Office 2008: Goodbye iWork?
The nail may just be in the coffin. Those of you who were paying attention last week may have seen the many screenshots of Office 2008 for Mac floating around. While it’s tough to gauge an application package as big as Microsoft Office on just a few screenshots, what we are seeing looks very promising.
Perhaps the most interesting screenshot shows off Office Art 2.0, the graphics behind Office 2007 for Windows and Office 2008 for Mac. Not only does Office Art appear to deliver some amazingly powerful graphics tools (like SmartArt), it appears that Microsoft has taken the power of OSX’s GUI to heart and built a (dare I say) beautiful application.
In addition to finally being a Universal Binary, Office 2008 will also bring Microsoft’s long-awaited OpenXML (OOXML) format to the Mac. This will (hopefully) mean more applications built on a standard file format. Microsoft is also including a few “Mac-first, Mac-only” features that, if nothing else, shows they’re serious about keeping their Mac software market alive.
Will Office 2008 crush what’s left of iWork? Not that Apple ever intended for iWork to become a serious competitor to Office, but where will Pages fit into my daily routine next to a more powerful (and much more widely used) Word?
In the end, I suppose it comes down to personal preference and what kind of work you do. Pages and Keynote certainly are niche products. But Redmond is sure giving many of us a reason to look beyond that niche and keep giving MS Office a chance.
denny on January 22nd, 2007 at 1:22 pm
I have to say… it looks great from the screenshots. However, using it may be another story.
I abandoned Office for three reasons. 1. No need for Entourage… much prefer iCal, Mail, and Spotlight as my project management. 2. Keynote is fantastic. Even if PP improves I’m not moving away from Keynote. 3. I tend to do small, graphically rich documents and Word bogs down as soon as I start adding lots of graphics. I rarely need to share documents for collaboration and don’t need most of what Word offers. I hope this next version is better but I’m far too happy with iWork to switch back.
Adam on January 22nd, 2007 at 1:32 pm
I;m sorry to say that NeoOffice, (the mac port of OpenOffice.org), is my Office. I never bothered with iWork, removed it from each of my Macs as soon as I got them. NeoOffice has a price I like, (free), and although it is in Beta stage, I have found it to be more than stable enough for everyday use. And Office 2008’s big selling point of OpenXML format is due to be integrated into NeoOffice, (and its big brother OpenOffice), by late February. Sorry Microsoft, OpenSource beat Internet Explorer with Firefox, and now Office is gonna be shot down too.
Scott McNulty on January 22nd, 2007 at 1:33 pm
I got a personal demo of some of Office 2008 from MS, and as I said on TUAW, it looks good. Office has always crushed iWork in terms of features, and now I think MS is finally realized that they need to make those features easy to access.
Office 2007 (for Windows) is the best Office app ever, and I think the Mac version will be even better.
Scott on January 22nd, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Maybe it’s just me, but has anyone, EVER used the M$ toolbar buttons for New, Save, Undo, and Redo? Why do these buttons need to be on a modern, revamped interface. Seriously, who looks at a document they’re working on and says to themselves “you know, what I really want to do while editing THIS document is start a new, unrelated blank one.” Sorry, it’s a pet peeve of mine.
Have to agree with denny in that M$ Office simply doesn’t fit my needs (with the exception of Excel – which I would gladly dump if someone would another usable spreadsheet app, and not just a 1:1 copy). Hopefully, the increased competition will spur Apple to do more with iWork (which does fit my needs).
Carl Howe on January 22nd, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Funny, we in my company are going the other direction. Our mantra this year is, “better deliverables in less time.” And from our experience, that means ditching Word and Powerpoint and doing more with Keynote and Pages. The latter two tools just deliver better and more professional results faster than the Microsoft ones. Oh, you can do everything that Apple’s products do and more in Office — you’ll just tear your hair out getting there.
Just my two cents, but I find myself doing more thinking and less cursing with the Apple products. And I’m using their export functions regularly now to deliver PowerPoint and Word docs. Even with the little bits of cleanup required, I’m finding myself ahead of the game time and quality wise. Office 2008 is going to have a high bar to clear. Your mileage may vary.
Scottie Biddle on January 22nd, 2007 at 3:12 pm
As Much as I love Pages and can do a whole bunch with it, Word is what I’m used to. As a recent switcher I can see that Pages is aimed at presentation and Word is focused on th material you’re typing. Also, the Mac version of Word is much better than Office 2003, even in Rosetta. For school, all formatting instructions are given for Word. I really ahte when people say “A Mac? You can’t do anything on a Mac!” or like my music teacher “Apple sucks!” (I was explaning the GarageBand had notation capability). I cannot wait for Office 2008 and Universal Office!
Jan Korbel on January 22nd, 2007 at 3:18 pm
I don’t know about you guys but for me the UI is so glassy that I would have to weare sunglasses using it…
You know, they take the cherry on the top and think that by putting it all over the cake, they would make it better.
macminiman on January 22nd, 2007 at 3:19 pm
I really like having the New and Save icons on my Word toolbar– and use them all the time!
I often have several document open at a time– and will create a New one and use text from the others–real multi-tasking. And the Save icon is a snap– and faster than menu hunting.
Just downloaded NeoOffice’s latest. Have they solved the slow start up time? It really took forever in earlier versions. There were some other features that were clunky. I guess I’ll find out soon enough what improvements have been made.
Yasser Dahab on January 22nd, 2007 at 3:37 pm
It’s nice to hear that iWork holds such a coveted place in the hearts of many of you. Since I’m in medicine, the creative aspect of iWork unfortunately doesn’t effect much of what I do.
I think the devil may be in the details for M$ Office. If Office 2008 isn’t backward compatible and efficient in converting older file types, it may just end up being a disaster.
I haven’t used NeoOffice in a while either, mostly due to the slow load times.
daveleaz on January 22nd, 2007 at 4:14 pm
As a professional Macintosh/Microsoft Engineer, I have had many years of installing, using and maintaining both Microsoft and Apple products. The key here is productivity. Here iWork reigns supreme. I use it 95% of the time myself. If you need to open or edit a Word document, use TextEdit – it can open, edit and save Word docs and is more compatible than any version of Word itself!
Doc on January 22nd, 2007 at 5:05 pm
iWork- love it- use it exclusively along with FileMaker but would love to see it have a spreadsheet
MS Office- really dislike it- much harder (and LOTS less fun) to use so no thanks to that particular over priced package.
Dave M. on January 22nd, 2007 at 6:46 pm
One very important problem with Microsoft Office 2008. It’s a Microsoft software product. I had Office 2004 installed for a few weeks on my Mac Pro. Then I got an update notice from Microsoft that there were vulnerabilities in Office that could allow a malicious hacker access to my computer. Basically the same kind of crap messages you get on Windows.
Why do I want to allow Microsoft to create bugs that will allow malicious hackers into my Mac.
I use NeoOffice when I need an Office tool. Mostly I use NeoOffice’s spreadsheet.
I don’t care how “good” Office 2008 looks, it’s going to have a bunch of vulnerabilities that I don’t want anywhere near my Mac.
I have found iLife to look interesting for what it has so far. I hope they manage to get a decent spreadsheet program by iLife ‘07.
Dan M. on January 22nd, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Say what you want about Microsoft, but I made the switch to pages and keynote shortly after they came out and have not been disappointed. Sure Word does some nice things and is more robust, but in reality it is clunky and I don’t think the new version will be a slick or functional as Pages. I do a lot of academic writing and I find that Writeroom is very functional, although it could have some additional functions. Scrivener holds real potential, but my workhorse will remain Pages and Keynote.
Kuswanto on January 22nd, 2007 at 7:29 pm
i ditched office for very long time. Neo Office and Open Office on windows computer give the same feature with lower price tag (its FREE ;p)
The new office eyecandy is nice though..
Kamal Mubarak, MD on January 22nd, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Yasser, I am in medicine too, and I find Keynote indispensible! Come see one of my Grand Rounds in Keynote and you will realize why I left PowerPoint behind forever. I always get questions about how I do all those cool things and whether the audience can have a copy of my slides.
Pages is different. No support for EndNote! So I can’t write papers or grants with it. But with Visual Basic removed from Office 2008, EndNote won’t work either. Either the EndNote guys will have to use AppleScript, which will work for Pages also, or drop support for the Mac! In that case, someone else will come up with a bibliographic solution for the Mac, and I can finally say goodbye to EndNote and their awful software :-).
Give Keynote a shot for your next talk. You won’t regret it.
WG on January 22nd, 2007 at 7:59 pm
I have a company purchased copy of MS Office on my Mac but find I use OpenOffice (X11) 99% of the time. I work with Macs, Linux, and Windows and got used to using it on all the platforms I support.
Office for Mac is a great program, hats off to the Mac BU, but I just don’t need it. I prefer mail, address book, and iCal and, like most office suite users, have relatively basic needs when it comes to word processing and spreadsheets.
With that said, when Apple finally gets around to releasing a spreadsheet I plan to become an iWork customer. A few days of evaluating Pages and Keynote sold me on programs, but I just can’t justify switching until the package is complete.
MisterKen on January 22nd, 2007 at 8:45 pm
I’ve been a faithful user of Entourage for a number of years. The integrated email, calendar, tasks AND project sharing are really powerful tools if you take the time to use them.
I’m looking forward to this release!
OMG…I just said I’m looking forward to a M$ product.
germ on January 23rd, 2007 at 12:11 am
What a collection of utter rubbish. M$ Office is a real POS. Word is an abomination. Really, it survives beacuse people don’t know any better. Entourage is even worse. M$ is about 2 years late, they took away VB, and all there is to the new release seems cosmetics. I ditched PP for Keynote, a much better product. Will look forward to Charts or whatever the new Apple spreadsheet will be called.
Chris Brown on January 23rd, 2007 at 12:45 am
Agree with germ. MS Word = MS Turd.
Galley on January 23rd, 2007 at 7:20 am
Number of major motion pictures made with Keynote: 1
Number of major motion pictures made with PowerPoint: 0
Some of us prefer to be 100% Microsoft-free, thank you very much!
Yasser Dahab on January 23rd, 2007 at 8:03 am
Kamal, I’m already an avid Keynote user when it comes to Grand Rounds and journal presentations. Nice to know I’m not the only one (though I certainly am at my hospital). ;)
I must say, I’m really pleased to hear so many of you echoing how much you love iWork!
How about you business types out there? Anyone forced into using Office but longing for iWork?
Robert on January 23rd, 2007 at 11:19 am
It would be nice if Apple put out Pages, Keynote, Charts and a scaled down FileMaker. I would definitely get that.
oomu on January 23rd, 2007 at 1:24 pm
why do you speak about the fact you are “used to” office ?
win office 2007 has a very _different_ interface from office 2003. you are NOT used to it.
and mac office 2008 seems to be very different of mac office 2004. you are NOT used to it
so… openoffice, iwork or whatever… don’t tell me you are so used to a future ms office than you cannot use other tools.
–
yeah , office 2008 seems to be nice and polished. we will see.
Kyle Korleski on January 23rd, 2007 at 11:35 pm
I hope Microsoft crashes and burns. This is why I recommend using OpenOffice.org or something similar. This way, we can get some decent games on the Mac.
Lucky13 on January 24th, 2007 at 6:08 am
>>How about you business types out there? Anyone forced into using Office but longing for iWork?>>
…not forced. I’m self-employed. I choose to run Office. Pages is OK and could serve my needs but Office is so much more. I’ve no use for Keynote or Powerpoint.
Frankly, if not for Office 2004, I probably wouldn’t be using a Mac right now. Everything that I really need to do with a computer can be done within a single package offering a unified, consistent interface. Excel stands alone and I find Entourage much more useful than any jumbled mix of Mail/iCal/Address Book/Stickies…
I took a peek at those free alternatives but they seemed like little more than cheap knock-offs of the real thing. Aren’t they just that – a copy of Microsoft Office? Hasn’t Bill Gates and Company been constantly accused of similar behavior?
As for Office 2008, native Intel support would be a welcome addition. The current version, while quite functional, still lags somewhat compared to its use on my PowerPC machine. I just hope that any frivolous eye candy is kept in check.
Clair on January 24th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Long awaited OpenXML? It has been a while since I about this new format, but I hope they’ve progressed further than they had. OpenXML is a misleading term. I’ll stick with ODF if I can when it comes to file standards.
However, I do enjoy using Pages over using Word. I hope Apple doesn’t get rid of it.
Marcus Tempte on February 1st, 2007 at 8:18 am
Can anyone tell me why it is not possible to convert the PST file from Office 2003 or 2007 to Office for Mac (either 2004 or 2008). The biggest usage for me and the company is Outlook and I would love to be able to convert fully to Mac but I dont know how to convert the PST file to be able to use it on Mac. Does anyone know if it will be possible to convert an office 2007 PST file to Entourage in Office 2008?
Jesse on February 4th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Iwork ‘07: goodbye Office 2008
Captain Morgan on February 5th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
The only thing I hope for is better integration with Exchange. I’ll be damned if I’m updating our department Macs only to find out that their just as crippled as Office 2004 when dealing with shared calendars, tasks, public folders and the like on an Exchange server. The other thing that gets me is: what good is the Project Center when you can’t share projects with PC users in your department?
Marcus Tempte on February 6th, 2007 at 7:21 am
Captain Morgan – I fully agree, there is no point without the PC sharing capabilities; everyone is talking about open standard but it still seems difficult to share the business apps.
I am forced to run parallels with XP and Office in order to still use my PST file, which is a shame.
James Lloyd on February 17th, 2007 at 4:46 am
You have to be kidding me right? iWork costs almost nothing, is fantastic to use and already does everything many people would want to do… AND it gives amazing results in a very short space of time.
I have both but I’ve stopped using most of Office. I no longer see any point in upgrading or paying for it again.
GUY on March 9th, 2007 at 4:49 am
Any word on a beta version?? or even a link for a alpha
:)
Thanks
Eric on March 19th, 2007 at 12:44 am
I can see using Pages and Keynote for getting things done quicker and more simply, as I don’t really run Word the way I used to, and I never really did like PowerPoint much. But I’ve tried over and over again to use anything else but Entourage (it’s about 90% of the way where I want it to be), but I still come back to it again and again. Hopefully this new iteration will get Entourage 95-98% of where I want it (integration of Spotlight, etc.). I assume no app will be exactly as I wish, but Entourage is one of the few that gets close.
EB on March 26th, 2007 at 2:21 am
when does the new Keynote/iWork arrive? Any
mark on March 31st, 2007 at 10:56 am
We’re an incoming tour operator based in Chile and we use pages on all our Macs. What’s so great about it?
I’ve created templates of all the different products or tailormade tours we present to our clients, with logos, nice color layout, placeholders for photos, etc..
In just a few minutes anyone in the office can personalize the whole tour-presentation by sliding the corresponding photos from the multimedia column, insert new text, format it in a few second, and export an optimized protected pdf file (three choice of export qualities) that we can then send to our future client.
Try that with Word!!!
I’m hoping that the coming Pages 3 will enhance these possibilities. For example, it would be great if we could have a noteholder in which we could store chunks of text that we use very often (list of hotels for example with active links to their respective websites…).
This is a VERY useful product… for us. Cheers to all. Mark
Jon on April 3rd, 2007 at 10:03 am
For home users and some work users, OpenOffice/NeoOffice/iWork may be fine, but for my work (editing a technical magazine) MS Office is essential. I tried Open Office (X11) on my Mac; however, despite great efforts by the developers, OO is not 100% compatible with the many, many Word documents I receive and deal with every day. I found myself alternating between OpenOffice and Pages to try to get my work done, and I still couldn’t do it.
And OpenOffice has three or four bugs — minor, but real — that irk me. For example, when doing a spell check, I tell OO to ignore a certain technical word, but it continues to find it again and again. And, because many people put two spaces between sentences and I require just one space, I have to do a search and replace; but about half the time, OO replaces two spaces with NO spaces!
But now I have Word, and all is fine.
Eric on June 1st, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Help
I have just bought a new mac. WOW!
I am looking for a compatible office suite- primarily with Word. Is compatibility an issue between Iworks and Office?
i would like to go completely mac. My needs? Academic and small business and I don’t need many bells and whistles. Can I make this work using iworks? Or do the big bucks need to be spent for office? Again the primary issue is compatibility.
I am aware that microsoft AND apple are about to release new versions of their programs.
Suggestions?
Richard on August 6th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Anytime you talk Microsoft there are a couple of things you have to keep in mind. First, Microsoft holds the lion’s share of the OS market (by way of Windows) not because they have a superior product, but due to a business decision by Apple, over thirty years ago, not to allow cloning. This lead to a ever escalating level of competition in the IBM base PC market, which in turn lead to steadily declining prices, and quality, the two go hand in hand. The vast majority of personal computers in the world are used essentially as toys, and thus, the cheaper the better and that is all the average consumer looks at, price. Microsoft has maintained their market share, not by delivering a ever improving product, but buy crushing anyone who dares try and compete with them and diligently working to insure there products will interface with as little as possible. This effectively forces people to use their products.
The reality is that Microsoft products, in all their incarnations, are some of the worst on the planet and their customer service is as equally dismal. If you have any doubts about this consider that there is a multimillion-dollar industry, commonly referred to as IT, that exists due to the flaws in Windows and other MS products. The problem is that MS have done such a good job of crushing the competition with lawsuits and money there are few choices available and very few consumers are aware of just how bad MS products are.
Microsoft is the poster child for the corrupt, greedy, socially degenerate, corporation and I for one will do whatever I can to not support it.
Terrin on September 20th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
I use Office for the Mac for one reason. Compatibility. With Office 2008, Microsoft broke compatibility by taking away support for Macros. This kills the essential purpose of Office for the Mac, to maintain compatibility across platforms. Macs will now have a hard time making inroads into the corporate world. If you are only looking for an application that is Mac like, surely there are better options then Office. Macs users would be better served to have Microsoft merely port the Windows version of Office to the Mac. Being Mac like is less important then feature parity.
jonmex on October 20th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
I will remain Microsoft free on my Mac systems.
iWork 08 is fine and easier (for me) to use than all MS OFFICE apps.
Martin on March 26th, 2008 at 6:56 am
Unfortunately, people at work (university) needs MS Office installed. Granted, they could use neoOffice instead, but these people are a stagnant bunch. However, I install iWork 08 at all the new macs anyway, since the cost is miniscule – we pay approx 11 euro for iWork, but 110 euro for office 2008. No-one in their right mind could say that it is 10 times better, though. I’m hoping that some users will find the benefits in using Keynote over PP over time.
FreeRange on April 26th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
What are you people talking about, Office 2008 for the Mac SUCKS!!!!!! Spellcheck doesn’t work in my PPT, and th bullet points in Word still have the same bug they’ve always had – one bullet will go bold and you can’t get it to change even though you’ve un-bolded everything, you know the one. How the h_ll can this bug still be in there after all these years and versions – this bloatwear still sucks the big one!!!!
Zhenlei Cai on May 5th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
I don’t want to be screwed again by M$. Bought Office 2004 3 years ago, the same key won’t install once I changed hard drive. Spent $10 and got a new key from M$, that key again failed to work when I need to reinstall due to upgrading to Leopard. Called M$ this morning they disconnected me while transfering to their “Install Support” department. F M$!
zlatan24 on August 24th, 2008 at 3:12 am
I heard about not bad application-pst file reader,
can read corrupted files of PST and OST format and save emails, works with all supported versions of Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Windows, supports data extraction as separate files in *.eml, *.vcf and *.txt format, they will be placed to any folder upon your choice, the size of every single output PST file will not exceed 1Gb, can work with very large files,is so easy, that even inexperienced users can easily work with this program.
Alvira Khan on September 7th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
The article provides an interesting perspective.
Alvira Khan
Florida Atlantic University
FAU Alumna
Maria on January 30th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
I just de-installed Office 2008 on my computer and re-installed Office 2004. I hated the changes to the user interface! It was cumbersome and not user-friendly. Entourage did not allow synchronization to my PDA except through ical. It royally messed my calendar on Entourage. I finally ditched Entourage completely and am using iCal and Address Book.
It is ok to make it compatible with the open xml format, but why make dramatic changes to the user interface?
From a very unhappy Office 2008 user
PS I am now considering switching to iWorks
Mike on February 5th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
I just got a MacBook Pro for work, with Office 2008 installed. It SUCKS! Working on a document today (in .doc format… I have to circulate it to people who don’t work in .docx yet…), and no less than SIX TIMES, Word had to shutdown “unexpectedly” and recover the document… into .docx format no less. I was a Use Case document I was reviewing. I had to save after every single change I made to avoid a crash that would lose my work… the autosaves weren’t enough to capture everything. NeoOffice eh? Worth a look…
Laoinjo on November 5th, 2009 at 7:17 am
If you are working in a multicorp environment the only thing that really matters is file format compatibility. OpenOffice is ruled out because it produces a different result than MS Office, the same goes for iwork. For me the question is:
Is the MS office for Mac compatible enough with windows MS office?
Can I finally stop using virtual box – XP – MS Office and run Mac MS Office instead?
I am working as a Linux/Unix technician and I hate MS by default. But as long I want to get any contracts at all I have to be 100% MS Office compatible, that is reality. I have read hundreds of reviews but none has answered the vital question. In the end of the day, will the produced documents show up exactly the same if my costumer open them in Windows whateverversion MS Office? Regardless if I use doc, docx, xls or xlsx?