Mac Office 08 take a page from iWork – Publishing Layout View


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Ars Technica has posted a preview of Mac Office ’08s Publishing Layout View, a new feature of Word in Mac Office 08 that…well…looks exactly like Pages to me. According to the article’s writer, Publishing Layout View “blows Pages 3 away” – but as easy as Pages 3 is to use, and as great as the projects look when they’re completed….I’m going to have to see that to believe it.

The more I see about Mac Office ’08 – the less I think it’s even necessary. Lots of people think that using Mac Office is going to ensure flawless compatibility with the Windows version of Office – and that just ain’t true. Right now, the Windows and Mac versions of Office are distant cousins at best. They have been developed in completely different ways by completely different teams. There will be flaws in translating documents from time to time, as their have always been, and now – more than ever – Office seems unnecessary.

I would much rather pay the $79 for iWork…but that may be just me.

What do you think?


Kokou Adzo

Kokou Adzo is a stalwart in the tech journalism community, has been chronicling the ever-evolving world of Apple products and innovations for over a decade. As a Senior Author at Apple Gazette, Kokou combines a deep passion for technology with an innate ability to translate complex tech jargon into relatable insights for everyday users.

8 Comments

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  1. I’d love to switch from Office to iWork, but there’s one killer glitch for me. I’m a student and I need to be able to use bibliographic software (Endnote in my case, which is one of the most common).

    Get that working in Pages and I’ll be over in a flaaash.

  2. “It’s too bad you’ll need a $600 video card and 2 gigs of memory to open a Word doc in Vista.”

    Is this kind of crap what bothers me. Are you so insecure about the Mac, that you have to make stuff up?

  3. As a Windows user for more than 12 years and a Mac user for 2 years (a real mac addict now). I have to tell you Michael while being totally un-biased:

    “There is nothing like Microsoft Office suite out there”.

    Word processing, Spreadsheets or even presentations. Office 2007 for windows is by far the best choice. I hope Office 2008 for mac lives to that reputation.

  4. @Leo

    I think kyre’s point was that you have to have some pretty hefty specs for Vista to run smoothly. Older computers can’t run Vista – or can’t run it well, so you do, technically, need a heavily powered machine to open a Word Document in Vista.

    That same cannot be said about XP, though.

  5. I’ve been using iWork 08 for my business since launch. I have never had an issue with compatibility with any Microsoft run businesses.

    Numbers, although not as advanced as Excel, has all the functionality I need, and it is very easy to use.

    So, if all you want is a word processor, presentation and a spreadsheet programme, iWork is much better value for money than Office.

  6. When I first switch to mac, I bought a copy of MS Office with it. However, it runs terribly slow on my Intel mac. Now that iWork includes Numbers as well, I just have to switch. Pages and Numbers may have less features than Word and Excel, but you can start wondering whether you really need them.

    Oh yeah, and Keynote blows Powerpoint away. Period.

  7. I’m sorry but iwork just doesn’t compete with office, except keynote of course, so personally i prefer Office. That said i do find its UI much better but just doesn’t offer the amount of features office has. I want to switch to either iwork or Mac office ’08 but pages simply doesn’t cut it for me. And from what i’ve seen of office ’08 it looks like the ’04 version but with a hash job of putting in the ribbon. Hopefully the ’08 version will offer what the windows version has when its released so i can finally get rid of vista on my mac.