I read an article about how disorganized Microsoft is. There are teams on other sides of the world who don't even know they're working on the same project!

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January 2008 is actually five months away. I had to count on my fingers but I'm pretty sure it's not eight months.

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Well, I'm not sure I should wait for it, anyway...
Agreed, the current Office/Mac is simply TERRIBLE, and far from useable on an Intel Mac due to its astonishing lack of any performance. But this makes it a lot easier to use Office/Win in Parallels, which is even starting faster in a whole than one part of Office/Mac.
Adding the never solved incompatibility-issues, I think I'll stick to Office/Win.

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Vista released: OS X and Linux market-share's go up.
Office 07 Released: OpenOffice and other alternatives market-share's go up.

Well, at least the 360 is a success...

(I mean that! despite the failure rate, the 360 is a great system)

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#4: Aren't the PS3 and Xbox being outsold by the Wii?

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finally microsoft realizes that it needs to be on every OS other than microsoft itself.
this is a major shift in perception and will go a long way in defining the next generation technology for users. http://www.clickindia.com

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>to make sure that the suite is up to snuff.

By "Up to snuff" they mean with macro languages that are totally incompatible with the Windows version.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2138349,00.asp

Idiots

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A US release of mid-Jan? So does that mean we're going to have to wait even longer in Europe?

I hope not — it's certainly not as if MS uses the time to change the menus to British English: we still have to pick a "color" rather than a "colour"!

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Oh good.

I'm actually sitting here at 2am working on '04 on an Intel iMac. Woulda gone to bed an hour ago, except Word has crashed three times on me tonight. Ironically, that kept me up long enough to learn that I'll have to put up with this crap for longer.

The only thing I hate more than Microsoft products is the fact that I'm forced to use them by people ignorant of alternatives.

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not really care anymore since most of us now use Google Docs for collaboration and neoOffice for local viewing.

I have to admit, the interface of MSO 08 is looks pretty.

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Ridiculous. But I guess that's what's to be expected of Microsoft.

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You mean people still use Office on the Mac? I thought everyone had switched to iWork or OO. Wow, had seriously believed Office for the Mac had been discontinued or something. Turns out, it's just being delayed.

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Personally, I always used Google Docs for the spreadsheet work, and NeoOffice - but having bought iWork recently (Pages is just lovely) I no longer have to use those alternative for anything but Excel. I wasn't about to go use Microsoft products on a Mac anyway.

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they need to fix messenger.

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Wait, Apple started shipping Intel-based Macs in January 2006 (forever ago, in the world of personal computers). EVERY OTHER DEVELOPER has made a successful port to Xcode and Universal Binaries, but it's going to take Microsoft 24 MONTHS to get theirs out (30 months if you include the 6-month development leadup from WWDC 05)?

There's no way that porting Office is any harder than Adobe porting all of its products, and lo and behold, we've had a Universal Binary Creative Suite for 3 months already. If Adobe can gets its crap together, what is Microsoft's problem?

I already didn't think the screenshots from Office 2008 looked all that wowing. The Mac BU has also revealed that Office 2008 won't have some of the cutting-edge features that Office 2007 for Windows has (but that it will have other "Mac-specific features" instead). In other words, we're waiting two and a half years for development of relatively minor enhancements (from a user's perspective) and a final porting of the code to be compatible with 2-year old computers?

I know the Mac BU guys try to play nice with the Mac community and play down the natural aggressiveness of that community towards Microsoft. But honestly, Mac BU, you're doing nothing but increasing my animosity of the company you work for by demonstrating the same lack of quality and commitment that makes every other product from that company so detestable to me (and I'm a full-time Windows Server admin).

In summary: Unbelievable delay.

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This is actually a good thing. Craig Eisler is new the the MBU and is trying to get the house in order. Better to delay the release and produce a better piece of software than to meet an arbitrary deadline.

Also, try reading the comments from Craig's POV. I wouldn't be in a hurry to update the readers of tuaw with that attitude.

Craig: there are those of us who appreciate what you're doing there. I'll get get my MBU news from Mac Mojo from now on. ;)

.sly

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It's good that they come clean so early on. That said, I can't use Word (the application I use most from Office) on my Intel iMac. It's too slow and even with all patches it crashes like crazy.

For stuff I get from the Windows world I've switched to NeoOffice, which does the trick nicely, is free and Universal.

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Hmm, conveniently delayed until after the back-to-school buying season. With Vista's lackluster response from consumers and Apple's domination of the news and rising sales, does anyone *honestly* believe Microsoft doesn't intentionally delay and/or hobble their Mac software for strategic reasons?

Personally, I'm over Office and have been for awhile now. I'm just waiting for iWork 08, which hopefully will have a spreadsheet app (hurry up Apple).

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Did they ever decide to add back in VB support? If I recall that was an issue some around these parts were not too pleased with.

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Whenever MS gets around to punting out office '08, I'll still be using NeoOffice, which runs dandy on my MBP, can save documents in .doc format for my MS-tethered friends, and has the low low price of nothing at all. Given all these advantages over Office, I have a hard time being excited or even interested in what Microsoft is doing.

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