[kboone34]

Just purchase office or any other Windows software you would like to run. All you need is an "Intel" Mac and CrossOverMac

[griffman]

Which is precisely the point of my article: by making this change, Microsoft is (a) killing Mac Office, and (b) driving people to spend their money on Windows software. Hardly a great message for Mac users -- and not functional at all for PowerPC users.
My point was not that there aren't workarounds -- I mentioned Parallels and Office XP in the article. The point is that this move is going to give Microsoft the excuse it needs to kill Mac Office, and along with it, the MacBU, and force everyone to buy even more (activation required!) Windows software.
-rob.

[haim]

Like Rob, I too am a Corporate Finance guy (Big 4 accounting firm)
Most of our modelling is done in straight Excel - no macros. But one of our divisions (the financial modelling crew funnilly enought) develop lots of macros through programming in VBA. Monte Carlo and senistivity analysis, option valuations etc.
OK, so we are at the extreme end.
But if I want to use the add in prepared by www.bpmglobal.com then I need Parallels.
I think this will limit the Mac version quite severely for "power users".
$0.02

[DocMacPS]

12 years of Mac Consulting and several thousand clients later: not a SINGLE client has ever raised the issue of VB macros. Ever! Heck, even with the advent of AUTOMATOR in Tiger - not a SINGLE client has ever mentioned or asked about it! It may be critical for select environments, but for the VAST majority of users I encounter, not a single one of them even knows or cares. It's just NOT on thier radar.
Apple is a CONSUMER products company. And Office meets the needs of 99+% of consumers. To sound the 'Death Knell' and paint the future black is just a myopic view from a Corporate, Geek and Programmer perspective that doesn't resonate with the majority of Apple's customers. As long as Word makes a great 'Typewriter' for A-Z, and Excel handles 0-9 and makes a great 'Calculator' - it will sell and meet the needs of the MAJORITY of users for eons to come...

[MacAdict]

Sounds like if I ever have to buy a new Offic version, it will be a Windoze one, run using whatever Mac Wine software turns out to be best.
Wine runs Office flawlessly. Please, do not give Micro$oft more money than nessesary by buying a copy of Windoze.

[Ockham]

PeterG: You're behind the curve on this one. I work in Massachusetts Government and I can tell you that the effort to abandon MS Office has pretty much been scratched. Interestingly enough, one of the biggest reasons it was scratched is because of Excel and associated specialized functions and VBA and the interoperability with OpenOffice and other Open Source office varieties. Another big reason is the MS support for folks with disabilities versus other offerings but since we're talking VBA, I'll leave that issue for another day.
Here's the deal: There are a few things things that government does bigger than anyone else, two in particular. Finance and Construction. There is one piece of software that is used by each more than any other software. Excel.
When the move to OpenOffice was being floated, and for a short time field tested, there was a HUGE outcry from the collective Finance and Engineering departments across state government. The fact is, there is not a single Open Source Office variant out there that can claim 100% compatibility with Excel's specialized functions and VBA automation. Frankly, there is not a single spreadsheet program out there that can even come close to Excel if you are a power user.
When you are doing billions of dollars in engineering and construction per year, you use a lot of engineering and finance spreadsheets. You also need to exchange these with consultants and contractors in the private sector and other agencies. In my own agency, the deal breaker came when we found out that a particular spreadsheet would no longer work with OpenOffice. This was a very complex spreadsheet used in Engineering to track projects with heavy VBA functions and more than a few customized functions. When it would not work, and was not able to be converted to a useable form, we advocated hard for keeping MS Office and Excel. So did a lot of other agencies.
Ultimately though, it was the collective finance departments that sealed the deal. They love their Excel, and they control the bank account.
The loss of VBA is a HUGE loss for Mac:Office. The Mac is big in a lot of scientific and engineering sectors, especially biotech. Office, and specifically Excel, is bigger.

[fortran_lives]

The lack of good cross platform compaibility with Office VB already put Office 2004 VB in the "lousy" pile. Any serious programmer would never use Office 2004 VB when he/she could use Xcode, or for that matter, even ancient tools like MPW. Hey!! Running fortran under OS 9 Classic provides more functionality than Office 2004 VB.
Bottom line, I use Excel with complex VB macros, coded by your friendly FEMA USA government. This code runs normally under windows, but completely trashes excel (zillions of compile errors and other VB glitches) when I open it under Mac OS Office 2004. Since FEMA will not change the code, I have to run Excel under Parallels.
With Intel Mac, I have decided to drop Entourage and use Mail. Two years ago, I dropped Powerpoint for Keynote. Both Mail and Keynote have been pleasant long term surprises. The search capability of Mail completely trounces Entourage. Keynote presentations still get more "wow" than Powerpoint ones. Now there are only two apps useful left in Office, and both WORD and EXCEL (buggy et al) run quite adequately under Rosetta. The reality is that Microsoft will have a hard time convincing me tio upgrade from Office 2004 to Office 2007, unless it is a) really cheap or b) gives me some extra functionality that I can use. Losing the buggy-lousy VB mplmentation on the mac will not be missed by me, as it is already too buggy to use in a cross-platform world. I regularly use WORD files over 100 MB and excel files over 30 MB, and the Rosetta Office 2004 has yet to hiccup using these monster files (amazing - than you Apple).
Bottom line. Apple (or whomever), please give us a WORD and EXCEL replacement, or Microsoft, just port the programs asap and be done with it. Also, Apple, please give us a native access to Intel-based code (buy Parallel, or do whatever). Let me and others run Autocad, ArcGis and other tools native under a mac, and you will sell a lot more Mac boxes.

[Ockham]

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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....

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I give up. Where can I find information on this "Cohercy Mode?" I've Googled it and searched the Parallels documentation but can find no reference to it. Link please?

[Abecedaria]

I've been in a large corporate environment for a long time and we've always had SERIOUS problems with compatibility between Mac and PC versions of Microsoft applications. Be it IE, Outlook/Enourage, or Office; it's a problem that Microsoft will never solve. We have over 1000 Macs and over 10,000 PC's in our organization and almost all of the cross platform issues are because of Microsoft proprietary code or missing Mac features in MS products.
Our IT dept finally has a solution: give every Mac a copy of XP, Parallels, and whatever PC app is required. I can see us in a situation where video-conferencing, media streaming, office apps, web browser, and email are all run this way. At some point, you've got to ask, "Why bother have a Mac at all? Just to run Adobe apps? For iLife? Final Cut Pro?"
All the while we have Apple stating that, "We're a Consumer company, not an Enterprise company" Yeah, well, there are a LOT of corporate users running Macs for design purposes and Apple stands to lose a huge amount of business by ignoring them.
Microsoft will never give Mac users what they need in a corporate environment so it's up to Apple. I agree with those who say that iWork needs to hit the big time with Office compatibility, perhaps even with Microsoft's blessing. Apple Mail/iCal also need to be compatible with Exchange.
Now if we could only do something to kill Active-X once and for all....
abc

[haim]

Coherence mode: From build 3306 of Parallels
http://forum.paralle...thread5997.html

Review here: http://www.oreillyne...06/12/parallelsdesktopformacbeta.html

[MacTel]

Quote:

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All the while we have Apple stating that, "We're a Consumer company, not an Enterprise company" Yeah, well, there are a LOT of corporate users running Macs for design purposes and Apple stands to lose a huge amount of business by ignoring them.

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Your dismissing Xserve, Xserve RAID, Xsan, the Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, and all the pro applications. Those are not consumer products. Apple walks a fine line because not all of the pieces are in place for them to tell M$ and Adobe to kiss their back-ends.
Leopard will bring more robust corporate features to both the client and server side. Staying with the spirit of this thread, MacWorld will bring the spreadsheet application to iWork 07. iWork 06 added charting and tables with spreadsheet like functionality, so you know they've been working on getting a spreadsheet application out the door. It will integrate fully with the rest of the iWork (and iLife) applications. I will definitely upgrade to iWork 07 just for that application. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[tmedia1]

I hate to say it, but I've seen this coming for a long time. The switch to Intel processors was essential to the future of the Mac and this article illustrates one of those many reasons. Office on the Mac has always been intentionally handicapped by MS for many years. The casual user may not notice it, but for anyone who needs full cross platform compatibiltiy and makes a living with these apps, its so obvious. They (MS) will never build the Mac version on parity to Windows (lest they kill their own OS).
Unfortunely, I will not be running the next MAC version of Office. I instead will run the Office for Windows version via Parallels (which I'm already doing) or Bootcamp or better yet, WINE. Watching how this situation has been panning out in the last 2 years, I'm really hoping there will be an announcment at Macworld that WINE or something similar is built into Leopard so we can run Windows apps directly within OSX. Otherwise, thank goodness for Parallels and bootcamp. Sorry, but MS is MS, they will never play nice with Apple and I doubt the DOJ will be of much help this time.

[goron]

Quote:

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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. <a href="/2006/12/opinion/microsoft/index.php">[more]</a>

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As a software developer, I can only applaud the demise of the toy that is Visual Basic... lets just hope they kill it off in the Windows version of office too.
Seriously though, I don't see this as that big a problem. Already, I can't use many (important ones from my accountant) Windows-sourced Office documents with the Mac due to incompatibilities, and at work, we have Office plug-ins to ensure corporate doc sharing/creation, and these have no analogue on the Mac.
So for these cases, I use Parallels, XP and a HUP (Home Use Program) copy of Windows Office (cost ~ US$20).
I actually prefer it that way: I don't want my home machine cluttered with work-related rubbish :-)

[tmedia1]

Quote:

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Quote:

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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. <a href="/2006/12/opinion/microsoft/index.php">[more]</a>

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As a software developer, I can only applaud the demise of the toy that is Visual Basic... lets just hope they kill it off in the Windows version of office too.
Seriously though, I don't see this as that big a problem. Already, I can't use many (important ones from my accountant) Windows-sourced Office documents with the Mac due to incompatibilities, and at work, we have Office plug-ins to ensure corporate doc sharing/creation, and these have no analogue on the Mac.
So for these cases, I use Parallels, XP and a HUP (Home Use Program) copy of Windows Office (cost ~ US$20).
I actually prefer it that way: I don't want my home machine cluttered with work-related rubbish :-)

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Where can I get this $20 Home use version of Office? I had to shell out $200