Microsoft Office ‘Spaces’ issues finally fixed?

MacRumors has recently reported that most of the issues with Microsoft Office and Apple’s desktop “Spaces” should finally be fixed in Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. The problem, which had serious consequences on usability had made many users permanently switch over to iWork, including myself. So what took so long? Microsoft pinned the blame on Apple, citing the architectural implementation of Spaces in Leopard as the cause of the issue. However, in a recent blog post Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit senior product manager Mike Tedesco has announced that both Apple and Microsoft have worked together to fix the problem in Snow Leopard:

Q. Are there any differences with Office 2008 for Mac running on Snow Leopard vs. Leopard?
A. Office 2008 for Mac is Snow Leopard tested and ready! Best of all, with the launch of Snow Leopard, the bulk of the Word 2008 Spaces issues have been fixed after our collaborative efforts to address the problem.

Mike’s wording connotes that there may still be a few lingering bugs. The Microsoft Mac help and support site suggests that there are problems when the Formatting Palette is open:

Note: With the release of Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard, a number of Word 2008 for Mac Spaces issues are fixed. For example, when the Formatting Palette is closed, there is improved performance between Word 2008 for Mac and Spaces.

Hopefully everything will (soon) be fixed in upcoming updates.

[via MacRumors]

Mac Substitutes for Windows Applications

Being a long time Windows user, I was quite unfamiliar with the new interface and so read the Switch 101 guide on Apple’s support page. Once I had orientated myself with the UI, the next step I thought of doing was acquiring all the programs I used on Windows, or at least their Mac counterparts.

A short list of commonly used programs on Windows followed by their Mac substitutes and a brief explanation: Read the rest of this entry »