Someone emailed me to ask:
where can i buy office for mac?
Once we hit our release date of Tuesday, 26 October 2010, you’ll have plenty of options. This list is nowhere near comprehensive, and is entirely US-focused because that’s where I live and thus it’s what I know about. Commenters, feel free to add in other options.
For those of you who want to go to a bricks’n’mortar store to buy it, your friendly local Apple Store and Best Buy will have it. Other authorised Apple outlets are likely to have it too, and I’ve already seen shelf signs for it at my local Fry’s.
Online, the fine folks at Amazon are accepting pre-orders. In fact, as of this writing, it looks like they’ve got some discounts from the price for the Home and Student Edition ($10 off the single-license version and $20 off the three-license version), as well as for the Home and Business Edition ($25 off the single-license and $40 off the two-license version).
The removal of the easy switching of identities from 2011 in all likelihood just removed the main reason for me to purchase Office 2011.
I, as well as others I know, share a computer with a partner. The main reason we use Entourage instead of Mail, was the ability to easily switch identities, so that each of us can separately check and view the various personal and business accounts we have.
The new Database Utility method is cumbersome, and frankly, idiotic.
I certainly hope that MS brings this feature back to the UI, and fast.
@Mark, switching identities is really an old way of doing things going back to pre-OS X. It’s of far more benefit for each user to have a separate user account.
With OS X’s fast user switching, you don’t even have to log out and log back in. Switching between user accounts takes two or three seconds.
Thanks, Rick. Actually, I have used user-switching, but the idea is to just separate email accounts, not desktops.
The Entourage option is just so much better for many.
I really don’t understand why would MS destroy a feature which clearly distinguish it from Mail, and is a clear advantage for multiple users?
As I said, in reality identities was my primary reason for keeping and upgrading Office, and I’d assume it would be for many others.
The vast majority of Entourage users only have a single identity; the handful of those who do have multiple identities often aren’t using them to switch between multiple users but rather for the purposes of backing up.
I’ll write a longer blog post about this soon, but wanted to quickly jump in here to comment.
Thanks for the response, Nadyne. By the same token, the vast majority of Mac users only use Mail.
I understand that focus groups may spit out such info, but focus groups are often of limited use, particularly with features like this (there is a reason Jobs hates focus groups — also, both the Prius and the Miata initially tested terrible with focus groups….)
I understand that identities is probably gone for good from Outlook, but it will only remove one more reason to chose Outlook over Mail on the Mac.
Otherwise, it looks like MS did a great job. Unfortunately, I am staying with Entourage because of the identities feature, and if I have to move in the future, I’ll probably just go to Mail.
Who said anything about focus groups?
Wow, I’ve just upgraded to Outlook 2011 and I have to say this is a serious oversight on the programmers part!
I constantly switch between two email accounts and just being able to press Cmd-Opt-Q was a godsend. This needs fixing quickly!
Andy
I Have to completely agree with Mark. I have a number of email addresses each requiring it’s own identity. Switching to check these in Entourage was a very key feature. I will be tossing MS Office 2011 until this is addressed.