“Is Microsoft running out of ideas? Is it so desperate to keep the cash cow’s udders full that it’s resorted to simply reshuffling the Office bits every few years and calling it a new release? Based on my experiences with this and earlier builds of version 2010, I’m inclined to answer yes,” Kennedy reports.
Kennedy reports, “The idea well has finally run dry in Redmond. Maybe they can borrow a cup or two from their contemporaries down in Cupertino.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft’s done quite enough stealing from Apple already, thanks.
BTW, these are the people who want you to pay them way too much for their bloated, disorganized mess:
• Not everyone wants a machine that’s been washed with unicorn tears. – David Webster, Microsoft’s general manager for brand marketing, commenting on Mac users, April 4, 2009.
• Paying an extra $500 for a computer… $500 more to get a logo on it? – Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, insinuating that the only difference between a Mac and a Windows PC is the Apple logo – March 20, 2009
While the “You’re a Fscking Idiot, Now Buy My Software” is an interesting sales tactic, its efficacy may be suspect.
We have long been 100% Microsoft-free and shall remain so ad infinitum. Do you really need Microsoft Office? Give Apple’s free 30-day iWork ’09 trial a try and find out for yourself.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dev” for the heads up.]
MS, here’s an idea…
Make it work. So many things is Office, particularly Word, don’t work as expected/properly.
– styles
– auto numbering
– auto formatting
and that’s just the top 3 that bug me.
Also, I’d like to be able to turn all that auto stuff off and have it stay off without having to search in 15 places to disable the same options.
Just waiting for an “entourage” to be added to iWork, only MS app I use!
And I have tried using iMail, iCal, they just don’t do it for my use 🙁
The IT guys let me make a new “This Refrigerator Will Be Cleaned Out Every Friday–NO EXCEPTIONS!” sign for the fridge in the breakroom on the PowerPoint beta. The screen bean is still there which is awesome. What isn’t awesome is Nancy in procurement brings in her cabbage soup once a week. It smells and the container leaks. Thing is Nancy’s cat died a month ago and noboby wants to upset her further by telling her to keep the cabbage soup at home. I bet she uses a MAC too.
Your potential. Our passion.™
Microsoft Free for over a year now…
I said the same thing about Office 2007. It had almost nothing new feature. Basically they added the horrid ribbon and called it a day. Microsoft hasn’t had an original idea in years!
@ Comment from: Zune Tang®
Lol nice twitter page mate very pink!!!!! have you got matching earings to go with you pink handbag and Zune?
Same for Adobe. How about instead of a bunch of new wizz bang features, clean up what you have now. Make it all work better?
Slow bloated sloppy code withoutmuch polish, crash ridden garbage with 40 new ‘features’ none related to increased stability and improved performance.
The software industry needs a Snow Leapard type update.
Sorry, meant to say feature wise…
I dumped Word for LaTeX (which is free! and runs on anything, even Windoze) 15 years ago. TeX Live 2009 was just released and works so nicely. Little things like ligatures are automatic — try getting one in Word.
Just how can M$ justify that 75%+ profit margin on Office? And why in the world does anyone buy into that? It continually boggles the mind…
I use all the iWork & iLife stuff. On occasion, NeoOffice to handle the POS Windows files that are full of it.
Office has always been clunky an unintuitive. Sure, people have gotten used to it through years and years of being subjected to it. But it sucks even if it has powerful features. The thing could have gotten rewritten in a much better way. How come I can do what I need in iWorks with out looking at a manual or help file of Goggling etc.
We just switched to office 2007 at work, talk about lame, I have to learn the thing all over again.
Like Microsoft Word is designed to prevent you doing anything remotely easily. Only the instruction manual is bigger, fatter and less comprehensible.
Here’s the problem: Raise your hand if you are a sought-after engineer, programmer, or designer today who would love to spend your days creating an office program…
It pains me to say this. But, I think the promotion of iWorks on a daily basis by Mac Daily News does a disservice to a lot of folks who may go out and buy a copy in hopes it will exceed MS Office. For some, maybe it will. But, the reviews on this site and others would not lead one to believe it. Personally, if you are in business, I do not see an escape route from MS Office. Some programs, like NeoOffice, come close. But, nothing really compares 100% with Excel and Word. I say that after extensively using NeoOffice for at least a year. I find that documents sent to me by folks who use Office on both Windows and Mac platforms are not formatted properly in 100% of the cases. Outlining is off slightly, formatting in Headers and Footers is off slightly. Sure, I can fix most of them. But, outline numbering in NeoOffice is simply not up to par and fixing the formatting is not a simple task. When I open the document in question in Word, the formatting issues are either easy to fix or they do not exist. If you dabble in spreadsheets on occasion and do not have a need to send files to others on the Windows platform (90% of the world), NeoOffice is great and it’s free. But, it is not 100% compatible with MS Office and the nuances will become apparent after you start using it. The one glaring area that may affect some people is in macro handling. But, I do not use macros. So, this has not been an issue for me. I am not even sure where the status of the macro issues is at this moment. I am sure I will get an earful abotuo it. But, it is not a factor for me.
iWorks is not even in the same ballpark as Excel. Nearly every spreadsheet I open In iWorks that was done in NeoOffice or Excel — no matter how simple — result in errors. Sure, the files open. But, formulas are converted to fixed numbers when there is an error. If I only used iWorks and lived in a vacuum where everyone else I knew used iWorks, life would be great. I like the product look and feel. But, compatibility…not even close.
I have also tried Mariner Calc…not ready for prime time. Takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r- to open files and is not 100% compatibiel. Open Office…NeoOffice is the same thing only better from a Mac perspective.
So, until NeoOffice operates at 100% or there is something else that pops up, I do not see Office going away. It’s all about compatibility and nothing else compares 100% with MS Office.
FYI, I have been a Mac user since 1984 and personally own a 2008 iMac and MBP. I do not own a PC and never will. So, I am not a shill for MS. Far from it.
I agree with the overall sentiment and I would stop using all of their software, but for large, complicated, linked spreadsheets Numbers can’t keep up. The speed on an 8 core MacPro with tons of memory, HD, etc. comes to a crawl in Numbers. And no, I do not want to break up the workbook. Turbocharge Numbers and I’m there.
@mac-daddio. Great statement nothing is compatible with M$ Office. Not even M$ Office is compatible. The number of times I received a doc, xls or ppt that looked different on my system than on the sender system, it’s amazing.
I’ll stay with Framemaker for documents. Shame Adobe stopped Mac support for this one.
Your post illustrates what the matter is, with regard to Micosoft’s inability to write useful software, that only gets better with time.
You, and millions like you are stuck with Office, because it is the de facto standard, even though every iteration brings a whole new set of problems.
I’m willing to wager that if Microsoft were to scale back on Word, in order to produce a basic word processor for home consumers, it would prove to be a popular app, even among enterprise, but unfortunately we know that is not their target market.
Their last attempt to appeal to consumers resulted in Microsoft Bob.
> Do you really need Microsoft Office? Give Apple’s free 30-day iWork ’09 trial a try and find out for yourself.
Unfortunately for the readers of the linked article, since it’s about Office for Windows, they’ll have to Get a Mac first, then “Give Apple’s free 30-day iWork ’09 trial a try.”
I have the great displeasure of having to use office 2007 at work and I cannot believe how unintuitive and difficult it is to do ANYTHING in Excel or Access. The ribbon menu system is a disaster. I don’t know who EVER thought this was a good interface.
The only thing that keeps MS Office going is that has become a de-facto standard in the business world where compatibility is paramount. It’s not about ease of use or efficiency, but about everyone running the same software, so we all have the same features (and faults) to make it easier to train and to support.
re “Do you really need Microsoft Office?”
Pages is a superior document generator for most tasks, but as I found out even the smallest formatting difference can have disastrous results when someone tries to view that document in any version of Office or vice versa. Sadly, even running Office on Windows via Parallels created issues with file corruption when they were saved to the Mac desktop and emailed vial Apple’s Mail.app (no techs could figure out why). For that reason we had to standardize our office on the most prevalent version of MS Office *on Windows PCs only* even though we’d prefer to use Pages on Macs.
Personally, I think MS “shuffles the deck” every couple of years partially to make the sure the competition remains incompatible with Office and can’t become a fully competent replacement. As soon as they begin to catch up to all the little idiosyncrasies, MS changes the game again to guarantee their captive audience.
ZT nice story. I feel your pain!
Unfortunately, Office is not optional when .docx and Excel and PP files are being passed around, are the ‘standard’ at work. Because of docx, I tried Office 2008 and it was incapable (of cut/paste support of 3rd party embedded objects, etc.), sluggish and a penny-dreadful HI as only MS knows how. So it’s Orifice 2004 for now, which at least is snappy (in fact, snappier than iWork’09).
Jafo, I hear you. But, I have not had a single document from MS Office that I can ever remember…certainly not within the past 5 years…that did not operate correctly from within MS Office on my Mac. I have to say that my statement is a very positive one. Because, if I had not been able to open a MSO doc on my Mac, it would have been extremely embarrassing given my vocal support in my work environement for the Mac.
I have heard the “bloated” statement made numerous times on Mac forums. I am not a programmer. But, I do not find MS Office to be bloated. Feature laden…yes. Opens fast enough and runs smoothly. I seldom have a problem with it. Look at the feature set for Excel alone. It can handle 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns. That’s over 17 Billion cells!! Does anything on the market even come close? I could not find the number of functions Excel has. But, Numbers has a paltry 250. That is why you get an error almost every time you open a spreadsheet that did not originate in Numbers.
Here’s my perspective. If MS had iWorks or NeoOffice and Mac had Office, this site would constantly throw it in MS’s face. The problem is: I want something BETTER than Office, NeoOffice, iWorks and Mariner Calc. Then I would be able to dump MSO. I barely use NeoOffice. But, I contributed to the development with hard cash. Where is Apple’s contribution? If they do not want to make a serious effort at providing a significantly better app than MS Office, contribute a few million to the Open Office community. Give them the task to make a 100% compatible product that provides a full-Mac feature set. Without MS Office, the Mac would be screwed. With a superior product to MS Office…a fantastic, 64 bit, eye-candy laden, feature laden, blow the doors off, easier to use, intuitive, completely compatible plus 10 times better app…then we as consumers would have something and it might even entice Corporate America to make the switch. It is the everyday, boring, work-required apps that drive computer sales. Bring a little excitement to the humdrum work world…then you have something.
One last thing…I promise. If Apple will not contribute a few million ($20 mil. would be chump change for them) to the development of NeoOffice. Why don’t we? Come on…You have an extra $100 laying around gathering dust. Go to their website and contribute. Tell them what features you would like to have. Tell your Mac friends to do the same. If 50,000 contributed $100 or more each, that would be more that $5 mil. I bet that would generate some action in the Open Source community.
FYI, I have absolutely zero connection with the Open Source community. But, if you want something done and no one seems to be doing anything except the other team, you step up and do it yourself. So, come on.. stop your bitching and do something useful!!
I use iWork, as well as Neo Office, and currently, OpenOffice on my MacBook Pro. I use MS Office on my work laptop. I don’t agree that formatting errors occur 100% of the time. Most documents work fine for me. The funny thing is a co-worker of mine (running linux) used to convert .docx files for people using OpenOffice because they couldn’t figure out how to open files with Office 2003. I just had a Mac user switch from the Mac BACK to a PC, because she used Office 2008 for the Mac, while her classmates (graduate school) couldn’t open files on their Windoze PCs. I tried to help her and could open every document she sent me on my PC, Mac, and even on my iPhone, but she insisted it was a Mac issue. So she bought a PC and guess what, still problems between different versions of Office. If I need to send read-only documents, the best solution is a PDF, easy to generate natively on any Mac from the print dialog, or by using OpenOffice or NeoOffice. You can’t do that natively through Office.
Mac-Daddio,
It’s iWork, not “iWorks.”
MDN does not promote anything in their Take, but trying out the free 30-day trial to see if iWork works for users. MDN certainly doesn’t do so daily.
Why are you fearful of people trying iWork, Mr. Microsoft astroturfer?
I used to like Word, at least, but it keeps getting slower, uglier, and I have no plans to upgrade for a long time, if ever. Sometimes 99% compatibility isn’t good enough at work, especially with the dim bulb Mac-bashers out there- so you have to standardize on Office in a cross-platform environment.
And I wish there was a definitive alternative to Adobe, also- another slap in the face to Mac users as well as others- especially at those prices. This is progress/innovation?
@ Mac-Daddio – Agree with your general assertion that Numbers is, unfortunately, feature-poor compared to Excel. Wish that wasn’t the case and hope to see significant improvements in the next release. Also hope to see Apple pursue that type of backend products that Microsoft uses to create its entrapping ecosystem.
Now, does anyone know how to apply a border to a page in Pages such that it’s a property and not just an object added to the page? Got a call one night and after being frustrated that the user couldn’t figure it out, I stopped by a Best Buy. I was surprised that I couldn’t find it either. How would one create a multi-page document with borders?
dont start with the stealing again, theres too many of these arguments around, yes MS has stole from Apple, but Apple in the past has stolen from MS. Basicaly Apple has got it right and MS is going about things the wrong way, maby its time the stealing of ideas started again, i mean, wheres the competition? MS will die out in the corporate world if they keep going down this path.
Funny one today ZT…
MDN: “We have long been 100% Microsoft-free and shall remain so ad infinitum.”
Really? Then could you drop the MS ads and stick this Bing search engine crap somewhere else?
Gee..thanks.
“Now, does anyone know how to apply a border to a page in Pages such that it’s a property and not just an object added to the page? Got a call one night and after being frustrated that the user couldn’t figure it out, I stopped by a Best Buy. I was surprised that I couldn’t find it either. How would one create a multi-page document with borders?”
It looks like you can do it as a Page Layout document, but not a Word Processing document. If you create a Page Layout doc, then insert a text box. This you can add a border to. A workaround, but not perfect.
I recommend you submit feedback at http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html for desired features.
If it wasn’t for the fact Numbers can’t quite do everything that Excel can, I would not be using office right now. For everything else I use iWork.
Pages is used to create all my pretty much all my documents, and Word is only used to check that .doc files look how they should when exported from Pages.
In conclusion, Microsoft sucks.
MDN Word: Likely, as in, ‘Office 2010, good?!?! Not bloody likely!’
To give MS credit where it’s due, despite being 10 years old Office 2004 is pretty good. If MS just released an intel-native version of that, complete with macro support, that’d be great. Office 2008 is horrible even without being crippled, but Pages isn’t the straigh swap-out MDN imply. It just doesn’t work if you need it to run macros created in Office. There’s no cross-platform macro compatible option available other than Office, so until Apple or OpenOffice release a package that can run the same plugins so they don’t all need rewrites from the ground up, I have to stick to Office because I need macro-based tools – and I’m sure that’s true for a lot of other people.
Being “Microsoft-free” seems to be some kind of ideal, but the reality is that in many businesses, Mac users can’t function properly without Office. One small example: Word has cross-referencing, which Pages doesn’t. Without cross-referencing, drafting technical documents in various occupations is a risky proposition.
Entourage: you can bad-mouth it all you like, and it definitely has plenty of shortcomings, but in my book it beats Apple’s shipped-with-Mac OS X software hands down.
@Mac-Daddio
As I’m sure you can appreciate, what’s in it for Apple to try to outdo MS Office? Just like Redmond has run out of ideas, I’m quite sure Apple doesn’t have enough fresh idea’s to make a truly compelling product (like the iPhone) vs the competition.
So as an Apple shareholder, and one who realizes his Steveness isn’t going to be around forever, I’d rather have Apple focused on the area’s where innovation hasn’t happened, markets ripe for major disruption and domination by Apple.
Steve said it years ago, there’s no point in fighting yesterdays war. M$ won those mkts, but there are lots of other markets where Apple has a level playing ground to go after.
Other than spell check as you go, is there a freature added since word 5.1 that has been anything other than code bloat for 99 percent of users?
I said I would not comment further…I lied.
I agree that Apple should pick it’s battles. What caused me to comment initially was the statement from MDN to look at iWork to see if you really need MSO along with the usual comment that MSO is a bloated, disorganized mess. MSO is a pretty decent software suite that provides tons of features not found in other programs. If you want to call that bloated, I prefer to call that “feature-laden”. MSO does just about anything you can think of when it comes to WP/SS/Presentation/Email/IM. No other program compares to it. If it did, we would all be using it. Yes, there are worthy opponents out there (NeoOffice primarily) who are trying. But, I can personally attest that they are not replacements. My son is a college student and uses iWork. He loves it. But, in a business environment, MSO is an absolute must have.
Points to ponder, in my opinion:
1. If none of the existing software allows the consumer to completely disengage from MSO, stop bitching about it. It is “bloated” for a reason. It is feature packed to fill anyone’s needs for word processing and spreadsheets. It provides nearly every WP/SS feature known to man and it runs quickly and has very few problems, given the complexity of the program and many tasks it resolves. Pick a different reason to hate MS. This program is not one of them. We Mac users would be screwed without MSO. There is not a replacement for it. Period. You would go farther sending MS letters of appreciation and encouragement.
2. Given that there is not a 100% replacement is scary. Mac users have to rely on MS for updates and improvements. Not a very promising situation. WE DESERVE BETTER!!
3. If Apple is going to pick it’s battles, getting rid of MSO on a Mac should be a high priority. I venture to say that if Corporate America had to eliminate one of two apps on every computer…browser or MSO…MSO would win by a very wide margin. The Office suites war is far from over. There is a better mousetrap out there. It has not been uncovered yet. No one could do it better and more elegantly than Apple. As a consumer, I wish they would take up the challenge. As of December, 2009, they had a war chest of $12 billion. Would it really cost that much to free Mac users from the last vestige of MS by providing a 100% compatible…perhaps customizable so the user could determine how “bloated” with features they wanted the program to be…option that would rid us of MS forever.
5. For the bitching mass of Mac users who think MSO is a bloated, disorganized piece of software and want someone to blame, look to Apple. They could build a better mousetrap…but they choose not to. I see comments that MS has not added a single feature to Word since Version 5.1. While a ludicrous claim, I am dumb enough to go along with that statement. Word 6.0 replaced 5.1 in 1994. So, given a 15 year hiatus by MS, how hard could it be for Apple to make a better product. If they can’t make a better product, then that makes a statement that MSO is pretty darned good…unbeatable one might say. Apple has given up trying to compete on the same playing field and chooses to play on a different field with iWork with far less features wrapped in a pretty GUI… and where the Mac user is still shackled with MSO. If we like iWork and buy it, we STILL have to have MSO for the REAL tasks. Given the magnitude of this product category, I believe it is incredible that Apple leaves so much vulnerability on the line by not providing a total replacement, “you don’t need MSO anymore” product.
6. I think there is a viable alternative with NeoOffice. But, it needs more work. I use NeoOffice. But, I still have to fall back to MSO frequently because NeoOffice is not 100% compatible. It is close. But, I would spend a significant amount of time relearning stuff if I wanted to make the switch. I would also spend a considerable amount of time dealing with the quirks in NeoOffice. One example: in NeoOffice spreadsheet app, you separate arguments in formulae with a semi-colon instead of a comma. Why? Is it a legal issue? I can’t tell you how many times I forget about this quirk and end up with an error that causes me to have to scrub through the formula. Isn’t the aim of software to make life easier and more productive. Why should I settle for an “also ran”? I would think that NeoOffice could make significant strides and potentially replace MSO if they were better funded. My closing comment is: CONTRIBUTE to an organization that may be able to improve on this mousetrap…the Open Source Community. If we want to remove the MSO shackles, Apple has shown we cannot depend on them so far. The Open Source Community is the only potential savior in this category.
@mac daddio
You’re a blowhard and your posts, like Microsoft’s software, suffer from bloat as well. Do you really expect anyone to read all you’ve written?
A billion cells? Is that your barometer for excellence? You know, pivot tables are your friend?
You and millions like you can’t live without Office, we get that, so give it a rest. But let’s be clear, don’t expect Apple to take up the slack for Microsoft just because you and the millions like you, believe Apple has failed you by not delivering an alternative to MSO.
Apple never intended to displace Microsoft Office with iWork. Their app was designed for the home consumer/small business owners who have no need for Microsoft’s “kitchen sink” approach to everything they make.
Those using iWork are realizing gains in their productivity and with Apple’s fantastic collaborative tools, are managing just fine to keep everyone abreast of their progress.
Apple will continue to collaborate with the MBU in support of office for Macintosh, and I truly believe at this point Microsoft needs the Macintosh more than ever because we’re good paying customers.
You know something, I think you’re in for a rude awakening when Microsoft reveals their plans for the online version of Office. Talk about setting the hooks…
So the guy who is not an ‘MS shill’ calls Apple’s productivity suite “iWorks”?
G4Dualie, yep, I expected anyone who was interested to hang on every little word. If you are not interested…don’t read it. What you call “bloat” translates into features in my book. If iWork is your cup of tea, good for you. Sorry to have wasted your time.
Geddy, OMG…you caught me. I’m an MS shill. Spent a bit over $20k on Mac equipment so far in 2009. And, I’m a MS shill. Ya, bright guy, you are picking out the true essence of the message with “iWorks” vs “iWork”. Good catch! I would not want to make the same mistake in my weekly report at MS this week.
@Anyone know how to…
“…does anyone know how to apply a border to a page in Pages such that it’s a property and not just an object added to the page?”
Make a rectangle on the page with a fill of none. Make sure the object is “Floating”, not “Inline” so that you can place it where you’d like.
Now go to “Format”, “Advanced” and de-select “Make Master Objects Selectable” and select “Move Object to Section Master”.
You now have a border as a property.
Just downloaded and installed it on a pc. It’s actually pretty cool.