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Office 2008 for Mac has gingerly stepped out of the alpha phase of its development as Microsoft works towards a late 2007 release of its overhauled Macintosh suite.
Heres the Microsoft Office 2008 for mac Macworld press release: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/jan07/01-09MacworldPR.mspx
Quote:
Microsoft Corp.’s Macintosh Business Unit (Mac BU) today revealed at Macworld Conference & Expo 2007 the news Mac fans have been waiting to hear: A new version of Office for Mac is on its way. The Mac BU announced its intent to deliver the first Universal version of Office for Mac for PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs — Microsoft® Office 2008 for Mac. Scheduled to be available in the second half of 2007, Office 2008 for Mac will allow Mac users to work smarter and more efficiently with new and enhanced tools that are simple, intuitive and easily discovered.
Inside Microsoft Office 2008 for Macintosh
Quote:
Q&A: From Macworld Conference & Expo 2007, the head of Microsoft's Mac Business Unit discusses the story behind the next generation of Microsoft's productivity software suite for the Mac.
"We're in private betas right now" confirmed Sheridan Jones, Lead Marketing Manager for Microsoft's Mac Business Unit (MacBU), during an exclusive interview with APC magazine.
From MacWorld, just to introduce Office 2008 for mac: Intel-based Mac owners will have a Universal version of Microsoft’s Office to call their own later this year. Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit revealed some details about Office 2008 for Mac Tuesday—namely that the suite of office productivity tools would ship in the second half of 2007.
Office 2008 adds plenty of new features, but the one sure to grab Mac users’ attention is its ability to run natively on both PowerPC- and Intel-based machines. Office had been one of the last remaining marquee Mac applications that had yet to add native support for Apple’s latest hardware.
“I’m really impressed with the speed [of the Intel version], especially with graphics intensive tasks,’ Sheridan Jones, group marketing manager for the Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit, told Macworld.
Office 2008 for Mac will share some technologies with its Windows counterpart, Office 2007, making for seamless compatibility between the different versions, according to Microsoft. Both Office releases will use the Office Open XML Formats, which will enable users to easily save files and open files in either platform.
Office 2004 users are not being left out of the new file formats, either—in February, Microsoft will release a free beta of the file format converters for the current version, so users can read and write the new Office Open XML Formats. Six to eight weeks after Office 2008 for Mac is launched, Microsoft intends to ship final versions of the converters.
While Jones was unable to speculate on the timetable for any public beta or the targets for RTM (release to manufacture), a demo of an alpha build showed the revised user interface is moving in a very appealing and Mac-like direction.
It's a move sure to please the thousands of Office for Mac users who became nervous after APC reported last year that the suite's UI would be overhauled and borrow ideas from the work done in Office 2007 for Windows, which saw the menus and toolbars replaced with a single ‘ribbon'.
At that time the Mac developers had already had one radical redesign tested and rejected after user feedback, said MacBU group product manager Mary Starman.
"We had what we thought was going to be this perfect UI solution, and the first time we put it in the labs, no-one understood it! It was so different they were completely confused!"
Happily, the latest version of the UI is heading in a much better direction. Our peek at the alpha build, which Jones cautioned was still in the very earliest of stages of both the UI and backend development, showed hints of a streamlined look with a modern black sheen, at times similar to the elements in recent Apple applications such as iTunes 7 and iLife 06. Rest easy, Mac-fans -- this is not Office for Windows.
While the Office 2008 UI retains the traditional menus and toolbars, the philosophy behind the Office 2007 for Windows ribbon and general interfacelift has been applied -- to expose more of the features buried several clicks deep, and make them more visual to browse and apply.
Quote:
Another smaller application that will be included with Office 2008 is My Day. The stand-alone application allows users to track priorities and stay on top of daily tasks no matter what application they’re currently working in and without launching Office’s Entourage personal information manager. My Day lets users color-code everything for visualizing daily priorities.
Microsoft did not announce pricing for Office 2008; that will come as the software’s second half of 2007 ship date draws closer, Microsoft said.
Here's a screenshot:
Quote:
"Part of our mission with Office 2008 is to expose all the things that are already there and make the product easier to use" says Jones. "We wanted to make it more discoverable, to bubble up the features that people didn't always find. We also have an opportunity to have a simple UI and a more intuitive interface.
"We got a lot of customer feedback (on the UI), we've kept the menus and embedded toolbars, but I can hide rid of embedded toolbars to have a really streamlined interface."
Parts of the redesign are peeking through almost every application, as well as application modules such as the notebook view in Word, and Jones promises that there's plenty to share in the months ahead.
While there's no Office 2007 ribbon in sight, one inheritance from its Windows counterpart is the ‘Escher' graphics engine which is responsible for Office 2007's dramatically improved art and charting capabilities.
All of the Office 2008 for Mac applications, most noticeably Word and PowerPoint, can conjure graphics with elegant visuals such as 3D effects, mirroring, glass effects, glows and shadows. Married to the new SmartArt diagramming tools for illustrating concepts such as processes, relationships and cycles, it puts plenty of ‘wow' factor at your fingertips.
I hope it has all of the features of 2007, but yes it is definatly "most wanted"!
Microosft traditionally lacks software updates and support generally for the Mac... even though they don't actually produce hardware for themselves.
See this topic to discuss this, and Apple's "Mactopia" Mactopia...or not? Microsoft software and support for Mac?
David Flynn at APC reports the latest news on Mac Office 2008, and it is big news.
Quote:
"We're in private betas right now" confirmed Sheridan Jones, Lead Marketing Manager for Microsoft's Mac Business Unit (MacBU), during an exclusive interview with APC magazine.
Mac Office 2008 will be the last major application for the Mac to be released as a Universal Binary. With Adobe CS being released next month, Steve Jobs will be able to declare yet another transition as being "over" sometime in the second half of the year. Mac users, especially those on MacBooks with 512MB of RAM—minus what the crappy integrated graphics steals—can look forward to much improved performance without Rosetta. While an RTM date has not been set, it will be closer to July than December, at least that is what I took away from my interview with Geoff Price, MacBU Product Manager, at Macworld Expo this year.
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