Office for Mac 2008 Delay and Pining for Excitement

Dang.

Looking though the news for the day in FeedDemon, my favorite feed reader of all, and I notice from Wired News that Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 has been delayed until January.

Normally this would bum me out, because I live half my life in Office, whether we're talking Mac or PC, but I have to say that I really don't care. Why? Because the new Office 2007 ribbon interface wasn't going to be migrated over anyway, which is a shame, because I find myself far more productive in my office apps now that I've become familiar with the ribbon. The layout just makes a lot more sense now, and things you do every fifteen minutes when editing a document have gone from four clicks to one. It's completely awesome once you get adjusted, which I will admit takes about two weeks.

But wait--why did I say 'dang' if I'm not bummed out? Because I've realized that it's not the ribbon that's causing me not to give a crap. I just don't care about this stuff anymore. I remember back in the day when I was first introduced to computers everything was new and exciting, and everyone felt that way as computers were becoming more mainstream. There was crazy public pandemonium when Windows 95 was released, remember? Rock bands, huge advertisements, celebrities everywhere... And it was all anyone was talking about.

Every time something new came along, I was signing up to try it, downloading the betas, and exclaiming about how neat it would be to have something new. But I don't have that sense of adventure anymore. The computer has stopped being an exciting hobby, and has become just another tool. When I think of new software, I just worry about whether it will be compatible, or if it will crash my system and make me lose time that I could be using to do work. It seems like it's just a chore, and for some reason I'm feeling nostalgic for the days when it was all fresh and exciting.

I'm making it my goal to try and find that spark of interest and excitement again. Maybe this is why people are using Linux. Maybe there's excitement there. But it's not here on Vista, nor is it on OS X, both of which are great, but neither of which is very exciting.