While WWDC is underway, Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit has announced that Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 will be available in 32bit only. Microsoft has not yet completed the transition to from Carbon to Cocoa since it has focussed on increasing compatibility between Office for Windows and Office for Mac, and since Carbon is only available in 32bit, Redmond doesn’t really have a choice. While it won’t affect users in any meaningful way (unless you use gigantic spreadsheets or something), it has some Mac users riled up.
Microsoft needs to complete the transition from Carbon to Cocoa before it can build 64bit versions of Office, since Apple decided not to transition Carbon to 64bit. While this effort is currently underway, the MacBU states they won’t be able to complete it because they decided to focus on other matters first.
“In Office 2011, we’ve made investments in better compatibility between Office for Mac and Windows Office, which is the largest request we receive from customers,” writes Jake Hoelter, Product Unit Manager at the MacBU, “Our work to increase compatibility means we haven’t completed the transition of moving the entire user interface over to Cocoa yet. And because Apple’s frameworks require us to complete the move to Cocoa before we can build a 64-bit version, Office 2011 will be 32-bit only.”
Several parts of the transition are already completed, though. Entourage has been rewritten in Cocoa from the ground, and has been renamed to Outlook. In addition, all the new interface work (the Ribbon) is written in Cocoa too.
“Looking ahead at the MacBU development roadmap, we expect to go even further with Cocoa in the future,” Hoelter adds, “Meanwhile, I think customers are going to be really happy with the improvements in compatibility, collaboration, and user experience we’re bringing in Office 2011.”
This news isn’t particularly surprising. When push comes to shove, the Macintosh platform only accounts for about 4-5% of the world’s desktops, so you can hardly blame Microsoft for not devoting additional resources to spur the transition to Cocoa if their users indicate other features are more important to them.
On top of that, while Apple’s Steve Jobs derided Adobe for being late to the game when it comes to Cocoa, the fact of the matter is that Cupertino itself isn’t really setting a good example either. iTunes is still 32bit Carbon, as is Final Cut. It’s interesting how Jobs derided Adobe for being the last major third party developer to adopt Cocoa, leaving out Microsoft, while in fact Apple itself hasn’t completed the transition either.
I think I’d rather have compatibility than 64 bit Cocoa… It isn’t the ideal solution (that would be to have both), but it isn’t awful. Granted, I’m writing this comment on MacBook that is only running Windows 7 Ultimate (no Mac OS X partition at all), so I’m not sure my opinion really counts for much, in this case.
While the move to 64 bit is good, making sure its done right is much more important. I would rather MS take it’s time making the best office for Mac it can than rush a 64 bit version out. Office is a MASSIVE code base, so slow and steady is fine. Looking forward to this coming release.
My favorite is still Google Docs, Zoho and OpenOffice and I can use all these on Ubuntu 10.04.
I can see both sides, as a Mac user (who is not riled up, though).
I figure for a lot of people who are bent out of shape, it’s just a “bragging rights” thing.
I mean, I am more effective today on my multi-core multi-gigabyte machine than I was in 1990 on my 286 running DOS 3.3 and WordPerfect 5.1, but not orders of magnitude so.
The 64-bit version of Office 2011 (if/when it comes) won’t make a difference in your effectiveness over the 32-bit version, but you can tell all your friends at the water cooler that you have it
Kind of like having a car with 400 hp and then driving it in stop-and-go traffic… bragging rights only, that you never fully utilize.
Me – I just want 2011 to come out on time, and I want it to be fast and stable. Sixty-four can wait, it’s just a number.
My 2x1O^E15 page book I was writing will have to wait for the next version of Word I suppose. *sigh* On a serious note, the beta I had of it was much faster starting up than Office 2008 was. Seemed to launch as fast as the Windows version.
Edited 2010-06-09 18:36 UTC
So I take it your planned book is a single volume of a fantasy series… =p
> While it won’t affect users in any meaningful way (unless you use gigantic spreadsheets or something)
Completely. It’s a non-issue. With Office bloatware, 32 or 64-bit is the least of anyone’s worries.
Honestly I think MS should make their office software run as slow as Apple’s software runs on Windows. C’mon, a dual core windows 7 machine with 4GB of ram should not run as crappy as iTunes does.
Considering how broken MS Office for Mac has been since they started with a Windows version, the speed isn’t the only consideration. However, if Office is stable, that’s more important than anything else.
I agree with you on Apple making their software more compatible with Windows, but they’re bent on using that Orange Box technology.
its amazing
As Apple continues down its road to alienate and lock-in users, Microsoft starts to seem more and more like a company that really cares about its users and listens to what they ask for.
This article shows the juxtaposition superbly!
Microsoft is doing real work to improve inter-operation with Linux, they are making real contributions to open source software, making sure OSS runs on Windows, and even listening to their users to find out what enhancements are most important!
Yeah, they’ve still got their faults, but once you put them beside Apple, the faults are a whole lot easier to overlook – and what they’re doing well really stands out.
It wasn’t that long ago that I’d have trusted a politician more than Microsoft, and thought Apple slightly better than the industry average. Now its Apple I distrust, and Microsoft looks about the same as all the other big players in the industry.
PC was always the more likable character … now Microsoft looks like the more likable company.
Who’da thunk?
I am not sure why he is getting modded down for saying this. This is one of the points I have been hitting on in most of my posts. It could be that its just not terribly topic related, but still.
on a separate note, I have to agree with one of the other posters on the fact that the beta’s for this version have been fantasic. Quick, responsive, quick to start (though a bit slow to start when the laptop was on battery, but still faster than 2008 by a long shot).
Don’t be surprised. As I mentioned before, each successful company like Microsoft, IBM, Google, and Apple go through a period of positive-public image — a bit of a golden age if you will — before losing favour with this crowd.
People quickly forget their hatred of the old “Evil Empire” and with the benefit of hindsight, their faults seem “a whole lot easier to overlook” in comparison to the new one who seems even more evil by comparison.
Inevitably, this will continue.
Sorry but… what?!
Yeah, pushing ooxml and the like I guess. OS X is *nix, orders of magnitude more compatible by default. Additionally, apple uses open standards in many places where microsoft doesn’t (exchange anyone?).
Can you name 3 examples? Here are three apple ones: webkit, grand central dispatch, CalendarServer.
… and I thought that OSS developers should get these kudos…
OMFG! They started listening after beginning to lose users. What a surprise.
The same as other big players as in “IBM, RedHat” or as in “Oracle, Cisco”? Don’t forget an extremely important point: MS, Oracle and Cisco have practical monopolies in their core businesses, whereas IBM, RedHand and Apple haven’t. This reason alone makes me prefer the later ones…
I couldn’t care less about Apple’s draconian conditions around the iPhone/whatever, because I don’t *have to* use it. Additionally, they have *no way* of indirectly forcing me to use any of their shit.
Microsoft is still another story. My trust goes to the politician (who’s lobbied my MS anyway) until this changes, sorry.
So does this mean that once the transition to cocoa is complete then giant excel documents won’t grind the system to an (almost) halt? Cos that would be great.
In any case, focusing on compatability with the windows version is the best strategy… us mac users do have to live in a world of windows users and it can be very frustrating when documents change when you open them up on windows (particularly powerpoint… getting halfway through a presentation and then finding a slide where all the images are scrambled is frustrating).
I do hope that they put enough effort into stability and crushing millions of bugs that current exist in office.
Edited 2010-06-09 20:36 UTC
Compatiblity, speed and stability, Outlook and the ribbon are all way more important than the switch to 64-bit. Way to make it happen MS! This could be the first version of Office for Mac that is up to the same standards as its Windows counterpart.
Edited 2010-06-09 21:57 UTC
IOW, crap?
Apple should be lucky it still has Office in any form after all their attacks against Microsoft.
I’m sure that, by the time Apple has a real 64-bit operating system, Microsoft will have a real 64-bit version of Microsoft Office.
Microsoft hasn’t even been able to provide a 64-bit version of VisualStudio, which is more likely to actually make use of the larger address space.
In fact, at work we’ve been running into cases where VS2010 runs out of memory on a 4GB system just building Silverlight apps.
MS still seems to consider 64-bit to be in the “server” realm. Supporting their 64-bit operating systems with 64-bit apps would, of course, be easier if they supported a “fat” universal binary format, like OS X does.
Whaaaat ???
Oh, my god… Looks like Microsoft tried to copy Adobe CS’s resource usage too ! ^^’
Well, our app is probably the biggest/most complex Silverlight app out there right now (Dundas Dashboard), but still… some of the tools needed to build it are problematic memory hogs.
Did you report the issue to Microsoft ? If you are such a valuable customer, I’m sure that they’d be ready to learn what they have to fix in their toolkit. My two cents however…
PS : The Dashboard Designer interface reminds me of the good old Borland days, when Delphi and C++Builder were still doing pretty well… :’-(
Edited 2010-06-10 12:45 UTC
Definitely, we’re very diligent about reporting bugs. 🙂
I was really disappointed when Apple announced that 10.6 would be 64bit on select machines, despite that nearly all of their modern laptops and desktops were running of 64bit chips. It made me regret buying my 13 inch white macbook despite the fact that it could run 64bit just fine if they wanted it to. So the fact that Microsoft has opted to ship a 32bit version of Office doesnt hurt my feelings at all, and even though it’s not their fault, I feel like I’m now even with all those 64bit users out there (at least when it comes to office).
Does not seem to be the case this time. Microsoft does not want Office to work well on Apple’s OS and Apple does not want iTunes to work well on Microsoft’s OS. Both are saying “If you want to use this app then use our OS”. Competition also delivers dirty tactics.