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Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Released
kylea writes "Office 2004 for Mac OS X has finally been released. From the Apple page: The latest improvements to the Office productivity suite promise new approaches to create, manage and distribute your projects. New features and tools in the programs help you get work done more efficiently. And now you can extend your reach beyond Office with greatly improved AppleScript support."
This is due to a lack of both Exchange server support and .NET technologies on the Apple platform.
Their answer? Run XP. Defeats the purpose of getting an Apple to begin with if you ask me.
Stick with the Mono project for .NET compatibility, and wait for a OS X Native Open Office port while using Appleworks in the mean time.
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
The single biggest block to my using Entourage for my email rather than Mail.app is the fact that Office X did not integrate at all with OS X's built in address book or calendaring functionality. While I can live without iCal integration (maybe) the plain fact is that I'm damn sick of massaging my address book data every time I need to use it somewhere else - usually because MS has stupid import/export options. Can anyone using the new version tell me if Office talks to the system Address Book, and if so, how well it does so? I like syncing my Palm directly to the System (iSync) and hence to .mac, rather than to a MS sandbox and then having to pry my data out of there with a crowbar.
Now, there may be very good reason(s) why the MacBU chose not to integrate with the system PIM services (and yes, I know Office X predated stable versions of those services!). If that's the case, an informed explanation of why this is so would also be much appreciated.
Thank you!
A hero is someone who knows when to run away. I am a hero. -Trent the Uncatchable
Word = TextEdit (reads/writes Word files)
PowerPoint = Keynote (reads/writes Powerpoints)
Entourage = Mail/Address Book/iSync (I will never give up my Bluetooth)
Excel = Mariner Calc
Two of those you have to buy. Keynote is $100 CDN, Mariner Calc is around $160. Panther was around the same and includes the rest. This is all cheaper - combined - than the standalone version of Word, last I checked.
Don't shell out the massive cash for Office Mac unless you really think you need it. Mostly what I deal with day-to-day is Word and PP files, and I do just fine with the above.
Sure, TextEdit isn't Word, but on the other hand.. it isn't Word, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Why would you spend thousands of dollars on a proprietary hardware/software combination only to top it off with a poormans office solution? That's very inconsistent.
I can appreciate your argument about most people not needing certain features but price aside, that seems to be the only argument against microsoft office. There are numerous open source and commercial alternatives that offer interesting subsets of features that are good enough solutions for most people. Some alternatives even have features that are better than the ms office equivalent. At the end of the day however, the full set of features found in ms office is pretty much unrivalled by any other product or collection of products.
People with macs like to pay for quality so it would be natural for them to consider ms office 2004. MS seems to have pulled of some nice improvements over the previous version. Compatibility is good, it integrates with OS X better than most other office suits. It's hard not to like it if you have the money and a taste for quality hardware & software.
Jilles