The election has just been called for 25 November. This is the best shot we have ever had at changing politics in Queensland.

• Book Launch Party

Launch Party This. The election has just been called for 25 November. The Labor party is going to pour millions of dollars into protecting the Deputy Premier. But we have something that Labor doesn’t, a grassroots campaign built on genuine community engagement and a huge volunteer base.

After Jonathan Sri's exciting victory in the Gabba Ward we have a historic chance to put the first Greens MP in Queensland Parliament. Come grab a drink, meet the campaign team and volunteers, and get hyped for this incredible campaign! This is our chance to take back control of our democracy and community from corporate interests and their lobbyists. The Australian has estimated that we only need 455 votes to win the election, but we can’t afford to be complacent. The Labor party is going to pour millions of dollars into protecting the Deputy Premier.

Book Launch Party

But we have something that Labor doesn’t, a grassroots campaign built on genuine community engagement and a huge volunteer base. We can create a future for all of us built upon sustainability, equality, and dignity. But we can’t do it alone. Every social movement is only strong if those who are passionate come together to fight in solidarity for something better.

The future starts with you and it starts here in South Brisbane. November 07, 2017 at 7pm – 10pm. 138 Boundary St West End Brisbane, QLD 4101 Australia.

Mac Users Left Out of the Microsoft Office 2010 Launch Party by Jul 14, 2009 - 8:25 AM CST. Sometimes I feel like Microsoft (s msft) keeps the Mac (s aapl) BU around just so it can mock and ridicule it. The unit never seems to get to join in the fun when it comes time to release a.

Not, at least, until well after its PC counterparts. The official line is that the development cycle for both products is always around two to three years, so the schedule dictates when new releases become available — which explains why until 2011. Regardless of cycles, Office for Mac is badly in need of an upgrade — right now. I have Office 2008, but I can count the number of times I use it in one month on one finger. Whenever possible, I use Google (s goog) Docs or (an excellent freeware multiformat text editor for Mac) for any Word doc editing I may need to do, which is almost none now that I’ve left school and the corporate world behind.

Even though a lot of people still depend on the format, as the number of Mac users grows, I suspect Office will continue to lose ground, especially if Microsoft continues to offer such seriously unpleasant Mac-specific software. Sometimes I swear Office 2008 was just a ploy to get me to install Windows on a Boot Camp partition and run Office 2007.

I find command and menu placement to be completely unintuitive and just plain awkward on the Mac version. Google Docs in an SSB seems like a natively designed OS X app by comparison. Of course, a big part of the announcement of Office 2010 was the revelation of a, which theoretically should be accessible from any browser on any platform (unless MS pulls a classic IE-only block, which I don’t think it would for fear of inciting riots). So, Mac users will be able to join in on the fun, right? The web portion of Office 2010, from what I gather from Microsoft’s press releases about the software, will complement and work together with the old-fashioned installed media portion. I think it’ll end up looking much more like iWork.com and iWork than Zoho Writer or Google Docs. Microsoft, if you want to be a software company, be one.

Clearly you think it makes business sense to develop for Mac, or the Mac BU wouldn’t exist (unless my conspiracy theories above are correct). If that’s the case, treat it as you would any other software, and build excitement by launching cross-platform products of consistent quality, all at once. Bap I am a Word Power User. I have written over a thousand macros, forms, and modules over the years. I find that MS has purposefully emasculated the Mac version and spoke with several people at MS that confirmed it in the past, especially back in the Word 6 days. At one point the Mac version briefly worked faster than the Windows, but Gates stopped that. I have found VBA to be unstable on Office 2001 and 2004, and have bought several titanium laptops just to allow me to continue to run 2001 – the VBA iteration I like better.

Some VBA functions just do not work as they are supposed to and I have had to write applescript patches for both versions. I find it hard to forgive MS for dropping VBA in the prior version.

I do admit that they tried to drop it for the Windows version as well, but with a shift to.Net and WERE NOT ALLOWED TOO. The uproar was great on the Windows side and unfortunately too mild for them to take it seriously on the Mac side until their market share dropped and people started avoiding macros to maintain cross platform compatibility. I WILL NOT BUY ANOTHER MS PRODUCT UNTIL A WORKING VBA FOR MAC PRODUCT IS AVAILABLE. I have emailed the Mac BU in the past and offered to be a beta tester. Applescript is not designed to handle strings, text, and formatting like VBA can. Filemaker Pro would be a better choice, but I just don’t have the energy to switch all of my documents to a new platform, though it would be the best long term approach. I am ornery and do not hanker towards bending over and using the windows version, which I would not be able to patch with Applescript.

Pam First off, I love my Mac. At work, however, I use a PC with Office 2003. I’m not a fan of the new Office 2007 or 2008 or whatever it is for PC. I hate that my menus are gone in it, and within 5 minutes of trying to make a graph (granted, one with quite a bit of customization) in that version of Excel, I was cussing out my computer. I spent about another 10 minutes trying to figure out how to get my standard menus back before giving up and going back to 2003. I’ve always thought the PC version of Office was superior to the Mac versions, which, in my opinion, is just one more way that MS is screwing over Mac users.

For all of you who have wondered what Office does that iWork doesn’t, I can’t tell you that since I honestly haven’t used the iWork products since they stopped coming free with new Macs (so, at least 5 years ago, if not more). Back then, I found they were lacking functionality I was used to from Office, but maybe that has changed. I’m a huge Excel user; I probably use it for at least 2 hours a day at work, if not more. I know I would not want to upgrade from Mac Office 2004 to 2008, as it no longer has VBA support, which I often utilize.

There are a number of other things that also translate to less feasible cross-platform sharing of documents between Mac Office 2008 and the PC versions. I personally am curious if iWork has the functionality I use on a daily basis. I would assume there’s no VBA support, but does Numbers (and the other iWork apps, for that matter) have any capability to automate tasks with some other language, say, AppleScript or better yet, C something, Java, etc.? (not that that does me any good if it’s a document that needs to be cross-platform) How about pivot tables, trend lines for graphs, statistical analysis add-ins, anything like Solver. And, does Pages have automatic tables of contents like Word does, and the other auto-text features available in Word? These are the big things that I’d be looking for in iWork before considering making the switch from Office. Neil This reply probably comes far too late, but anyhow.

Whether or not you should upgrade to Office 2008 depends on a couple of things. If you use third party apps such as MathType for equations or EndNote for reference and bibliography management, then I would say don’t upgrade. The lack of VBA support in Office 2008 has severely limited the functionality of many third party applications. If you are looking for a speed improvement, then you will likely find a small improvement in office 2008 since it does not require Rosetta. However, the speed gains have been pretty slight from my experience. I have both 2004 and 2008 installed on my computers and I quite often opt for 2004.

Meghann I totally disagree with the comments saying that MS Office is superior to iWork. I don’t understand what iWork doesn’t have, that Office does. One of the major things I’ve noticed is this: if you create a document or presentation using Word/Publisher/Powerpoint, one look and it is undeniably Microsoft Office. People see it and they recognize instantly. Products of iWork are so much more professional looking, and what you get instead is people (most likely PCs) asking how you have done it. The templates make it so easy and quick to use and even though, yes, you get some pretty animations, you also get all of the tools you need to create a professional looking piece of work.

Matt I’ve been using Office for a great many years and I think that the 2008 edition for mac is right now by far the best package money can buy on any platform. This will change with the 2010, but hopefully the mac unit at MS will do it again. Sure Apple is trying very, very, very hard with iWork, but it’s just so far behind that I don’t see any way of it ever catching up, instead of real features, what we get is fireworks and pretty animations all I can say is that sometimes when I start an Apple program I have to choose between feeling like a complete idiot, or like a 3 year old, neither of which is entertaining. NickS Do you mean the mocking in Apple’s TV ads? Hasn’t that only been going on for a few years? It seems to me that until recent years Apple has never directly antagonized MS in its marketing.

They’ve managed to carve out a significant niche for themselves by concentrating mainly on user experience, rather than open extensibility. Both ways seem fine to me. There’s more than one kind of person, so there should be more than one kind of computer, eh? And by the way I work all day and all night every day on a Mac. Have done so for many years. And I’ve always managed to thrive as a small business owner in a very cut-throat world. So I completely disagree about PC being superior for office/work.

Different strokes for different folks. No need to get worked up over marketing! Kenneth I much prefer to the set-up of the Mac edition of Office to that of the Window’s Office 2008. While they are not different in many ways, the interface is so much easier to use in my opinion that that god-forsaken mess of 2008’s ribbons or whatever-they’re-called menu system. More and more I am using iWorks for school papers.

It was once the case that I would only use Pages for smaller assignments and things that didn’t need the professional touches of Word (such as a competent Header/Footer editor). However, Word (and other Office programs) have issues working with Spaces in my experience (the cursor will shift to a different space, almost annually during work) and this has pushed me to use Pages more. I am the kind of person who plays with Excel for fun but not anymore since I found Numbers. It isn’t much of a change from Excel, but it just does the job better and prettier. Natsfan7 Time out, did you just call me a “standard user”?

That hurts=( But honestly, what core functionally does iWork not have? I’ve used Office as long as I can remember, and I’ve been using iWork for a few months, and honestly, from my perspective (that of a student who uses these tools mostly for school papers, presentations, and so on) I don’t see a major feature that Office has over iWork (to be fair, I don’t use excel or numbers all that much, so maybe excel is way better). Honestech vidbox for pc. Maybe there is an enterprise thing I’m missing, (cause I’ve never been in the “business world”), but as a student, iWork does everything I need to succeed in school.

Stefan.kk I don’t like to use Office 08 either for it complexity and stick to iwork whenever possible. But I would choose Office 08 over Google Docs any day. It still is by far the most capable Office suite out there and it’s clear that it has to lack some of the intuitivity (due to so many functions) that we know and love from other Mac software.

I give them credit for that. Could it be better?

Of course, but I think it still is an excellent product and the only choice for many pro-users. I think you are to harsh on the MacBU. The fact that you’re into Google Docs shows that you don’t need a lot of features, but remember that many people do need more. I’m sure even in 2011 Office 08 will still beat Google Docs (and still feel a lot more like a Mac application then Google Docs does).