may be a real need for NeoOffice some day

[sandbox]

"Macworld features an article stating that the next version of Office for the Mac will not include Visual Basic scripting. From the article: 'Microsoft Office isn't among the apps that will run natively on Intel-based Macs — and it won't be until the latter half of 2007, according to media reports. But when it does ship, Office will apparently be missing a feature so vital to cross-platform compatibility that I believe it will be the beginning of the end for the Mac version of the productivity suite...'"
http://apple.slashdot.org/

Microsoft makes a Basic mistake with Office 2007
Dropping support for Visual Basic scripting makes Office suite DOA

By Rob Griffiths

Microsoft Office isn’t among the apps that will run natively on Intel-based Macs—and it won’t be until the latter half of 2007, according to media reports. But when it does ship, Office will apparently be missing a feature so vital to cross-platform compatibility that I believe it will be the beginning of the end for the Mac version of the productivity suite.

http://www.macworld.com/2006/12/opinion/microsoft/

[kimmer]

The "news" doesn't surprise me.

I switched to NeoOffice ages ago. I kept M$Word for a bit, thinking I really needed it, then it kept crashing and I finally removed all the pieces and parts I could find from my drive. (I'm sure there are pieces and parts still here ... but not many).

Anyhow, I like NeoOffice very much. I run both the older version and the Beta version. Sneakers runs X11 and runs Open Office, which he likes very much. All of them allow the user to save as a Word doc if need be.

So M$Word ... *yawn*

[sandbox]

Kimmer, if one just searches the software section of Apple you’ll notice an absence of MS products that were at one time promoted and highly visible. The abandonment of AppleWorks puts many in a precarious position and I suspect Apple as well, without an in-house software option for a basic computer function.

Having the option of saving as a word or excel document is not like having the full function of the software, anymore than having PDF viewer as an alternative to the full Acrobat program. For those who use the Office Suite and have built their business records upon it, this could be a major disruption and another reason to avoid a Mac.

I trusted Apple with appleworks and they dropped it and promoted MS Office, I shifted records to Office and found it to be so much more convenient when corresponding in the business world. Today I’m challenged again with the possibility that Apple will no longer have a reliable Office Suite that will smoothly communicate with the majority of computers in the world. The fact that Apple is not business friendly surfaces once again.

I do have Mariner, OpenOffice and NeoOffice, and Appleworks but there are documents that we receive from government agencies or medical facilities for example, formatted in MS Office PC that will not format properly in anything other than Ms Office for Mac on an apple computer.

MS Office is the standard and Apple needs it if they expect the business community to take them seriously. http://www.apple.com/software/

[kimmer]

QUOTE

I do have Mariner, OpenOffice and NeoOffice, and Appleworks but there are documents that we receive from government agencies or medical facilities for example, formatted in MS Office PC that will not format properly in anything other than Ms Office for Mac on an apple computer.

I admit I didn't approach it from your business point of view, and I didn't know of any probs you (and others) might face. I've always been able to open docs from win folks, with the exception of powerpoint presentations, and I never considered that an issue.

How does Apple go about getting MS to produce what they need? I'm not sure they can.

[Paddy]

From what I've read (and it's been fairly extensive, both back in August, and again today) it's not the basic functions of Office that will be affected with the next Mac version - it's the Visual Basic macros, which many businesses use extensively, mostly in Excel. The Mac Business Unit has chosen not to port this to Intel, citing the time it would take and the years of delays it would involve, given that the code is all PPC and creaky in the extreme - on the PC side as well. The other part of this equation is the oft-repeated statement that Microsoft will be abandoning Visual Basic scripting on the PC side anyway - that Office 2007 is likely the last version to include it (and even then, it isn't installed by default - it's a separate install).

So...the question is - will they indeed abandon it in favor of .net solutions, and if so, will all of this be moot and will there still be a viable, compatible version of Office for Mac? And what is everyone who needs that compatibility supposed to do in the mean time? Things can take a long time to change in the business world. What sort of incompatibilities will there be between Office:Mac 2004 and Office 2007 for Windows, should Mac users choose not to upgrade?

NeoOffice is not a solution for those wishing to run macros - it doesn't do VB.

Of course, many have responded with "well, just buy the PC version of Office 2007 and run it in Parallels or BootCamp" - which is all very well in the short term, if you happen to have an Intel Mac. Costly though - and you're forking over more of your hard-earned cash to M$. It's far from a satisfactory solution for many, many people.

And what if other software producers like Adobe start pulling this on us? Then where are we? Granted - Adobe relies much more heavily on Mac users than M$ does, but one cannot deny the attractiveness of developing for only one platform!

Meanwhile, it's going to be interesting to see where things like Google Docs go...(anyone used it yet?)

And BTW - Microsoft got approval for OpenXML as an international standard today:

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20061207/D8LS9NUG0.html

Apple backed them in this effort - ya think maybe they'd return the favor???

[sandbox]

Thanks Paddy, the XML decision is good to know.  

kimmer the openoffice project is great until you need something it doesn't have then it loses it's value. There needs to be a standard here. Now that Appleworks has gone belly-up and Apple promoted MS Office, it's Apples burden to make sure that the followers of their suggestion to buy Office 2004 Professional Edition @ a cost of $499.00 do whatever they need to do to make this product the standard. The ripple effect through the industry, if they fail, will be felt right into their iPOD.

[pendragon]

Thanks from me too Paddy.

Since I must use Office (for work), my knowing what's happening is crucial to keeping my wife in the style in which she has grown accustomed.