7 ms·

Hasn't Office always been available for the Mac?

stingraycharles 13y ago
I believe that is more because of Apple than because of Microsoft. Apple has a history of being pretty convincing towards these crucial applications. I believe Microsoft got out of a anti-trust suit from Apple if they agreed to release Office for Mac. And Apple has a love/hate relationship with Adobe too, in a similar way. It's kind of funny, though. Jobs was pragmatic enough to realize that it was better to get Microsoft to "open up" than to win the lawsuit. It's hard to say, but I definitely think it paid off.
kyllo 13y ago
In a limited way. Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, and Communicator (i/o Lync) are available for Mac, but they are not even close to the Windows versions in terms of feature parity. VBA support has been on-and-off. Access, Infopath, and Publisher are not available at all. They're written in Cocoa and on a different release cycle. There is no Office for Mac 2013, current version is 2011.
- selectodude 13y ago
  OneNote for Mac just came out, and it's really good. So they're obviously doing something in the MacBU.
- jbrooksuk 13y ago
  With One Note for Mac and now this, I'm actually excited for the next release of Office for Mac, it's looking like it's going to be really good! I'm sick of Outlook on OSX (it's the only Office app I use), I can add rules, but I can't add notifications so I miss all of my emails. Now I've turned it off I have to manually order things. On top of that I'm stuck with Calibri as the default font. The default can't be changed.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Mac Office has often surpassed Win Office in many ways; in usability for example. It is at least a different product, not better or worse.
  - rahimnathwani 13y ago
    "It is at least a different product, not better or worse." The very fact that it's different makes it worse for me. I can use Excel 2010 for Windows without thinking about the tool. Small differences like startup behaviour, position of things on the ribbon, and keyboard shortcut force me to think about how to use Excel for Mac, rather than focusing on the task at hand. Some, but not all, of this is down to differences in the platform and platform-specific design conventions.
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      You should really look into a version of Word called 6.0 for Windows and Mac. Thankfully, Excel 6.0 was skipped for the Mac.
- ghshephard 13y ago
  For 95%+ of their user base, Word, Powerpoint and Excel have feature parity on the Mac/Windows. Outlook and Lync are significantly superior on the Windows Platform. Excel had a pretty nasty regression on the Macintosh in Office 2004/2008 (to the point at which I no longer used it on the Mac in 2008, it was pretty horrid) - but they returned it to (mostly) feature parity as of Office 2011. Sharepoint, on the other hand, is complete crap on a Macintosh. It's almost like it's been designed to be bad.
  - threeseed 13y ago
    For 95% of their user base Outlook for Mac is also at feature parity. I've been using it in enterprise for years and never found a missing feature.
jusben1369 13y ago
It has. And it was pretty good. Ironically at the time it was made available it was part of MSFT's injection of cash into a near death APPL and a way for MSFT to get the monopoly police off their back (See we are supporting another platform! wink wink) My how times have changed.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Microsoft made Office for the mac long before that deal was made, and it was only done as a show of confidence for the Mac platform; Apple didn't really need the money (they had more than few billion in the bank, were still profitable, and far from death). To paraphrase Mark Twain, "news of Apple's impending death had been greatly exaggerated."
- BugBrother 13y ago
  >> part of MSFT's injection of cash into a near death APPL and a way for MSFT to get the monopoly police off their back Afaik, it was a deal that Jobs made (with some other parts) because Microsoft had been found to have code in its Windows' video software that came from Quicktime. I googled this: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/stop-the-lies-the-day-that-microsoft-saved-apple/7036 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/stop-the-lies-the-day-that-m...
  - jusben1369 13y ago
    "At the 1997 Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would be entering into a partnership with Microsoft. Included in this was a five-year commitment from Microsoft to release Microsoft Office for Macintosh as well as a US$150 million investment in Apple." - People forget back then that if MSFT dropped Office support for Apple it would have been a significant blow. - Then Steve Jobs himself. I think these specifics support my initial comment. "If we want to move forward and see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go of a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. And if others are going to help us that's great, because we need all the help we can get, and if we screw up and we don't do a good job, it's not somebody else's fault, it's our fault. So I think that is a very important perspective. If we want Microsoft Office on the Mac, we better treat the company that puts it out with a little bit of gratitude; we like their software. So, the era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over as far as I'm concerned. This is about getting Apple healthy, this is about Apple being able to make incredibly great contributions to the industry and to get healthy and prosper again."
r00fus 13y ago
Yes, in fact, before Windows even existed, the 1.0 version of Word for Mac was released the same year the Mac debuted (1984).

I believe that is more because of Apple than because of Microsoft. Apple has a history of being pretty convincing towards these crucial applications. I believe Microsoft got out of a anti-trust suit from Apple if they agreed to release Office for Mac. And Apple has a love/hate relationship with Adobe too, in a similar way. It's kind of funny, though. Jobs was pragmatic enough to realize that it was better to get Microsoft to "open up" than to win the lawsuit. It's hard to say, but I definitely think it paid off.

kyllo 13y ago

In a limited way. Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, and Communicator (i/o Lync) are available for Mac, but they are not even close to the Windows versions in terms of feature parity. VBA support has been on-and-off. Access, Infopath, and Publisher are not available at all. They're written in Cocoa and on a different release cycle. There is no Office for Mac 2013, current version is 2011.

selectodude 13y ago
OneNote for Mac just came out, and it's really good. So they're obviously doing something in the MacBU.
jbrooksuk 13y ago
With One Note for Mac and now this, I'm actually excited for the next release of Office for Mac, it's looking like it's going to be really good! I'm sick of Outlook on OSX (it's the only Office app I use), I can add rules, but I can't add notifications so I miss all of my emails. Now I've turned it off I have to manually order things. On top of that I'm stuck with Calibri as the default font. The default can't be changed.
seanmcdirmid 13y ago
Mac Office has often surpassed Win Office in many ways; in usability for example. It is at least a different product, not better or worse.
- rahimnathwani 13y ago
  "It is at least a different product, not better or worse." The very fact that it's different makes it worse for me. I can use Excel 2010 for Windows without thinking about the tool. Small differences like startup behaviour, position of things on the ribbon, and keyboard shortcut force me to think about how to use Excel for Mac, rather than focusing on the task at hand. Some, but not all, of this is down to differences in the platform and platform-specific design conventions.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    You should really look into a version of Word called 6.0 for Windows and Mac. Thankfully, Excel 6.0 was skipped for the Mac.
ghshephard 13y ago
For 95%+ of their user base, Word, Powerpoint and Excel have feature parity on the Mac/Windows. Outlook and Lync are significantly superior on the Windows Platform. Excel had a pretty nasty regression on the Macintosh in Office 2004/2008 (to the point at which I no longer used it on the Mac in 2008, it was pretty horrid) - but they returned it to (mostly) feature parity as of Office 2011. Sharepoint, on the other hand, is complete crap on a Macintosh. It's almost like it's been designed to be bad.
- threeseed 13y ago
  For 95% of their user base Outlook for Mac is also at feature parity. I've been using it in enterprise for years and never found a missing feature.

jusben1369 13y ago

It has. And it was pretty good. Ironically at the time it was made available it was part of MSFT's injection of cash into a near death APPL and a way for MSFT to get the monopoly police off their back (See we are supporting another platform! wink wink) My how times have changed.

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
Microsoft made Office for the mac long before that deal was made, and it was only done as a show of confidence for the Mac platform; Apple didn't really need the money (they had more than few billion in the bank, were still profitable, and far from death). To paraphrase Mark Twain, "news of Apple's impending death had been greatly exaggerated."
BugBrother 13y ago
>> part of MSFT's injection of cash into a near death APPL and a way for MSFT to get the monopoly police off their back Afaik, it was a deal that Jobs made (with some other parts) because Microsoft had been found to have code in its Windows' video software that came from Quicktime. I googled this: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/stop-the-lies-the-day-that-microsoft-saved-apple/7036 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/stop-the-lies-the-day-that-m...
- jusben1369 13y ago
  "At the 1997 Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would be entering into a partnership with Microsoft. Included in this was a five-year commitment from Microsoft to release Microsoft Office for Macintosh as well as a US$150 million investment in Apple." - People forget back then that if MSFT dropped Office support for Apple it would have been a significant blow. - Then Steve Jobs himself. I think these specifics support my initial comment. "If we want to move forward and see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go of a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. And if others are going to help us that's great, because we need all the help we can get, and if we screw up and we don't do a good job, it's not somebody else's fault, it's our fault. So I think that is a very important perspective. If we want Microsoft Office on the Mac, we better treat the company that puts it out with a little bit of gratitude; we like their software. So, the era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over as far as I'm concerned. This is about getting Apple healthy, this is about Apple being able to make incredibly great contributions to the industry and to get healthy and prosper again."

r00fus 13y ago

Yes, in fact, before Windows even existed, the 1.0 version of Word for Mac was released the same year the Mac debuted (1984).