In the past there were less Mac users than today. Consequently, MS should
have been much more pushed and interested in developing a "suitable" and
improved version of Office, since the share of the market of Macs is now
greatly increased.
Well, Mac market share was up to 7% in December 07. That's a huge delta
for Apple, not so much for MS Corporate.
The more relevant statistics would be (1) how things looked early in the
development cycle (i.e., 2004/5) when adding resources might have made a
difference, and (2) the corporate and academic shares, and whether the
market for MacOffice is increasing as dramatically, or whether those
content to use iWork, NeoOffice, or WinOffice in emulation were/are
flattening demand. I don't know those statistics, but I'm pretty sure
that MacBU does.
Bla bla bla.... This sounds like an excuse to me.
Well of course it's an excuse. Doesn't make it invalid as a reason for
making difficult implementation choices. Changing code base for a
product that has been developed by accretion for more than 20 years is
NOT a trivial undertaking, especially when the software architecture is
fundamentally tied to then underlying operating system. Worse, of
course, is that unlike WinOffice units, MacBU isn't tightly integrated
into the OS developers.
If I am aware that I cannot offer a good WORKING product with
acceptable standards, I would not put it in the market!
And there's the rub, isn't it. "Acceptable standards" isn't an objective
criterion. We all tend to think we're typical users (or at least members
of a substantial minority). But what's acceptable to you and me (and
XL08 is NOT acceptable for *my* needs) is hardly universal.
And despite the number of folks here that are having problems, Office08
does WORK (to use your caps). I support to an organization with hundreds
of machines that are having no problems under constant use.
I don't like the choices that MacBU made, but I'll give them the benefit
of the doubt that their R&D, marketing, and management folks aren't
morons. Actually, I can do better than that - I know most of them, and
they're assuredly *not* morons.
Two possibilities: either MS was not aware of this or they made a big
mistake! Actually, there would be a third possibility.. but I do not
want to think about it...
There are far more possibilities than you've outlined. Among them is
that they put out a product that will do well enough in the market to be
both profitable and to allow them some breathing room to make
significant improvements in the next version. That's obviously what
they're hoping for.
As a business unit, to have decided to delay much further would likely
have killed off MacBU and MacOffice altogether, as Office04 slips
further out of date, and with it compatibility for the majority of users
that DON'T need VBA and add-ins. While MS corporate has loved MacBU for
its profitability, it certainly can't justify subsidizing it "just
because" - they have a duty to their shareholders after all.
Personally, I think it's a crapshoot whether MacOfficeNext ever gets to
market (at least as anything more than the equivalent of Works). The
WinOffice side isn't standing still.
My guess is that it'll depend on whether sales of Office08 are robust
enough to justify the business case for a dramatic expansion of
resources allocated to MacBU (and perhaps whether the requisite *human*
resources even exist - MacBU has had some difficulty filling positions
for quite a while, and, at least ostensibly, it hasn't been due to lack
of pay and benefits).
The market's judgment won't be out for quite a while yet. We're still
less than three months from launch - everyone who is complaining here
about Office08 is both an early adopter and savvy enough to find and use
the newsgroups/fora. That's *usually* a remarkably different demographic
than the "typical" customer.
