If you ever want to get an idea of the complexity of determining what should go into Office, you can read the blog comments in Mac Mojo. The comments there are a pretty interesting snapshot of the multitude of directions that we're pulled in.
As of this writing, my most recent post there has 30 comments. One person asks, 'Seriously, does anybody really care about anything but Exchange support?' Someone responded, 'Well, I don't care at all about Exchange support, since there isn't an Exchange server anywhere around.' In another line of commentary, someone says, 'I use office daily, and having it be more usable and mac-like is fantastic.' But then someone else says, 'Honestly, I'd love to have the identical program available on both platforms with absolutely no difference between the two.'
Those are just four blog comments plucked out of the comments to one post. I could spend hours finding examples of comments just in the team blog that identify places where we receive directly conflicting feedback. That's just the blog comments. Now add in the research that I do, the research we get from other places in the organisation (product planning, for example), other sources of feedback.
When I interview candidates for program management or user experience positions, I usually throw a question about handling conflicting feedback at them: some users say [this], other users say [that], how do you make a decision? (So now you know something you might hear from me if you were to interview with me!) Answering this question is an important part of what we do here.
Are you going to add the Mini Toolbar found in the new Word 2007. This wouldn't be too difficult to add since that its a small, but useful feature.
PLEASE INCLUDE THE Mini-Toolbar IN WORD!!!!
I guess for the balance, don't take the all comments singularly. I would combine all comments (positive and negative) and develop a application list (Word, Excel, Entourage, PowerPoint, and non-existing MacAccess and Mac OneNote) and then cross-cut it with one-word / two-word description of the jist of the feature(s) mentioned.
I spent 30 minutes thoroughly reading through the blog posts for last week and yesterday regarding Office 2008. The larger theme of what is important to almost everyone -- is will Entourage be improved? Will it contain the functionality of Outlook? The hot-point to 80% of interested blog responders is Entourage.
I can imagine that working for Microsoft in a development team that supports the competing OS platform is more difficult than just working for Microsoft in Office/Windows/Servers teams. I know you may never say it's true, but I suspect the powers that be keep your group from developing a 100% ass-kicking version of Entourage that blows Outlook out of the water.
They don't want the competition, it will distract potential purchasers of Vista and Office 2007 when they see they have real options to consider an OS other than Vista. If suddenly Office 2008 grew wings and soared ENTIRELY on-par with Office 2007, the MacBU would suddenly become a target.
Why won't the MacBU just produce a high-level features list of Entourage? Is it because not much has changed?
James Hohenthaner
I guess a part of the problem is the different between corporate and home use.
We have Office 2004 on a Mac mini in our office at work, and I have it on my iBook at home. On my iBook, the fact that it natively handles the Office formats is fantastic. The few differences don't matter too much to me, and I don't even use Entourage as my email is on Mail.app.
At work, however, the differences are slightly more pronounced. And the fact that Entourage is not 100% Exchange-compatible causes problems when I need to use the Mac. Especially when my Windows laptop has problems, and I need to look up a Note or a Task.
I also think that part of it is that a lot of people use Office for Mac to be compatible with Windows colleagues or offices, but there are some who simple use it because they prefer it from the alternatives. The former group want something WinOffice compatible, yet plays nice with Mac. The latter might contain people who just want the best Mac office client going.
As someone who works in a Windows office, and wishes to use the office Mac more often, I have to admit being in the "full feature parity" camp. Looking/acting identical isn't so much of a concern, but it really needs to do the same job.
But I guess it's just one of those situations where it's hard to please everybody, otherwise you'd be needing to release dozens of versions of the same product.
If I worked on the team, I would combine all comments (positive and negative) and develop a application list (Word, Excel, Entourage, PowerPoint, and non-existing MacAccess and Mac OneNote) and then cross-cut it with one-word / two-word description of the gist of the feature(s) mentioned. Each specific cross-point would get a tick for each instance it was mentioned in a comment. The items that had the most ticks would get my attention, the singular items would get a "thank you for writing" type response. Those items having 2 to 3 tick points would be asked to submit more information to explain their point, and those having 4 or more ticks would become a discussion point for the development team.
Why won't the MacBU just post a high-level features list of Entourage on the Mojo blog? Is it because not much has changed, or you don't want to spoil the surprise of an Mac-feel based Outlook equivalent tool?
Read all the comments and think about them.
Then throw them away and build what your instinct tells you to build.
The reading and thinking will give you insight. The throwing away will release you from the conflicting detail.
Parity efforts should start with the renaming of Entourage to Outlook 2008:mac
The current name scares the s@@t out of mediocre IT camps.
James - The comments to our team blog is that it's not the only source of input to us. Blog readers tend to be rather savvy and much more likely to be IT folks, which means that the comments there are heavily skewed. Soccer moms don't tend to be tech blog readers. :)
More importantly, adding features isn't just about tallying up votes. That's how you end up with bloatware instead of good software. To really deliver a great product, we have to be able to figure out what users need, which isn't always what they say that they need. Meeting unarticlated needs is one of the differences between good software and great software.