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MS announces Universal Office 2008 for Mac

updated 04:25 pm EST, Tue January 9, 2007

Office 2008 to ship in '07


Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit (Mac BU) today revealed that a new, Universal version of Office for Mac is slated for shipment in the second half of 2007. Office 2008 for Mac shares a new graphics engine with Office for Windows, and Office Art 2.0 enables users to add professionally designed graphics with one click. Office 2008 features a new user interface that introduces an Elements Gallery, emphasizing discoverability while providing quick access to tools as well as Mac-specific features within applications. Document Parts -- a tool that comes as part of the Elements Gallery -- enables users to simplify and automate some of the most common document tasks, such as adding a table of contents or headers and footers. [corrected]

Mac-only features include a publishing layout view to support layout-rich documents such as newsletters, fliers, and brochures; ledger sheets for handling common financial management tasks in Excel; and 'My Day' which allows users to track priorities while staying on top of daily activities. Mac BU will use the Office Open XML formats which were just approved in December by standards body Ecma International as an international standard, and in the spring Microsoft plans to release a public beta of the file format converters for Office 2004 for Mac, enabling users to read as well as write the new Office Open XML formats. The Mac BU plans to ship final versions of the converters six to eight weeks after Office 2008 for Mac launches.


by MacNN Staff

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 software, business software

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  1. wymer100

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Oct 2003

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    01/09, 10:27pm | report spam | Reply |

    wymer100

    Come on MS. Make sure you get VB support with Excel for Windows macros. I know that it might be tough to do, but it will sell a lot more upgrades.

  1. Jeronimo2000

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    Joined: Aug 2001

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    01/10, 12:53am | report spam | Reply |

    oh, that was fast.

    So MS delivers a Universal binary version of Office more than two years after Apple made the tools to create UB apps available to developers?

    That's... shockingly fast.

  1. fubar_this

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jul 2006

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    01/10, 05:40am | report spam | Reply |

    har har

    While I realize your comment was meant to be sarcastic, I don't expect you know how hard software development is. Apple basically f*cked the entire development community by dropping a bombshell, lying to everybody by saying developers have a year to make the transition and then announcing Intel machines 6 months early. Apple is one of *THE WORST* companies to develop software for, and it's not just the Mac's market share that keeps big name software like AutoCAD off the Mac (go to WWDC and get an Adobe employee drunk...in five minute's he'll be cursing Apple). Just because Steve Jobs says it's easy to port to Intel doesn't make it easy. As a person who works on a software project on the same scale as Microsoft Office, I can say that Adobe's and MS's task is daunting: re-testing millions of lines of code, porting non-conformant code to a new architecture, re-writing hundreds of thousands of lines of new code (some of which was probably in PowerPC assembly language, completely incompatible with Intel) and on top of that, adding new features because this bombshell came right in the middle of your project cycle. It takes all day to just COMPILE a project of that size. People need to get off of Adobe's and Microsoft's back. Just because they don't jump at Apple's beck and call doesn't mean they're lazy.

  1. Horsepoo!!!

    Banned

    Joined: Jun 2003

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    01/10, 09:26am | report spam | Reply |

    stfu fubar

    ...

  1. frankthetank966

    Grizzled Veteran

    Joined: Jun 2006

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    01/10, 11:57am | report spam | Reply |

    Thankfully

    I hope they add intel support. p.s. didn't MS say they weren't going to release Office for mac any longer?

  1. elroth

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jul 2006

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    01/10, 05:03pm | report spam | Reply |

    re: har har

    So you're complaining that Adobe and Microsoft now have to work for their profits? Of course they earned their positions by developing best-in-class software for the Mac; they also have reaped large rewards from the Mac. So now they have to spend a large amount of time (and some of the money they've earned from their Macintosh successes) to bring their products to the next generation of Macs. Of course it's a lot of work for them - and they will be handsomely rewarded for it. When the Universal products come out, there will be boatloads of sales. If they want the big profits, they can put the work into it (and hopefully improve the products at the same time, though I don't like the direction Microsoft is going with Office).

    I have more sympathy for smaller developers (large ones too) whose products don't have a built-in guarantee of success.

    To frankthetank: Microsoft signed a 5 year deal to continue developing Office for Mac last year (after the switch to Intel was announced).

  1. ebow

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Oct 2001

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    01/11, 05:19pm | report spam | Reply |

    Intermediate design?

    Ye gads! I hope this is an intermediate, incomplete interface. It looks like they took a fairly standard toolbar, mashed it on top of a limited ribbon (as in the ribbon using in Office 2007 for Windows), and left the Formatting Palette on the side, getting the worst of all worlds. Actually I'm staying fairly open to the ribbon they're using in Office 2007--I've read a lot of postings by the usability team, understand the goals of the implementation, and actually used it for a few minutes to help my company evaluate whether a training video eases the transition. Pretty much everything gets rolled into the ribbon. With *this* interface, though, things are everywhere, covering far too much of the screen. So, I have no choice but to conclude (for my own sanity) that this is not the final interface.

  1. Faceplant

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jan 2003

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    01/12, 09:16am | report spam | Reply |

    I only hope...

    ...that the new Word is snappy. That's all I care about. That, and why my wife calls the shower head Steve.

  1. chotty

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jan 2003

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    09/18, 06:44pm | report spam | Reply |

    Fliers

    maCNN relly needs to sift thru a spell checker. It is really getting out of hand...

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