[MW Forums]

When the next major upgrade to the Mac version of Office ships in 2007, it will do so without support for Visual Basic scripting. That's a decision that could come back to haunt the company, Rob Griffiths contends. more

[Schneb]

You know Apple is going to respond with an Office killer that WILL be killer.
Microsoft Office will be swirling about at the same time as Vista. Users will be slow to adapt, if at all. While Apple will be innovating their brains out with new and sleek hard/software offerings.

[NaOH]

While I agree with the author's analysis, I suspect someone at Microsoft sees it differently.
I have a nagging feeling that they believe that doing this, can allow Microsoft to claim to still be supporting the Mac with a version of Office, while at the same time effectively killing the Mac as a corporate machine.
This is a win-win situation for Microsoft when they look at the big picture.
It means that for every sale of a Mac version of Office they lose, they gain the sale of a copy of Windows as well as a copy of Office for Windows.
I'm pretty sure that could mean that they will eventually see no further justification in keeping the MBU running, as their flagship product is no longer selling well enough to justify the cost.
This may be a pessimistic view, but I wouldn't put it past Redmond to do this.

[MacTel]

Yep, it could be the last bell for Office for the Mac. We'll see what Apple offers at MacWorld to give us a clue on what's really going to happen. If Apple supports Microsoft's Office Open XML in iWork and include a separate spreadsheet application with iWork then the writing is on the wall and Office will be EOL'd after the next release.

[derbazooka]

I think Excel Mac is destined for a quiet, lonely death, like IE for Mac. There are few compelling reasons to upgrade to newer versions of Excel, particularly if we have converters for the OpenXML format. Mac users will just keep their ancient copy of Excel 2004 running under Rosetta (which will get peppier as hardware turns over) or start running the same version the rest of the world is through Parallels. I love my Mac but, when it comes to Excel, I really don't care what OS it's on. I just needs to work like I expect and play well with Windows users.

[jreedrock]

I am concerned about the demise of VB as well. I actually saw the original post and was tempted to reply then. We manage a lot of big and usually very dirty data sets. We have found that VB is a very quick and useful way to reformat and extract data. We have a whole library of queries and transformations that we run from either Word or Excel depedning on what we need to do.

[nmpike]

It doesn't matter if they kill Office for Mac... parallels saves the day... and I don't mean by running windows on a mac... using the new Parallels Cohercy mode, I literally run Office 2007 for Windows as a native Intel app....
Running parallels in cohercy mode with Office 2007 is FASTER than running Office 2004....
I won't buy the next version of Office for the Mac... I'm buying the windows version and running it in Parallels Cohercy mode.... literally, windows apps run like they are in finder, at twice the speed of a rosetta emulated app.

[osxfoundry]

I don't think it is a big issue and here is why:
- All new mac runs Intel and you can either boot in Windows or buy parallele and have Excel or MS Office run on top of your Mac.
This is a win-win for both party. MS does not have to support the Mac Office version anymore while Mac user can still run MS Office.
If Apple release a better Office suite (Page is OK, Keynote is great) with a great spreadSheet, then people will switch to iSheet or whatever name.
That app needs to have Excel features but on steroids.
Example: I'd like to be able to download Stock Quotes automatically in a spreadsheet and have Stock Analysis function built it so I can create Graph.
If the App is Automator aware, then i just let you imagine what else can be done.
Connecting straight to Mysql, Oracle or other DB is also required.
I'm sure Apple is not sleeping, don't worry for them.

[griffman]

Considering that but a small percentage of Macs in the universe are Intel-powered, Parallels and Win Office won't be a valid answer for the majority for quite a while.
It's not a win-win; it's a big win for Microsoft, and a lose for the OS X platform, as a key piece of software vanishes.
-rob.

[mjtomlin]

Microsoft is trying very hard to make "cross-compatibility" a thing of the past. It wants nothing more than to make every file somehow dependent on its Windows OS. The three big file types right now are, media, web, and office files. Each of these files when created on Windows usually have some Windows only specific data tied to it and it's only getting worse. They talk about open and "standards" while under-handedly shutting out all other platforms.
As a side note, I'd really like to see Apple put in some development hours on Wine. Would be great if they could somehow get the XP API layer running under OS X and break this Windows dependancy. Perhaps a top secret feature in Leopard? Would be nice... Steve says on stage, "Oh, and Leopard runs thousands of Windows XP software titles out of the box."

[doglesby]

The only reason I ever considered getting Office (specifically Word) was to use Macros from work.
For any Mac shop and home user, why spend all that money? If Apple pushes scriptability (and a spreadsheet, of course) in the next version of iWork, it will be a much cheaper solution.

[nmpike]

Quote:

---

Considering that but a small percentage of Macs in the universe are Intel-powered, Parallels and Win Office won't be a valid answer for the majority for quite a while.
It's not a win-win; it's a big win for Microsoft, and a lose for the OS X platform, as a key piece of software vanishes.
-rob.

---

Well, there is also NeoOffice (http://www.neooffice.org) - it has Intel and PPC versions.. and it's free.
It is native application and runs under OS X without needing Linux/Fink.... we've been testing it and it works quite well... and you can bet that NeoOffice will be compatible with Office 2007 files before a version of Office comes our for Mac from Microsoft that is.
mike

[nmpike]

One other thing to consider, is we are all jumping to the conclusion MS will kill Office for Mac...
Microsoft is greedy, they are not going to walk away from millions in revenue... so as long as it sells well, they will sell something... albeit maybe a piece of $hit.... but they will sell something.
But on the flipside, they may look at it this way.... they kill Office for Mac... mac users have to buy windows office AND a windows OS to run it in parallels....hmmm
we are all screwed,
mike

[PeterG]

openoffice
Responding to Rob's article,
Doesn't your article give Massachusetts Gov., more credence for wanting to move away from Windows by using OpenOffice?
If more States took the same approach wouldn't that change the entire argument?
and
After all the success by Apple I don't believe they would allow this to happen without a backup for the Mac, Windows & Linux OS's.
Peter