The Mac Professional's Resource
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is one of the most highly anticipated pieces of software to be released this year. It is the first version of Office that brings native Intel Mac compatibility, and brings the file format in line with Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows. Notably missing from Office 2008 is VBA, which means many people who depend on macros within their documents will be left to find another solution.
A recent note at TUAW says that Office 2008 for Mac will be available for “Enterprise” starting Feb. 1. They don’t describe what is in the Enterprise version other than some language translations and end with the caveat that your mileage may vary in terms of licensing, but we have been hearing some other things.
Our sources tell us that while you may need to wait localization, most licensees will be able to install the software right away; depending on how long it takes their provider to get it to them. Most companies and educational institutions are not going to pay extra for physical media that they will be receiving in the mail or by download for free after a short wait. Since many larger companies need to test software before deploying it, they will wait until their next software upgrade cycle to install anyway. Depending on how much your campus/business has allocated for computing support that could be a few days or several months.
If you are an individual looking for an educational discount, it might already be available at your campus book store, depending on how big your school is and how tight they are with Redmond.
— Joe Fahs
Yesterday, we warned against judging the greatness of any Apple announcements until you have left the reality distortion field the surrounds Steve Jobs wherever he goes. Today, we would like to call out the analysts who may have avoided the RDF, but then go on to decide how good a product announcement is based on stock price. BusinessWeek took time to outline why the Keynote bounce is sometimes a thump.
Since 2000, Apple has become a strong company, and its growth has gained it a lot of attention within the investor community. Many investors look towards Apple product announcements to gauge the Apple’s future prospects. But although AAPL has risen 2000% in the last five years, the stock often fares poorly after a Keynote. If you remove last year’s iPhone announcement, the stock has fallen an average of 3.9% after every keynote. There are a lot of people with things to say about the viability of Apple’s new offerings, but if they immediately point to stock price, you probably know they haven’t done their research.
— Joe Fahs
Editorial Manipulation by Adam C. Kooyer
— Tom Ierna
Steve Jobs said a lot of things in his keynote yesterday at MacWorld. It’s fine to get excited about the products Apple announces, but it is important to re-visit everything after giving yourself a chance to let the RDF wear off.
Time Capsule – Great product. You have up to 1TB of storage along with a built-in Airport Extreme base station, allowing you to share printers, etc, off the disk. It supports Time Machine backups, which is great for the people on Leopard who saw this feature pulled, but also sucks because it doesn’t look like Apple is going to ever build that support for those people who already have an Airport Extreme. I think an amazing feature to add in the future is built-in syncing of home directories, something some third parties already offer, but it is not seamless. And in our pipe dreams we would like to sync iTunes libraries across Macs as well.
New Software for iPod Touch – Apple is charging $20 for software some people should have been included in the first place. We know Apple is a business, and it’s not as bad as the 802.11n surcharge from a few years back, but Apple stopped nickel and diming early adopters, then fewer people would hold off for the Rev. 2 models of their products.
New Apple iPhone Software – This is a great, free upgrade. The customizable home screen and web clips are a great addition, and we can finally send SMS messages to more than one person. The Google Maps location field does a decent job finding your location, although using only EDGE data, I think Blackberrys are more accurate (could be my imagination). And directions can originate from the location Google Maps provided you. Next up, we need the ability to send MMS.
Updated AppleTV – Apple did a good job lowering the price, but the hard drive sizes are still only marginal, especially since you don’t need to use a computer to download content any longer. The improved interface looks nice, and the addition of flickr content to the picture items is a nice feature, although for such a hip company, they really should be offering stuff from facebook as well.
iTunes Movie Rentals – This is a nice addition that brings Apple more in line with other competitors out there, and Apple did good work to get all of the studios on board. The price is only average, and you should have more than 24 hours to play the movie. There are times when you see a movie and want to share it with a friend. 72 hours to view would be a good compromise and give Apple a competitive advantage over the cable companies that offer similar on-demand features. Also, it’s great to have HD content, but not all titles have 5.1 sound. AppleTV is getting closer, but I’ll stick with NetFlix.
One small item we liked is the addition of free iTunes content on 20th Century Fox Titles. This is a great way for Apple to promote iTunes and movie studios to encourage people to buy more DVDs.
MacBook Air – I am not sure, but I think jobs created this MacBook solely because he wants to make the people who say Apple will introduce a tablet look like chumps. As an exercise in design, the MacBook Air is a masterpiece. Once again, Steve is challenging the industry to think about what an ultralight laptop means. For Apple, that means a large screen, 2GB of RAM standard, and a full keyboard. What it leaves out are a lot of ports, and user replaceable RAM, battery, or hard disk. As products go, this is much better than the Cube, which some have compared it to, but we really hope the price of the SSD storage comes down. It looks like a good product, but we’ll have to see what a less free-spending market thinks. However, I like that the wide variety of intel chips has given Apple some flexibility to try innovative designs. Presumable, the MacBook Air is just the first step. Still, I really just wanted a 13” MacBook pro. Is that too much to ask?
Combined with the new MacPros from the week before, it has been a pretty good couple of weeks for Apple hardware.
— Joe Fahs
The annual pre-Macworld Expo rite of wild-ass guesses is winding down to the Stevenote that will end the ignorance orgy. The blunt truth is that no one outside of the Apple inner circle knows what Steve is going to announce. Sure, people can make guesses based on holes in Apple’s line or industry trends but mostly it’s just click-bait or blog masturbation.
Will Apple release a sub-notebook? A 16GB iPhone? an improved Apple TV? Most likely. You don’t have to be industry insider to guess on these. You just have to be paying attention. It’s the new product category that the mindless fun is at. Home servers? Big Screen TVs? Apple branded perfume?
Apple of course encourages this. More press is good press, even if it’s content free. Why do you think Apple put up the “2008, There’s something in the air.” ahead of time? They (Steve) know that this vaguely worded banner would be worth dozens of articles and podcasts. Apple is the master of free publicity. And we eat it up.
My favorite pre-expo event is the flurry of blogs and supposedly-legitimate news sites publishing pictures of the the Apple booth draped in black curtains. What’s the news value of that? Apple once again chooses black? It’s called filling space. No news is news.
Of course readers may notice that I’m just filling space ranting about filling space. Fair enough, I’ll see you at the keynote. Save me some RDF.
— Dr Phred