Hi Matt:
The people in here really have no idea about Microsoft's plans for future
releases. In the American legal environment, it's close to corporate
suicide to actually talk about what you "might" do in the future.
If you do decide to move to Pages or Open Office, I am sure we would all
like to hear a report of your experiences. My experience has been that
"Much of what I need can't be done in those packages." So for me the choice
is to change from software that's annoying but it gets the job done to
software that won't get the job done.
As to Microsoft's future plans...My guess is as good as anyone's: and it is
this:
1) The behaviour of Word's user interface will not be changed in Office
2008. Ever.
2) Office 2010 should work perfectly with OS 10.6.nn
3) In the future, it will be even more important to avoid installing an
operating system newer than the applications you want to run on it.
Of course people will do it, and for home computers, I am sure the result
will be entertaining. For computers used in business, the result will be
uncertain, and probably mean that something you need won't work.
It takes about 12 months to carefully research, design, build, test, and
market a major change to an existing piece of complex software. 24 months
to produce a new version.
If your company makes both the operating system and the application, you can
develop the two together, knowing what changes are coming in the operating
system, and knowing what functions the application uses.
If the operating system is made by a different company, and particularly if
that company is in competition with your company, then you will not know
exactly what's going to be in the operating system until it appears on the
shop shelves.
After that, it will take a minimum of 12 months to issue a proper fix for
anything that got broken.
And often, your research into the problem will find that "The changes
require that we redesign the application, and we can't afford to do that, so
the users will just have to wait until the next version."
I think that's pretty much the situation we're in now.
From a business point of view, a company can never afford all the resources
it would like to have to develop a new version of their product. So they
are very unlikely to take the resources they do have off the new project ‹
where they are developing software that will generate new sales ‹ to have
them work on the old product, which has already been sold and for which
their effort will produce zero revenue.
Imagine, for a moment, that they said "Yes, we have a fix for the Spaces and
Expose problems in Office 2008. It's an add-in that costs $237.98!" Would
YOU buy it? Do you know ANYONE who would?
The next version of Mac OS X will have a lot more 64-bit code in it. We can
expect the next version of Office to have fairly major changes to its
internal architecture to fit it for a 64-bit operating system. The world
looks quite different inside a 64-bit computer.
My strategy is to buy the computer that was designed for the operating
system. Then buy the operating system that was designed for the computer
when it comes out. Then to buy only applications that were designed for
both (i.e. Applications released 12 months after the operating system was
released).
I still get bitten from time to time.
In my business, I carefully test everything I need on the proposed new
environment before moving it into production. Yeah, I know, it takes all
the fun out of it!! But I have been in and around this industry for 40
years: the only thing I have learned that is as certain as Death and Taxes
is "You cannot believe computer companies or software companies: SOMETHING
won't work in the new one. Don't bet your business on it until you know
what that is..."
Cheers
I have the same bug-- even though all patches and updates are
installed-- and it drives me crazy. It means that I often close,
email, or edit (paste into) a document that is active but behind
another document (ie, I'm looking at one document that I just
navigated into, but the cursor is blinking in some other document). I
know this is a complicated issue between Microsoft and Apple (see
http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2008/10/23/risks-and-rewards/comment-page-1/#comme
nt-35911)...
but can we expect this to be fixed any time soon? In Snow Leopard,
even? Or will we have to wait for a new Word written for the version
of OSX that is, by that time, almost out the door?
Thanks for any help; I'm thinking about switching over to Pages or
Open Office since this is such a basic, persistent, foundational issue
(navigating between documents should not be an issue!), but I'd much
rather use Word... so I'm hoping this is all-the-way fixed soon. Will
it be?
This email is my business email ‹ Please do not email me about forum matters
unless you intend to pay!
--
John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:
[email protected]