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NZ Macguide Issue 1
 If
you've been sticking to the tried-and-true Mac OS (9+) because
the tide of OS Ten applications has not yet washed up something
that can read your well-developed spreadsheets, then it might
be time to see your Apple dealer.
Suite deal
The lack of an OS X version of Microsoft's Office suite of applications has
been the sole reason many home and small business users haven't taken the plunge - after
all, the years spent getting spreadsheets to behave, filling up address books
and making up templates to run in Word can't just go to waste.
But Microsoft Office v. X is here, and it's
the best-looking and most fully featured version to date - and
only a year after Office 2001 shipped.
It pays to note here that the version tested
is a beta (albeit a very late one) and some things might
change prior to the shipping of the full retail version.
Boxed up
The box you'll buy contains several applications - Word, Excel, PowerPoint,
Entourage and MSN Messenger (a dinky bonus chat and messaging program). Office
is designed to work as an integrated productivity suite - applications
that talk to each other, reliably, when necessary. And it's the ease at which
this all feels like it's happening that means the MacBU has scored.
The soothing aqua interface and carbon behaviour
doesn't feel like it's a PC program biffed at our lovely
Macs as an afterthought.
It's not a port from 9 to X - the four
applications feature complete new architecture - 25
million lines of code, 50 shared libraries, 700 new aqua-flavoured
icons and over 8,200 files, according to Microsoft.
It is OS X native, and does it well.
 Word
Up
Word is one of the main pieces of software I use in getting editorial ready
for magazines, thus it gets a bit of a thrashing. As the most advanced Word-pro
on the market, it can satisfy from home users writing a letter to Aunty, through
to those keen enough to knock up 500-page tomes.
There are some superb new features, like multiple
text selection (a la Nisus already, years ago) and a clear
formatting feature. As anyone who has to apply formatting
to massive amounts of copy knows, it can be a painfully repetitive
experience. Now, you simply select one piece of text and
then hold down the command key and select anything else - the
formatting will then be applied in one hit.
Clear formatting allows you to instantly strip
any formatting that has been applied to a document at the
press of a button, right back to the default style - handy
when you just need a text file and a helpful person has bolded,
underlined and justified half of it!
There's also a Data Merge Manager, which will
allow even the most technologically challenged user to get
form letters and envelopes happening without incident. The
address book is now accessible from Word, which means using
that as a data source lets you choose contacts for merging
or to forward form letters and suchlike to anyone you select.
For those web-inclined, it's not great mission
to save a Word document in a net-friendly manner - simply
use the Save As Web Page command and it will talk you through
the process of optimising the page for online display.
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Some features in this package are only on the Mac - users
of the much-uglier Windows XP version miss out.
Tools like the Formatting Palette, Project Gallery,
List Manager, Data Merge Manager and being able to
see QuickTime movies in PowerPoint are some of the
Mac touches.
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 On
Tour
Apple's proprietary postal app Mail may suffice for some undemanding users,
but it's as clunky as an Austin Maxi when you're trying to keep track of serious
email. With a half-dozen accounts keeping my ISP's mail server well exercised,
I like an email client that does what it's told, when it's told - especially
handling attachments. So I was pretty happy when the Entourage-toting Office
disc arrived, even more so when I managed to import all of my mail data from
its predecessor without drama.
The new face of Entourage is a mighty pretty
one, as you can see, with full aqua treatment and a brilliantly
laid-out interface. The important new features include a
beefed up PIM (Personal Information Manager), which gets
calendar, diary and address book working together more cohesively
through the use of linking. I've actually forsaken my paper
diary for Entourage for the last few weeks, using the Reminder
function to keep me honest. When your Mac is switched on,
any events that have been diarised will flash up on screen
without launching the application itself.
The calendar has had a redesign, and it is
now possible to view by day, week, work week or month at
a click. International address formats are also possible,
which saves having to manually re-do addresses when you're
sending things to the US - or even Australia.
Rich content is one of the Microsoft buzzwords with this product, and the ability
to insert background images, video, audio (and basically anything else you
want) into messages is an absolute bonus when you feel like showing off with
your mail.
For those who're enthused by the Mac OS Keychain,
Entourage now provides support by adding passwords directly
to the keychain.
In all, the abilities of Entourage to organise not only your mail, but your
life, makes it one of the most useful applications to rear its head on the
Mac OS. Ever.
 Excel
with fancy graphs
Sick of Excel graphs that look like your four-year-old niece has been playing
with her crayons? The incredible strength of Quartz (the pdf-based 2D drawing
engine in OS X) means you can now turn those Excel files into incredibly detailed,
anti-aliased 3D graphs. Semi transparent panels make for superbly professional
results and will add a new lease of life to reports and presentations (these
can be shipped happily into PowerPoint as well).
Excel is the big daddy of spreadsheets, and
has been for some time. But the big drama was always getting
a keyboard set-up that was friendly. Some functions with
easy quick-keys were never used and repetitive functions
that needed them didn't have them.
Well, it's customisable shortcuts this time around, folks - add or remove
to your heart's content and use Excel the way that best suits your needs.
The List Manager has also had a polish, and
will run at speed when converting cells into a usable list
(a very welcome change). There's a Total Row command now,
which will automatically add a row at the end of a list to
calculate information. Full-noise filtering and the oft-dubious
AutoComplete round out the useful features.
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Office is Carbonised, making use of Apple's Carbon
architecture for existing applications. Cocoa was
not available to the MacBU when work began, and Microsoft
says it prefers Carbon anyway. The core code of the
suite is still Office 2001, but everything above
that is brand-spanking.
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Get
to the Point
PowerPoint is the easiest way to produce a professional presentation without
skill or computer knowledge, and it has become even more effective with its
newfound Carbon roots. Again the Aqua interface has given the application its
biggest lift, with transparency and fade effects now operating cleanly and
more obediently within the parameters you set.
Improvements in the movie end of PowerPoint
allow easy saves as QuickTime movies and can now include
any combo of animations, transitions and effects you desire.
The full support for QuickTime also allows
the use of QT transition between slides, making for a smoother,
more seamless switch. Saving a PowerPoint presentation has
been made more foolproof with the creation of Packages - if
you save as a PowerPoint Package, every component of your
presentation will be saved, rather than gaping holes appearing
when you've forgotten to copy an image (hands up those who've
done that, he said sheepishly).
What's the verdict?
As with any new package of this size - and Office is a behemoth - there
are going to be issues. The funniest one is the dictionary - it suggested
'andostrich' as a grammatically correct replacement on one file I was working
on. The most irritating one is the tendency for scroll bars to turn themselves
off after retrieving a document or application from the dock - this doesn't
happen every time, but when the blue lights on the scroll bar stop working,
you have to close and relaunch the window (not the program) to continue working.
Bugs are part of the process, and considering
the MacBU only shipped Office 2001 a year ago, it's surprising
that we're not talking bugs in They Nest proportions.
It's fast, it's slick and the new features make it a very
friendly suite to use. As long as the updates keep flowing,
Office v. X will continue to be the best productivity suite
on the Mac.
System Requirements
Power Macintosh G3, G4; iMac; PowerBook G3, G4; or iBook computer
Mac OS X 10.1 or later 128Mb RAM minimum 160Mb of available hard disk space
for drag-and-drop install, or 75Mb for a minimum custom install.
© Parkside Media 2002
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