huge reason other than a geographic one: The devs who write apps for Mac can’t just flip their skillset over to Windows programming if MS decided to move them on a whim.
Regardless, the parent poster was way off in his (her) assumptions.
I wasnt talking in terms of development – i was talking in terms of promotion (seems daft to promote an office suite on a rival platform when you’ve got a new office suite on your own platform due soon)
“(seems daft to promote an office suite on a rival platform when you’ve got a new office suite on your own platform due soon)”
Works doesn’t compete with Office…the Mac equivalent is AppleWorks. Office for Mac doesn’t compete with Windows Office either…MS is completely aware of how brand loyal Mac users are, so those users aren’t really cutting into any Windows license. Besides that, a copy of Office sold for either Mac or Windows is money in the bank for MS.
Works is a completely different market segment from Office.
A bad product delayed is eventually good, a bad product released is bad forever.
(Don’t recall who said that at the moment.)
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/04/29/tuaw-interview-gus-mueller-leopard-i…
Skip down to the last question from that interview.
I find it very predictable that apple Microsoft is unable to deliver office 2008 for the mac in time for school or the holiday season in one of Apple’s biggest years. Given Vista’s lack luster debut and the publicity that Mac has been getting I say this is deeper than deadlines.
Everyone has known about the switch to intel processors even before the switch so lets drop that one, everyone knew about the Universal Binaries even before the binaries so lets drop that one , spare me the OOXML format because openoffice and neooffice have already implemented converters so surely Microsoft is capable.
So Adobe was able to deliver UB’s and hundreds of other vendors but Microsoft can’t convert the app they wrote to a UB or integrate their own OOXML in their product. This sounds like the main reason to make a case for OpenOffice/Neooffice and why ODF should be the standard to me.
Let’s not kid ourselves here this is to slow some adoption on Leopard and Mac by making office still run half as on the Apple’s next generation OS.
Edited 2007-08-02 13:56
Agreed. The timing of this announcement is far to convenient to be coincidental
I find it very predictable that apple Microsoft is unable to deliver office 2008 for the mac in time for school or the holiday season in one of Apple’s biggest years. Given Vista’s lack luster debut and the publicity that Mac has been getting I say this is deeper than deadlines.
1) Office 2008 won’t affect back-to-school sales for Macs. Quick the contrary, it would hurt Microsoft’s bottom line. How many students would you say know the difference between a Rosetta app and an UB one? If you’re writing term papers and doing basic Excel spreadsheets, you won’t really notice the sluggishness.
2) It is a stretch to connect this to “lackluster” Vista sales. Office is in a different development unit as Vista, and the Mac BU is even more insulated from the Windows side. Microsoft is a lot more business conscious than to delay a product that hurts Microsoft far much more than Apple.
Everyone has known about the switch to intel processors even before the switch so lets drop that one, everyone knew about the Universal Binaries even before the binaries so lets drop that one , spare me the OOXML format because openoffice and neooffice have already implemented converters so surely Microsoft is capable.
So Adobe was able to deliver UB’s and hundreds of other vendors but Microsoft can’t convert the app they wrote to a UB or integrate their own OOXML in their product. This sounds like the main reason to make a case for OpenOffice/Neooffice and why ODF should be the standard to me.
You’re forgetting a few things. Firstly, Office for Mac’s codebase is a lot older than apps made by “hundreds of other vendors”. Secondly, Office 2008 is a bigger overhaul than, say, Adobe CS3. And Microsoft is ditching a legacy binary format for an XML one – it is a big change. It is unlikely Microsoft would have less problems if they were using ODF. Quite the contrary, because they don’t control the specifications of ODF, it probably take them longer to implement it in a standards-compliant manner.
UB and the file format is not the only two reasons – just the only two examples given by Mac BU’s general manager. How about their user interface overhaul#? Last I check, products like Adobe CS3 or Apple’s pro apps aren’t going through a similar shift (heck, neither did they change their default formats to a fundamentally different one).
If Microsoft is merely porting Office 2004 to XCode and Intel, yeah, it make no sense for them to delay. But the changes going into Office rivals that of Office 98. Forgive me if I give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt.
Let’s not kid ourselves here this is to slow some adoption on Leopard and Mac by making office still run half as on the Apple’s next generation OS.
Ironically, Leopard is releasing in October, at best: *after* the back-to-school period.
# Personally, I think Office shouldn’t have taken Office 2007’s user interface in its entirety. Ribbon is nice, and IMHO it beats regular toolbars. But it seems counterproductive to put the Ribbon within each document window, rather than under the menubar like toolbars did in previous versions of Office. Ribbon would probably be easier to implement if Mac BU adapted the idea to Mac OS X, not port it completely over.
Edit: Office 2004, not 2003. Gah
Edited 2007-08-02 14:55
You are making a huge assumption as to the code-base of CS3 and unless you work inside both organizations I would assume that is a comment that you are not capable of verifying. With that said it has to do with commitment to the platform, Adobe was committed to delivering a UB version for mac, The Office maybe a overhaul but again given the proper resources and the fact that they had a starting code-base there is really no reason for a 3 year delay I am of course talking about the time they learned of the switch to intel till now.
You also contradict yourself you first say
Then you say
It is either a problem or it is not either the format conversion added to the delay or it did not in if it did then production should have been shortend by supporting ODF. If it didn’t then the overhaul was not that big of a deal now was it?
The fact of the matter remains is that again Microsoft’s IMHO delay of office is directly related to the fast publicity that apple has been receiving lately. Whether the MacBU is understaffed then the resources could be allocated if there was a true commitment to the platform. You can talk sales from Office fir mac but right now MS views office as the only real choice for mac and therefore competition does not force them to deliver and therefore they don’t to the disadvantage of Mac users.
Edited 2007-08-02 15:37
You are making a huge assumption as to the code-base of CS3 and unless you work inside both organizations I would assume that is a comment that you are not capable of verifying.
Likewise your claims regarding Office, isn’t it?
With that said it has to do with commitment to the platform, Adobe was committed to delivering a UB version for mac, The Office maybe a overhaul but again given the proper resources and the fact that they had a starting code-base there is really no reason for a 3 year delay I am of course talking about the time they learned of the switch to intel till now.
No reason for a three-year delay? Office 2007 came out four years after Office 2003, and they didn’t have to deal with a change of platforms, APIs, and development environment.
Unless you’re suggesting Microsoft have weird, peevish reasons why they intentionally delayed Office 2007 as well.
Adobe CS3 on the other hand did have to go through a painful porting process, but their main saving formats are largely the same, as with their user interfaces. I’m not saying Adobe had it easy with porting, but they have it easier than Microsoft.
It is either a problem or it is not either the format conversion added to the delay or it did not in if it did then production should have been shortend by supporting ODF. If it didn’t then the overhaul was not that big of a deal now was it?
I did not contradict myself. I said Microsoft is moving to a fundamentally different file format. How is that contradictory to saving choosing ODF versus something designed in-house may lengthen production time?
Microsoft is switching from a binary format to an XML based one. There’s no way ODF would take less production time than OOXML.
The fact of the matter remains is that again Microsoft’s IMHO delay of office is directly related to the fast publicity that apple has been receiving lately.
Google News lists 1,604 stories with the search terms “office mac”. It lists 19,726 for “iPhone”, 14,137 for “iPod” — honestly, Microsoft themselves know delay news aren’t going to put a damper on Apple. Or at least on particularly damaging for Apple.
Whether the MacBU is understaffed then the resources could be allocated if there was a true commitment to the platform.
Vista was delayed for *years* – understaffed?
You can talk sales from Office fir mac but right now MS views office as the only real choice for mac and therefore competition does not force them to deliver and therefore they don’t to the disadvantage of Mac users.
Certainly, you could say Office is the “only real choice” for Windows as well, considering that in the four years between release, it’s market share did not drop in any significant amount. But even if the whole world uses Office, Microsoft has the incentive to release new versions: upgrades. Most Office users on Intel Macs for one would upgrade, even if they don’t like the new user interface (Windows users, however, have that choice).
Microsoft is first and foremost a business. You have not shown why, for Microsoft, it would make more business sense to delay Office than to release it on time.
This would be a huge shift from history. Office for Mac has typically, if anything, been better then office for windows. Not only that, but being a month or two late is not going to seriously disadvantage the apple platform any more then the year delay between the windows release and the mac release already has, which honestly, is not that much.
Sometimes a delay is just a delay.
sounds like it’s even worse than earlier versions. ms office for osx looks nice, but it’s slow as hell (ok, pages is even slower) and it crashes regularly. the last stable version of word was 5.1 – which was much better than the windows version (2.0 ?) back then. nowadays i’d really prefer the windows version – if it wouldn’t run in windows.
“..nowadays i’d really prefer the windows version – if it wouldn’t run in windows.”
Use CrossOver Office for the Mac so you can run the Windows version without needing windows.
Let’s hope Apple releases iWork’08 soon and it includes the spreasheet app and speed and memory enhacements across the suite, it will make many Mac users happy. So… this delay might just give iWork a boost.
Im surprised Apple didn’t push Microsoft harder on an intel version of office. If you remember the lack of native office was one of the major factors in people not moving from OS9 to OSX. This was despite there being applworks available, AppleWorks/iWorks are not in the same league as MS Office in the mind of the consumer(esp in buisness)
The problem is in the minds.
People just don’t want to spend any time with iWork to see how it can help them. Great (and inexpensive) apps that are, sadly, unpopular.
I find myself using Pages more and more and really like it. As for spread sheets I have been looking at Tables (http://www.x-tables.eu/more/overview.html) but I have not purchased a copy as of yet.
Gosh, sometimes I wish the days of WordPerfect Suite on Mac would return… Granted, it had some shortomings, but at least Mac users would not be so heavily dependent on the mercy of MS.
After they axed VBA in Mac Office, if they never released it that would be sooner than I need it.
Yes, I have a chip on my shoulder. 🙁
Edited 2007-08-02 14:26
Without VBA, Office is officially dead on the Mac. Thus, Windows is the only viable OS to run Office. I realize Crossover/Wine allows you to run _older_ versions of Office _reasonably_ well, but not the current version, Office 2007.
I think it is important for Microsoft to restrict Office to Windows. Without Office, there’s really no compelling reason for most people to run Windows, certanily not in the business world (no 3D games there). In fact, I would not be surpised if the next version of Office is Vista only, thus forcing the giant percentage of people who are running XP to give it up for Vista.
More of that wonderful marketing Foo that Microsoft is famous for. Rant over.
Most VBA macros I’ve encountered wouldn’t run on Office 2004 anyway. Even if Macs can run every VBA script just like Windows can wouldn’t make Macs especially more popular in the corporate world.
Most corporate settings rarely have mixed systems to begin with. Licensing would be more expensive (I don’t know any vendors have have site licensing deals that cover both Windows and Mac versions, Microsoft included). Support would be prohibitive.
And many business software don’t have Mac in addition to Windows versions, and many that do (Lotus Notes come to mind) don’t mesh well between both platforms, even if Office 2008 does continue VBA support, it would not make the Mac more popular in the corporate setting.
The lack of VBA in Office would not necessarily harm Mac’s foray in the corporate world: there are very, very few keep mixed environments to begin with (creative departments using Macs excluded).
I just figured you might at some point want to open documents that were made on a Winders box. My bad!
Office mac has always been dead to office users since it doesn’t include the ubiquitous Outlook. Sure Entourage is included, but it can’t connect to exchange servers unless you install a service pack released much later and even then support is limited ( http://www.entourage.mvps.org/exchange/exup_entx.html )
Office is one of the lashes tying business to Windows, there’s no way they’re giving up that link. Mac Office is just there for students wanting to write papers.
…when has poor quality ever stopped Microsoft from releasing a product? Apparently Steve Jobs and company demand better for Macintosh computers. If only consumers had the same power to demand such quality for PC’s..or rather they exercise such power!
And how do you explain Tiger being at service pack #11?
“And how do you explain Tiger being at service pack #11?”
You have a point, but surely the number of service packs isn’t a quantification of software quality – all software have issues, and the number of service packs released is just a result of the company’s policy for update frequency.
“Without VBA, Office is officially dead on the Mac.”
Welcome to MacTech’s Guide to Making the Transition from VBA to AppleScript.
http://www.mactech.com/vba-transition-guide/
hylas
So if you work in a Mac-only Office that _never_ interfaces with the outside world, then Mac Office is for you!
> Welcome to MacTech’s Guide to Making the Transition from VBA to AppleScript.
you didn’t get the point. since when does applescript run in windows?
“Shigeru Miyamoto (who created Zelda, Mario, and bunch of other Nintendo games) once said “A delayed game is eventually good; a bad game is bad forever”.
E.T. says, “Amen!”
it’s to good so microsoft has to make it worse like make it delete home folder when installing
While it’s understandable that it would that it would take a large effort to do all that they are doing for Mac Office 2008 (new file format, new UI, processor change, etc), they should prioritize releasing an OOXML plugin for Mac Office X and Mac Office 2004. Delaying Mac Office 2008 is no big deal, but they need to release an OOXML plugin as soon as possible since OOXML files are currently being created with Win Office 2k7.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx?pid=download&location=/…
Besides, the uptake of Office 2007 is pretty slow. As long the majority of people are using Office 97-2003, OOXML files would be relatively rare. Not really a critical issue Mac BU has to deal with immediately.
Looking at Microsoft moves insisting in anti-competitive strategies every time they release a new version of Office or Windows OS why didn’t Apple invested some of their (record breaking) profits in a Office Suite made by Apple itself ?
Office suite is the most needed software application of any platform and Apple shouldn’t impose a third party professional solution to its user base. They could even make some money with it.
As for the VBA, OpenOffice and Python can really work as a substitute; if not better.
Feeling bad about leaving out VBA support, Microsoft is considering bringing back Clippy and his friends for the Mac. They will ship with a default animated helper of an Eagle. To match the Apple motif, and in keeping with his bird nature, he will be called iSoar.
It’s typical. You have more to do and you wait longer to do it, right?
The MacBU apparently didn’t experiment trying to build Office 2004 with Apple’s development tools, so they’re up against a deadline trying to take an unfamiliar release and trying to port it along with getting to know the foibles of the tools. Crazy!
Apparently, the Office for Windows group doesn’t collaborate a whole lot with the Mac group so the Mac group doesn’t get to make it easier up front and they end up with a lot of extra effort on the back end.
It makes OpenOffice/NeoOffice and iWork look much more palatable because they’re updated more often.
Personally, I don’t see any need for MS Office on my Apple machine. Pages and Nisus are all the writing tools I need, Keynote is great for presentations, and NeoOffice provides good support for those rare occasions when I need to deal with speadsheets.