Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is a slide show presentation program currently developed by Microsoft. PowerPoint initially named "Presenter", was created by Forethought Inc.. Microsoft's version of PowerPoint was officially launched on May 22, 1990, as a part of the Microsoft Office suite. PowerPoint is useful for helping develop the slide-based presentation format, and is currently one of the most commonly-used presentation programs available.

History

Originally designed for the Macintosh computer, the initial release was called "Presenter", developed by Thomas Rudkin and Dennis Austin of Forethought, Inc. In 1987, it was renamed to "PowerPoint" due to problems with trademarks, the idea for the name coming from Robert Gaskins. In August of the same year, Forethought was bought by Microsoft for $14 million USD ($29.2 million in present-day terms), and became Microsoft's Graphics Business Unit, which continued to develop the software further. Microsoft's version of PowerPoint was officially launched on May 22, 1990, the same day that Microsoft released Windows 3.0.

Office 2004 for Mac

Office 2004 for Mac is a version of Microsoft Office developed for Mac OS X. The software was originally written for PowerPC Macs, so Macs with Intel CPUs must run the program under Mac OS X's Rosetta emulation layer. For this reason, it is not compatible with Mac OS X 10.7 and newer.

Office 2004 was replaced by its successor, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, which was developed as a universal binary to run natively on Intel Macs. However, Office 2008 did not include support for Visual Basic for Applications, which made Microsoft extend the support period by an additional 27 months for their older Office 2004. Microsoft ultimately shipped support for Visual Basic in Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac, which also dropped PowerPC support altogether.

As of January 10, 2012, support for Office 2004 for Mac has ended: no further updates or support will be provided from Microsoft.

Editions

Microsoft Office for Mac 2004 is available in three editions: Standard, Professional, and Student and Teacher. All three editions include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage. The Professional Edition adds Virtual PC. The Student and Teacher Edition cannot be upgraded, which means when a later version of Office is released, people who purchased the Student and Teacher edition must buy a new package.

Microsoft Office for Mac 2011

Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 is a version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite for Mac OS X. It is the successor to Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac and is comparable to Microsoft Office 2010 for Windows. Office 2011 was followed by Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac released on September 22, 2015, requiring a Mac with a 64-bit Intel processor and OS X Yosemite or later.

New features

Microsoft Office 2011 includes more robust enterprise support and greater feature parity with the Windows edition. Its interface is now more similar to Office 2007 and 2010 for Windows, with the addition of the Ribbon. Support for Visual Basic for Applications macros has returned after having been dropped in Office 2008 (). If you purchase the home premium version of Office for Mac you are not automatically allowed telephone support to query any problems with the VBA interface. There are however, apparently, according to Microsoft Helpdesk, some third party applications that can address problems with the VBA interface with Office for Mac. In addition, Office 2011 supports online collaboration tools such as OneDrive and Office Web Apps, allowing Mac and Windows users to simultaneously edit documents over the web. It also includes limited support for Apple's high-density Retina displays, allowing the display of sharp text and images, although most icons within applications themselves are not optimized for this.