Mac Forum / Applications / MS Office / January 2006

Well, anybody who really knows details can't tell you, but--there *will* be
another version of Office, and it will probably be a while, because:

Public knowledge:

A free update with Entourage features (Spotlight, Sync) is due out in March.

MS has said they are working on a next version (Office 12).  It's going to
be a universal binary for both the Intel and PowerPC Macs, so that's not a
quick operation, although it is apparently "on track" at present.

The next version will incorporate some features from the next version of
WinOffice 12, so it's definitely going to ship *after* WinOffice 12.
WinOffice 12 is in early beta right now, and rumors say might ship in the
summer, MS has said it will be out sometime in 2006.

Historically, MacOffice has come out several months to a year after
WinOffice--e.g., there was Office 9: WinWord 2000/MacWord 2001; Office 11:
WinWord 2003/MacWord 2004.

References:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2006/jan06/01-10MacWorld.mspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2005/06/01/424086.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/howtobuy.aspx?pid=upgrade

My opinions:

WinOffice 12 is a huge undertaking with big changes to the UI and the file
format, so my personal guess based on complete ignorance of everything is
that it will be out later in 2006 rather than earlier, just cause I figure
it'll take longer than they expected.

I assume you are trying to decide whether to buy Office 2004--kinda depends
on your situation.  If you are happy with Office X, why change things?
Though it is true that Office X seems to be basically just Office 2001
ported to OS X, while Office 2004 actually has some new features.  But that
depends on whether you are the type of computer user who would make use of
the new features.

If you are worried Office 2004 will vanish before you have a chance to buy
it--no, not until something else replaces it.

If you are using Office in Classic, I'd go for Office 2004. Right now the
upgrade eligibility for Office 2004 goes back all the way to Office 98, but
there is no guarantee that will persist.

With Office 2004, my opinion is that you'd be in good shape to sit back and
see if the next version (Office 12) might be skippable for you.  There ought
definitely to be an Office 13 version, because MS also just publicly
committed to working with Apple for 5 more years.

Hope that helps--

DM