4 ms·

You can entirely blame Microsoft for the crappy Office experience on the Mac. They had one of the earliest full-featured word processors on the Mac, which histo

by teilo 16y ago

You can entirely blame Microsoft for the crappy Office experience on the Mac. They had one of the earliest full-featured word processors on the Mac, which historically was way better than MacWrite, and arguably, Nissus. It's been down hill ever since. Their claims regarding the Office suite are transparently stupid: "Apple's productivity suite file formats won't open in Microsoft Office on PCs. This can be a real hassle for Mac users sharing work documents with PC users." Excuse me, but you have to PAY for that Apple suite, just like you have to PAY for Microsoft Office on Mac. Does Microsoft mean to tell us that Office for Mac is a real hassle for Mac users to use in order to share documents with PC users? Well, now that you mention it, it is! They can't even keep their own office suites compatible, and I'm not talking OLE or VBA crap. "If there's a Mac version of a program you need, you'll have to buy it again and relearn how to use it on a Mac." No kidding, and thank you very much, Microsoft, for making the Mac version of Office so slow, clunky, and stupid. NeoOffice launches faster than Word or Excel. Want to edit a cell in Excel? Don't waste your time with F2, or many other shortcuts that are changed for no apparent reason. Oh, and every time you launch a new Excel document, change your view from page-break view (with gaps for the margins!!!) back to the normal spreadsheet view that almost every other spreadsheet in existence starts with by default. Add a font to the OS? "Optimizing font menu" and add 30 seconds to the startup of either program. This does not happen on any other Mac software I use, and I use three other word processors, and the Adobe suite.(And yes, I am on Office 2008). I can run the Windows version of Office faster in Parallels, than I can run the native Mac version on a bloody Mac. They just absolutely will not make actual Mac software. And you cannot convince me that this is anything but intentional. The Mac version of office is deliberately stunted to make Mac's look slow and clunky.

etherael 16y ago
Like Internet Explorer is deliberately stunted to make web applications look slow and clunky. But once a critical mass is reached and people see the alternatives outside the microsoft ecosystem (chrome in the browser, neooffice etc on mac) People end up realising that MS are just really bad in environments that they do not control, whether this is on purpose or not at that point really ceases to matter. For the record, I think it's a bit of both, why invest in attaining mastery in products you directly compete with, it makes sense to half ass your effort to cast the platform in the most negative light possible. And before apple zealots get too self righteous on this issue, I offer iTunes on windows as exhibit A as to why those in glass houses ought not be throwing stones.

by teilo 16y ago

etherael 16y ago

Like Internet Explorer is deliberately stunted to make web applications look slow and clunky. But once a critical mass is reached and people see the alternatives outside the microsoft ecosystem (chrome in the browser, neooffice etc on mac) People end up realising that MS are just really bad in environments that they do not control, whether this is on purpose or not at that point really ceases to matter. For the record, I think it's a bit of both, why invest in attaining mastery in products you directly compete with, it makes sense to half ass your effort to cast the platform in the most negative light possible. And before apple zealots get too self righteous on this issue, I offer iTunes on windows as exhibit A as to why those in glass houses ought not be throwing stones.