Microsoft OneNote for Mac In the Works
It is possible that Microsoft may be developing a Mac version of the popular OneNote 2007 note-taking software. They already have Microsoft Office for Apple Macs.
Nadyne Mielke, who works as a user experience researcher in the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft wrote the following post that may have sparked the OneNote for Mac rumor:
I’ve been noticing several requests for us to add OneNote to our Mac product portfolio. I have some questions for those of you who want OneNote. Tell me how you have used OneNote. Where is it especially useful? How would you compare it to the Notebook Layout View in Word:Mac 2004? Be as explicit and detailed as possible!
I should say that, as a non-Windows user, I’ve never used it myself and have no personal opinion about it. I’ve heard good things about it from both Windows and Mac users, though, so I’m curious. Link
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I think that your title is misleading.
At several points during our software engineering lifecycle, we reevaluate our portfolio of Macintosh applications and determine whether we should add applications to it. OneNote is an application for which we have received a number of requests. Other popular requests include Project, Visio, and Access. My gathering information on use cases for OneNote is not, by any means, a statement that we will add it to our product portfolio. Understanding its use, especially in comparison to other applications to other applications on the platform (such as the Notebook Layout View found in Word:Mac 2004) help me to better understand the user’s needs and make recommendations for ways that we can meet their needs. Such recommendations are prioritised along with all of the other work that we’d like to do in any given release.
Well, I will say one thing. I am attending an MBA program this spring and it requires MS OneNote. So if it is not made for Mac, it automatically rules out MacBook as a laptop I must buy for this academic program.
I use onenote to mark up design comps and send comments out. In particular, I use the screen grab function, then mark up my changes. I do this by project and track the changes.
i use it for bug tracking. with the clip tool ist easy to make screenshots, mark on them, comment them and send them to a developer for example. if you use the internet explorer you also get the url of the website you just took a screenshot from under the picture
Yep, I use it for taking notes of meeting minutes and sharing them with the team. Also, screen clippings of quotes or articles I plan to use as resources in public speaking. I don’t make recordings much. I’ve also used it as a project planner, for visioning, and mind mapping. I’m switching to Mac, but hesitated a long time because of losing OneNote functions.
Since Office 2008 did not release onenote on the mac, I am weaning myself off of it and all MS apps. there are good alternatives out there. Don’t get me wrong, I love OneNote; however there are 3 reason on why I am ditching it.
1. .One files are larger in size than .doc or .pdf files.
2. the Cache and automatic backups eats up a ton of diskspace. I keep having to delete the backups and deleting the cache to get disk space back. Deleting the cache makes your notebooks take forever to load as it has to rebuild the cache. Optimizing temporarily eats up even more disk space as it creates a temporary cache file until you shutdown and reload OneNote.
3. I want all my apps to run native on one platform.
Circus Ponies Notebook is a real close MAC equivelant for only $49 and features automatic appendixes to create indexes of all your work.
Also, I just got burned by MS with an office 2007 upgrade on the Windows side. I can no longer do some of the things that are vital to me, plus office 2007’s GUI was a complete overhaul and I am a little lost when trying to do stuff.
I also got burned when MS did away with Front Page and Office extensions, and the new Web Essentials removed a lot and doupled the price.
I would’v ereally likes OneNote on the mac, but since it did not happen - I found something else.
What I especially liked was the ease of creating a separate notebook for each class I’m taking. Once in a notebook, i could simply Ctrl for a new page, then I could alter the header so I just had the date for that particular day. I could take notes anywhere on the page; I could move the cursor to another section of the page and start another block of notes; I could drag the blocks anywhere I needed. Within the notebook, I also had a function to create a new section, that I could name right on its tab. The integrated search feature was a real life-saver, and I really was glad it had an automatic auto-save-I never had to enable it or turn it on, it was just there. Both the Mac Word Notebook view and Circus Ponies Notebook come close, but neither is the same, and neither seems as complete and easy to use. The only improvement that the Mac Notebook view has is the “object palette” and the scribbler-they work much better than the drawing tools in OneNote for making quick diagrams on the fly as you’re taking notes in class. Again, not having OneNote is really a deal-breaker for getting a Mac; I only got one because the guy at the Mac Store said Circus Ponies was as good and did the same things-which it doesn’t; I’m still trying to figure it out, so I don’t know if it is as good or not. OneNote was really the first and only truly elegant and useful Microsoft program I’ve ever come across; the only way I can add to this is to say “get a copy, use it for some classes,and you’ll see how useful and elegant it is.”
Im considering replacing my way to big 17inch HP with a smaller lighter more portable 13 inch MAC but OneNote is essential to my productivity I use it everyday. I’m in the middle of getting my Nursing degree and I use OneNote to capture clips from webpages i use for class research, taking notes on ebook versions of my college text, tracking my budsget, and keeping track of important account info. I also use it to keep travel information organized and track of various miscellaneous info. It is easy to sync info with outlook and covert pages to pdf documents. I use OneNote constantly. Ill guess Ill spend my money on a tablet PC and wait to switch back to MACs when they have a MS office syite as featured as the PC version.
Have you considered running OneNote in a virtual machine with something like Parallels or VMWare Fusion? I hear that Fusion does a fine job of running OneNote on a Macbook.