OSNews

Microsoft's Beta != Beta
Microsoft's RC != RC
Microsoft's Gold != Gold

Nothing out of the ordinary here.
I must add that Office 2007 is a fantastic innovative product from Microsoft. If they can deliver something new, why is it so hard with Windows. (What more, the MacBU are a handful of people and deliver Office:Mac with a fraction of the resources)

(What more, the MacBU are a handful of people and deliver Office:Mac with a fraction of the resources)

Perhaps it's because the bulk of the work is done by the Office division, and the Mac BU is there to port most of it to OS X, while adding some small changes to the UI here and there?

Well, there are definitely more than some small changes.

For example, Internet Explorer for Mac was all-time more powerful than it's Windows counterpart. It did better rendering, it supported transparent PNG images, etc.

Also, the products are a lot more polished like their counterparts. I always found it funny how the guys and gals in the Mac BU could do it all right, what elsewhere at Microsoft everybody seemed to do wrong.

it's odd and I realize this is subjective, so many folk keep saying how the mac office version is much better than the windows version, but I don't see that. I have both, and to me the mac version with all those floating windows and menu bars (not to mention the default zoom/page display being set to being way too small to be comfortable) just seems weird and less useable. can't get used to the thing. plus, I actually miss the cat office assistant. with the mac all you get is max, he's just not as cute ;-)

I think they're on different code bases. At least I think I may have read that somewhere.

The point is that, if I recall correctly, the OS X version is not just a port with small changes to the UI.

The sad part is, is that once MS piles on a bunch of Service packs/hotfixes/security patches it will no longer be of Gold quality.

Yes because SP2 made Windows XP sooo much less secure...

Give me a break.

I didn't say anything about it being less secure, I am referring to how bloated XP becomes once you load all the patches on it. I don't remember the exact numbers but they speak for themselves: XP System dir Prepatch = 950M; XP System dir now w/ all patches installed = 2.4G. You can't seriously tell me that Windows doesn't get more and more bloated and slow with every patch MS throws at it.
I think a good quote that says it all is: "You can think of Windows XP as a house with a second floor built of spackle, wood filler and duct tape." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/23/AR2...

Edited 2006-11-07 13:09

And if you knew what you were talking about...

Every time you install a patch is backs up the old files. In the cases of SP1 and then SP2 it essentially makes a backup of the entire Windows directory. Any file that SPn replaces is backed up and compressed in the process.

My one year old, 4.2 gig Windows directory has 2.6 gig of it residing in the "$NtUninstallx," "$NtServicePackUninstall," "ServicePackFiles," and "Installer" directories. Another 200 megabytes is used by the dllcache directory which contains current backups in case of malware trying to replace system files. Various driver files take up another 200-300 meg.

Most of the what's in my Windows directory isn't bloat, it's backups and drivers. A lowly amount of 1.4 gigabytes is all that windows uses on a day to day basis barring drivers. The average fresh Windows SP2 install is about 1.1 gig.

It doesn't get slower, and the software itself doesn't get bloated. It's gets slower because of registry bloat and software creep.

Edited 2006-11-07 17:45

Are you sure that their software isn't modeled after what the computer industry was five years ago?

Fortunately, you are right about hardware requirements, but unfortunately, you are also right about DRM. I'm sure the rest of the industry will be forced to follow, but for right now, Microsoft can hogtie your computer today.

A very handy feature I use in Office:Mac Powerpoint is converting PPT to movie.