When iWork first came out, I was quite excited and looked forward to having a play. Despite my best efforts and enthusiastic attempts to like the program, Pages was a disappointment. It was slow, bulky and just not up to scratch compared to Microsoft Word. I’ve always been a fan of Keynote and think that it runs circles around Powerpoint, but Pages really didn’t impress. I found tasks that were simple in Office took much longer to achieve and whilst documents always ended up looking much better, the additional time didn’t make it worthwhile.

I was a little skeptical about iWork 08 for the reasons above, but obviously thought it worth giving a try. Boy am I glad that I did. So many little improvements and enhancements have made this program run rings around its predecessor. Pages is completely re-worked and it a breeze to use. It’s faster, more logical and buttons are better laid out. But none of that compares to Numbers.

Microsoft Excel has been around for quite literally as long as I can remember. It does the job that it is designed to do, but I can’t put my finger on any real major improvements it has provided since Office 97. Nothing is fresh and new, nothing really makes it easier to use. Five minutes after opening Numbers I was pretty sure that Excel would never be needed again - far from the experience I had with the original Pages.

The way that sheets are laid out just makes so much more sense than Excel. The same can be said for formulas and formatting tools, charts and graphs. Everything is straight forward and easy, and the program seems to perform very well. The way that print previews can scale is revolutionary and will save Excel users such a headache. I haven’t tested it under heavy loads and huge spreadsheets (I have no need to), but for my purposes it’s a breath of fresh air for managing finances, shares and all my other information.

Microsoft Office is still a massive cash cow and is more popular than any other software package, but it’s being gradually chipped away. With continued improvements and advancements such as this one from Apple, it runs the risk of looking outdated in the very near future.

I’ve been looking into Microsoft’s new Office 2008 suite which will be released later this year for the Mac platform. I have to say I’m impressed! Office is one of those tools which you still really can’t do without on a Mac, with Apple’s offering of Pages and Keynote excelling in some areas but still definitely lacking in others. I’ve been using Office for Mac since I bought a Mac Mini a couple of years ago and I really do need it in my day to day workflow.

The new version of 2008 to be released later this year will already be a ‘must have’ upgrade simply because it will be a universal application. Microsoft have sure taken their time to make Office universal, but then again so have companies such as Adobe so it doesn’t really seem to be a case of spite for Mac owners. Rather that it’s a large program and a difficult one to port across to a universal binary.

Excel appears to have really redefined itself, now offering several templates making the tasks people actually use Excel for a great deal easier. Managing finances through the program is greatly simplified using these new tools and wizards. This should be very useful and save a great deal of time for people who don’t need to get to grips with the advanced features of the application.

Powerpoint also seems to be taking a step in the right direction. I imagine Keynote will remain my presentation tool of choice, though I’m open to being proven wrong by this new version. The interface seems to have undergone a complete overhaul and it seems much more concise. The graphical effects and visuals offered also seem much more impressive and it seems more like a sleek presentation package than the clunky and generic Powerpoint I’m used to seeing.

I’m looking forward to buying and using this for myself, simply because it seems that Microsoft are starting to understand that Mac users are a growing market. Who knows, they may one day be known solely for making Office for Mac (once Windows has been well and truly killed off by OS 11) - they need to keep their future options open!

Characteristically, Ballmer also laughed at Apple’s iPhone and its premium pricing. “$500 full-subsidized with a plan! I said that is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine,” Ballmer said. “Now, it may sell very well or not, I, you know. We have our strategy, we’ve got great Windows Mobile devices in the market today. You can get a Motorola Q phone now for $99, it’s a very capable machine, it’ll do music, it’ll do Internet, it’ll do email, it’ll do instant messaging. So, I kinda look at that and I say, well, I like our strategy. I like it a lot.”

Via iLounge

Despite whatever views Steve Ballmer may have on the iPhone, the attitude shown in that statement above is an absolute testament to why Microsoft are starting to fall behind. Pricing aside, you simply can’t look at a product that’s had a great press reception and an eagerly awaited launch with such a dismissive attitude. Microsoft may well have a great share of the smartphone market - who knows, they may even keep it after the iPhone’s launch! - but they should be analysing the competition, looking for ways to equal and better them.

Innovation from their end with phone technology has been slim to say the least - Windows Mobile is basically ported Pocket PC software from years ago which hasn’t evolved all that much. Improvements have mainly been from the device manufacturers building better, sleeker and faster smartphones. With additions such as visual voicemail, Multi Touch and the iChat style SMS messaging, Apple are at least making headway from a software angle.

I was quite indifferent before reading that quote - I’d choose an iPhone over a Windows Mobile phone any day, but I had nothing against Microsoft’s business model. The complacent business attitude of Microsoft will be their downfall, and I imagine their market share is going to be promptly shattered later this year when iPhone sales kick off.

There have recently been several different contests and attempts to run Windows on the new Intel Macs, with one being particularly successful. However, there were many problems with the lack of driver support on Windows for the various Mac hardware components, and there were certain machines that it didn’t work particularly well. Until today.

It’s called Boot Camp, and is a beta piece of software from Apple to allow you to dual boot Windows XP on any of the new Intel Macs. Because it finds a way to avoid the problems with different types of BIOS, it means that Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows Vista, will also run without a problem using the software.

It is designed to be integrated into the upcoming Leopard operating system from Apple, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what other changes and additions will be present in the next operating system iteration from them.

But what will this new piece of software mean, and how will it affect the reasons people purchase a Mac? Right now in it’s early stages and I imagine that it won’t have a huge impact on sales or switchers. The real effects will begin when it is implemented by default in Leapord. It will become a very stron marketing tool for Apple, eliminating one of the reasons for people refusing to switch to a Mac - ‘I won’t be able to run x, y or z’. Now you will be able to, you’ll be able to run them legally, and you’ll be running them on a very very fast Intel Core Duo machine.

It’s great to be working on a machine built by innovators. Microsoft have another reason to quake in their boots.

I’m not going to lie, I’ve got several reasons to be biased towards Safari over the upcoming IE7. I’ll do this methodically. Firstly, Safari is great at CSS, where IE7 is, well, sketchy at best. Secondly, Safari looks much, much cooler than any version of IE has ever done. Judging by what I’ve seen to provoke me to write this article, that’s going to stay the same way for some time. Finally, Safari is already here! IE7 isn’t going to be arriving any time soon.

I’ve already made my views clear about Longhorn’s user interface. I found a demo screenshot of IE7’s RSS support earlier today and was just as shocked and appalled as I was when I wrote that previous post. Just looking at it - it seems - well, wrong! Colours are nasty, the layout looks like a huge step back from Windows XP - They’ve gone back to 98! Another few aspects caught my eye as well. It looks like something I’ve seen before…

(more…)

As more and more screenshots and previews of the forthcoming Longhorn are released, I cannot help but wonder what has happened to it’s user interface. Windows XP always served me well. It was easy to find my way around, and everything seemed to be in the correct place. I came across the screenshot this morning, from the new Windows Explorer in Longhorn:

I can’t help feeling that somewhere down the line, the Microsoft interface design team lost their way. Let’s take it in stages:

Colour
There are so many different shades of blue and purple?! in that window that it looks disjointed and messy. They should definitely have stuck to the blue and green theme from Windows XP, which looked fairly acceptable (if a little garish).

Search Bar
Jacob Nielsen would have a field day. The text on that search bar is bearly readable, and mixing grey with a mauve colour is a bad combination. On top of that, they seem to have taken “inspiration” from the way Apple’s search works - neatly placed in the top right corner, with a magnifying glass…

What’s New?
I can’t help wondering, looking at the content of the screenshot, what new features have been added. It seems to me that Explorer has just been repackaged, the look and feel changed a little (for the worse) and a new “reference” column/attribute been added. How useful that will be to anyone will remain to be seen.

Don’t get me wrong - I know that there is a long time between now and the release date (a very long time), but I hope for everyone’s sake that they can come up with an interface which is more inginuitive than that one before it hits the streets.