With Microsoft Office for the Mac 2011 (Home and Student version, $119; Home and Business version, $199), Microsoft has finally gotten it right. After a string of disappointing releases, the new Mac version of the world's most widely-usedoffice suite is a spectacular success, and an unexpected triumph for Microsoft's Macintosh group. Compared with Office for the Mac 2008 and its predecessors, Office 2011 is innovative, better-designed, startlingly faster, vastly more powerful, and far more compatible with Office for Windows. It even includes a few features that outclass anything in its Windows-based counterpart, Microsoft Office 2010 ($499, 4 stars). If you're a casual, light-duty office-suite user or a student, iWork '09 ($79, 4 stars) is still a great option, but if you've got heavy-duty work to perform on the Mac, you'll want Office for the Mac 2011.
I used to suspect Microsoft of deliberately holding back Office for the Mac so that Windows users wouldn't be tempted to abandon Windows for OS X. No more. For the first time, OS X has an office suite I can imagine using full-time. Office for the Mac still has some minor weaknesses, and at least one feature that's less powerful in than the previous version—Office no longer syncs calendars with iCal. Overall, it's the best office suite ever for using the Mac as a serious platform for getting work done.
Office for the Mac comes in two versions, a Home and Student Version (single user package, $119; three-user family package $149) and a Home and Business Version (single user package, $199; licensed for two machines, $279). The Home and Student version includes Word 2011, Excel 2011, PowerPoint 2011. The Home and Business version matches the Home and Student version plus Outlook 2011, which replaces the Entourage mail, calendar, and contact manager app in recent versions.
The most newsworthy changes in the suite include the shiny new Outlook and the collaboration feature that lets multiple users edit a document simultaneously when the document is stored on Microsoft's free SkyDrive cloud-based storage or on a SharePoint server. I tested this by editing documents at the same time from a Mac and a Windows machine, and the whole procedure was surprisingly smooth, although I needed to click a Save button on each machine before the actual content that I had created on one machine was visible in the other.
Speed, automation, integration
But the best thing about the new suite for most real-world users will be its jackrabbit speed—unlike the pokiness that made the previous version almost unusable. I also like the new ribbon interface. It's similar to the ribbon on the Windows version, with a few changes that reflect the graphics-oriented world of the Mac. For example, the ribbon on the Mac version includes tabs for traditional charts and the text-based SmartArt charting feature, but puts mail-merge features on a drop-down menu instead of on a tab as in the Windows version. In the Mac version, if you want to hide or reveal the ribbon using the keyboard, you need to press Option-Command-R. I wish Microsoft had included an option to use the Ctrl-F1 keystroke that the Windows version uses for the same feature. One advantage of the Mac version is that it uses both the ribbon and the standard Mac top-line menu, for maximum ease of access to its many features.
Visual Basic and Backstage
I'm also delighted to see the return to the Mac version of the Visual Basic for Applications automation language. This means I can finally record and edit Word macros in OS X, and, better still, I can use all the macros I've recorded or written over the years for use in the Windows version. I also like a new full-screen view that lets me edit a Word document without being distracted by the desktop, dock, or menus. Some of the suite's best new features are directly copied from Apple iWork 09, but that doesn't make me any less glad to have them, and it's good to have Apple-style elegance combined with Office's unique power.
One notable feature in Office 2010 for Windows that isn't matched in Office 2011 for the Mac is the Windows' version Backstage view, which puts all file-management and printing features on a single, spacious menu. I like the Backstage view in Windows, because it takes the place of Windows' own cramped and ill-designed print and file management menus, but I don't miss the Backstage feature in the Mac version, because OS X provides a well-designed interface for printing and file management in its built-in menus. Overall, Office for the Mac is more Mac-like than ever before, and that's a good thing.
Word for the Mac Grows Up
Word for the Mac finally has virtually all the dazzling power and flexibility of Word for Windows, and it even adds a few special tricks of its own. When you edit a document in the new full-screen view, nothing is visible except the current page and a background image—by default flat black, but you can choose among different textures. When you move the mouse to the top of the screen a formatting toolbar appears; it's less distracting than the full OS X menu bar that appears in iWork's Pages app when you move the mouse to the top of Pages' full-screen view.
Word 2011's full screen view, unlike Pages', lets you switch between editing mode and a read-only mode that uses a Time-Machine-style sheaf of pages behind the current page to give you an idea of how many more pages remain beyond the one you're reading.
In normal editing views, Word includes an optional Sidebar, roughly equivalent to the Word for Windows navigation pane—the column at the left of the editing window that displays thumbnail images, a document map, or search hits. The Mac version improves on the Windows navigation pane by adding the document summary to the Sidebar.
For me, the biggest news in Word—and also in Excel and PowerPoint—is the return of the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) automation language that disappeared from Office in the transition from the "classic" Mac OS to OS X. This isn't the limited version of VBA familiar from ancient Mac versions of Office, but the full language—minus Windows-specific features. I was able to export my macros from the Windows version of Word and import them into the Mac version, and almost all of them worked perfectly. The only exceptions were the macros that used Windows-only features like the uneditable Protected Mode that the Windows version uses by default when opening files downloaded from the Web.
The other terrific new feature is the Styles Guide display. When you turn this on, a color-coded column appears (on screen only) in the margin of your document. Each block of color has a number, and the colors and numbers match colors and numbers in the styles menu, so you can see at a glance which styles are attached to every paragraph. This is impossible in all other versions of Word, and all other word-processors. Another option, also available from the Styles menu, turns on a "direct formatting indicator" that outlines in blue all the text in the file that is formatted directly from a menu with (for example) italics or bold, instead of being formatted with a style. I only hope that Windows users will get this terrific feature before too long.
Word's Publishing Mode Dazzles
Like the previous version, Word can operate in two different modes, one for normal word-processing documents, the other a "publishing" mode used mostly for graphics-rich layouts like menus and flyers. (Apple's Pages app uses two closely similar operating modes.) Word for the Mac's publishing mode has essentially the same feature set as the separate Publisher app in Office for Windows, and improves on Publisher by saving files in Word's standard .DOCX format instead of Publisher's .PUB format, which can't be read by any app except Publisher.The big news in the latest version of Word's publishing mode is the dynamic reordering feature (which is also included in the Mac version of PowerPoint). To move a graphic image or text box toward the front or back in a multi-layer layout, you used to have to select each object in turn and select Move to Back or Move to Front, often a complex operation if the object you wanted to move was hidden behind another object.
Now, you can choose Reorder Objects from the ribbon, and Word (or PowerPoint) displays all the objects on the page in a 3-D horizontal stack of layers, each with a separate object on it, making it easy to drag the layer you want to move to exactly the right position in the stack. You can simplify the procedure even more by choosing Reorder Overlapping Objects instead of Reorder Objects, and then the 3-D display shows only the overlapping objects, not the other ones on the same page. It's a brilliant and even beautiful solution, and there's nothing like it in any other software.
Like Word and Publisher 2010, Word for the Mac supports typographic features like "lower-case numerals," which are more legible in ordinary text than standard full-height numerals. The Mac version even surpasses the Windows version in its typographic support by showing a drop-down menu of the variations in typographic style available for the current font—although this menu is unfortunately included only in the Word's publishing mode, not its default word-processing mode. You can use typographic variations in both modes, but they're available in word-processing mode only from a list that doesn't show what the variations actually look like.
Apple's Pages—part of iWork '09—is an innovative word-processor, especially valuable for graphics-rich documents. Good as it is, it can't match Word in power and flexibility, and now, with Word's dazzling new version, Pages can't match Word even in speed. If all you need to write are memos and letters, Pages will get the job done, but if you need to get some real work done, nothing approaches Word.
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Messenger For Mac
As previously posted by absorbation, Messenger for Mac version 6.02 has been released. I have been waiting to do a MFM review for ages now, but only when some news popped up or an update was made - so it didn't seem too random. MFM features a clean and easy to use interface, chat logging, spell checking of messages, the ability to talk to your Yahoo! Messenger contacts, and more.
Messenger for Mac and Windows Live Messenger differ in many ways (see side-by-side comparison). One major difference is the ability to be signed into two different accounts at the same time, one account for personal use and the other for corporate use. Another is how conversation history is saved. MFM logs are much nicer looking and easier to read compared to WLM.
One disadvantage when using Messenger for Mac is the limited in-chat features. There are no games, MFM does not support handwritten messages or voice clips and worst of all there is no Video Call support whatsoever. Hopefully some of these features are on the "to be added and not abandoned" list.
Much of the stuff you are probably used to by now in Windows Live Messenger is in Messenger for Mac. The emoticons are the same as in WLM; custom emoticons, display pictures , and file transfers all work too.
No program is perfect and just like any other program, Messenger for Mac has a couple of bugs that I have noticed. When moving a contact from one group to another, dragging and dropping, it can take up to several seconds for the contact to move. A user might try moving the contact 2 or 3 times if he is not aware of this bug.
I also noticed there is no way of viewing a contact's full personal message other than expanding the contact list width wise and reading it like that (this can be very annoying). Personal messages do not show up in a conversation window like in WLM nor do they show up when you try to right-clicking/ctrl+clicking and then selecting "get info" on the contact in question.
My personal opinion is that I prefer Windows Live Messenger to Messenger for Mac. WLM looks better in my opinion but MFM is not that bad itself. The lack of features is one of the main reasons, but I am sure I can live without video calls until the team finally adds it in.
I hope this little review answered some of the questions you may have had about Messenger for Mac.
by :msgstuff.com
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