Today, the geeks at Microsoft and the hipsters at Apple came together for an early Thanksgiving dinner with the main course being the new Microsoft Office: Mac 2011. But instead of fighting over this figurative turkey (“It’s overdone” or “It’s not done enough”), these software engineers developed a product that’s all about collaboration. They’ve even titled their launch, “Work well with others.”
Microsoft Office: Mac 2011 features cloud computing software like Office Web apps, SkyDrive and SharePoint, so you don’t have to email the document to your coworkers. Instead, you can share the same one over the Internet. Adios Google Docs; that’s one extra step you don’t have to do. And it’s goodbye Entourage, hello Outlook for email (thank you!). But we’re not the only ones who are happy the two companies decided to play nice.
Duane Dax Alexander posted on their Facebook wall, “I bought last night and have have been using it all morning. So much faster than 2008. I build very complex word documents, and they used to crash because of all the imported graphs and charts. These don’t seem to anymore. It’s only been 8 hours, but it’s a glorious start! Thanks so much!”
“This is the version that everyone wanted,” Microsoft’s senior user experience manager for the Macintosh Business Unit, Han-Yi Shaw, told PC World.
What’s ended up happening here is that consumers are getting the best of both worlds. The hipness of a Mac with the intellect of a PC.
“As someone who works at Microsoft and deals with Apple often, I acknowledge that our companies compete,” Eric Wilfrid, general manager of Microsoft’s Office for Mac team, said. “Some people choose Windows, and some people choose Mac. That conflict tends to get a lot of attention, but I deal in the reality that there are customers who love their Macs and also love using Office.”
The guys even created a video together. Aww.
Photo via Microsoft.