ParisLemon » What the Hell is Taking Microsoft So Long with the New Office for Mac?

What the Hell is Taking Microsoft So Long with the New Office for Mac?

Maybe it’s a stupid question because it is Microsoft after all and the platform is the Mac, but what in the hell is taking them so long for new version of Office?

Today Microsoft announced they had to delay the release of Office 2008 until January – this comes just a month and a half after they announced they were right on schedule for the “second-half” of 2007. They have not had a new version of the software since Office 2004 for Mac.

Almost every other App available for OS X has been Universal (that is, working on both the old G4 and G5 chips on top of the newer Intel ones) for a long time now, but not good old Office. Even Photoshop is Universal – is Microsoft Office really more complicated to code than Photoshop?

I mean Microsoft has an entire division (MacBU which, coincidentally has one of the worst official websites I’ve ever seen for a large company) created especially to develop Office for the Mac and they can’t get it done within a reasonable time frame? If Apple would ever come out with iWork ‘08 (could be coming at the up coming Apple Event on August 7th), maybe they could take actually take some business away from a piece of 4-year-old software.

4 years. Entire operating systems are written in less time. At least Apple ones anyway.

Post by MG Siegler on 08/02/07
Comments

Anonymous

Yeah but with the quality of openoffice these days, does it really matter?

Disclaimer: not a mac user but I have been using oo on linux/windows..

MG Siegler

Point well taken. Don't forget about Google Docs & Spreadsheets which I now find myself using more and more...

Anonymous

Even without the delay Microsoft would be late. In marketing speak, "second half of 2007" means the very end of the year. "We had hoped to hit the Christmas selling season," Craig Eisler told CNet. Office will ship in January instead of October-December, in itself it's not that important, but the 3-month delay comes on top of the lateness. The Intel switch was announced 2 years ago, the Adobe Creative Suite was delayed until the next major revision for instance, but CS3 finally shipped last April. And Microsoft's deadline was Christmas 2007?

As an aside, Office for the Mac seems to be profitable but the Mac version hasn't had an upgrade since Office 2004. This is kinda lame:

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/02/ap3979609.html

"Sales of the Mac versions made up about 20 percent of dollars spent on Office at U.S. retail stores and Web sites in 2006, up from 4 percent in 2001. "Even though Microsoft is losing that operating system sale, they're still keeping that Office sale," noted Chris Swenson, an NPD analyst."

J. Smith

I have a Microsoft-free zone complete with a logo to irritate the MS fanbois. I use OpenOffice and am satisfied with its performance with MS office docs as well as creating new ones.

In addition, I use The Gimp for photo editing and VLC for media files. It seems that open-source software is the way to go. I don't miss the pay apps at all.