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This is a review from someone who uses Microsoft Edge, Outlook, and Adobe Reader on a Mac. Those are very unusual choices nowadays for Mac software, so I don't

This is a review from someone who uses Microsoft Edge, Outlook, and Adobe Reader on a Mac. Those are very unusual choices nowadays for Mac software, so I don't think this applies to most Mac users considering upgrading.

bstar77 6y ago
I think I finally convinced my wife to stop using Acrobat Reader for Mac, which performs and looks like a java swing app. I don't know why she refused to use Preview for viewing PDFs, but I think some people just get set in their ways. That said, these people should not be writing technical reviews for major news organizations.
- soapdog 6y ago
  I had to use Acrobat Reader on a Mac to work with a book publisher because the comments they were attaching to the manuscript didn't work the same on Apple Preview. PDFs don't behave exactly the same everywhere for things that goes beyond just reading documents. For example, I had a reply on the PDF that was visible on Preview but vanished when you tried to read on Acrobat Reader, that caused a lot of trouble with the publisher that claimed I didn't answer... YMMV with regarding to these features and them working across apps.
Closi 6y ago
Outlook isn’t a weird software choice to be fair, I’ve never found another email application that comes close if you are a heavy user. Adobe reader and edge... I agree have better alternatives that come shipped with Mac.
- grey-area 6y ago
  Sure I think Outlook is fairly widely used in corp environments, though I’d be surprised to find many such environments who use outlook purchasing or supporting mac laptops for their users. There are cheaper and perfectly capable windows machines for office work. So it is an unusual choice on an Apple laptop, but also I expect it to be supported in time, and it is unsurprising that it is not amongst the first apps ported to a new architecture.
  - Closi 6y ago
    Plenty of companies have a mix of Mac and Windows. The last company I worked for had a mix of Windows & Mac devices, and everyone got the office suite on it (including Outlook). Additionally, my current company is a small business that runs on Windows computers and the office suite, however I have installed Outlook on my personal Mac as a single licenced user can install it on 5 devices, and use it for answering work emails from home (I've also got it on my iPad and phone - it works great).
    - grey-area 6y ago
      There are a lot of alternatives to the MS Outlook binary though in a mixed environment, as your use of iPad and iPhone shows, and most mac users will be using those as opposed to the actual outlook app. There is a web version (increasingly popular amongst corporate users), and mail.app supports outlook accounts as does the ios version of mail.app. Perhaps some users prefer outlook.app on their mac, which is fine, and I'm sure it'll come with time, but it's hardly a deal breaker for most people who have chosen MacOS, and none of those alternatives require the outlook app itself from MS which is what this article is talking about.
      - Closi 6y ago
        > most mac users will be using those as opposed to the actual outlook app I would assume most mac users will be using those as well as the actual outlook app. Mail.app can handle basic email, but do not cover Outlook's other capabilities (which include corporate address books and diary management). The web version is good-enough for most people, but not for power users. Will it be a deal breaker? Probably for some users, but probably not for most, but it's not an uncommon application.
pmontra 6y ago
Edge and Adobe Reader maybe but there are mixed environment companies. What if your company's email and calendar server is Outlook? And what if everybody's writing docunents with Word and sheets with Excel? Furthermore a web developer probably wants to test in Edge even if I assume Chrome is enough.
- grey-area 6y ago
  Mail.app and Calendar.app work fine with outlook accounts and Word and Excel work fine in Rosetta 2. Edge is based on Chromium now, and nobody uses it on the Mac, so there's not much point in testing rendering on a Mac (better to test on Windows Edge). However if you're really bought into the MS ecosystem (or much of your company is), and can't do without outlook or old Windows programs like winzip (!) I'd agree with the author that you should wait, though I don't agree that it's a big problem to do so or this is somehow a failing of the new Macs. Pretty sure this isn't going to be a problem for longer than a few weeks anyway, as MS have already announced the office suite working fine on early betas of M1 and new beta builds for the architecture: https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/microsoft-office-big-sur-m1-macs-3797952/ https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/microsoft-office-big-sur-m1-... In fact on checking I see the betas have already arrived: https://twitter.com/Schwieb/status/1326728712948076545 https://twitter.com/Schwieb/status/1326728712948076545
jason0597 6y ago
Microsoft applications are a massive staple in the business world. The fact that Microsoft went as far as to port them natively to the MacOS platform goes to show how important these applications are.

bstar77 6y ago

I think I finally convinced my wife to stop using Acrobat Reader for Mac, which performs and looks like a java swing app. I don't know why she refused to use Preview for viewing PDFs, but I think some people just get set in their ways. That said, these people should not be writing technical reviews for major news organizations.

soapdog 6y ago
I had to use Acrobat Reader on a Mac to work with a book publisher because the comments they were attaching to the manuscript didn't work the same on Apple Preview. PDFs don't behave exactly the same everywhere for things that goes beyond just reading documents. For example, I had a reply on the PDF that was visible on Preview but vanished when you tried to read on Acrobat Reader, that caused a lot of trouble with the publisher that claimed I didn't answer... YMMV with regarding to these features and them working across apps.

Closi 6y ago

Outlook isn’t a weird software choice to be fair, I’ve never found another email application that comes close if you are a heavy user. Adobe reader and edge... I agree have better alternatives that come shipped with Mac.

grey-area 6y ago
Sure I think Outlook is fairly widely used in corp environments, though I’d be surprised to find many such environments who use outlook purchasing or supporting mac laptops for their users. There are cheaper and perfectly capable windows machines for office work. So it is an unusual choice on an Apple laptop, but also I expect it to be supported in time, and it is unsurprising that it is not amongst the first apps ported to a new architecture.
- Closi 6y ago
  Plenty of companies have a mix of Mac and Windows. The last company I worked for had a mix of Windows & Mac devices, and everyone got the office suite on it (including Outlook). Additionally, my current company is a small business that runs on Windows computers and the office suite, however I have installed Outlook on my personal Mac as a single licenced user can install it on 5 devices, and use it for answering work emails from home (I've also got it on my iPad and phone - it works great).
  - grey-area 6y ago
    There are a lot of alternatives to the MS Outlook binary though in a mixed environment, as your use of iPad and iPhone shows, and most mac users will be using those as opposed to the actual outlook app. There is a web version (increasingly popular amongst corporate users), and mail.app supports outlook accounts as does the ios version of mail.app. Perhaps some users prefer outlook.app on their mac, which is fine, and I'm sure it'll come with time, but it's hardly a deal breaker for most people who have chosen MacOS, and none of those alternatives require the outlook app itself from MS which is what this article is talking about.
    - Closi 6y ago
      > most mac users will be using those as opposed to the actual outlook app I would assume most mac users will be using those as well as the actual outlook app. Mail.app can handle basic email, but do not cover Outlook's other capabilities (which include corporate address books and diary management). The web version is good-enough for most people, but not for power users. Will it be a deal breaker? Probably for some users, but probably not for most, but it's not an uncommon application.

pmontra 6y ago

Edge and Adobe Reader maybe but there are mixed environment companies. What if your company's email and calendar server is Outlook? And what if everybody's writing docunents with Word and sheets with Excel? Furthermore a web developer probably wants to test in Edge even if I assume Chrome is enough.

grey-area 6y ago
Mail.app and Calendar.app work fine with outlook accounts and Word and Excel work fine in Rosetta 2. Edge is based on Chromium now, and nobody uses it on the Mac, so there's not much point in testing rendering on a Mac (better to test on Windows Edge). However if you're really bought into the MS ecosystem (or much of your company is), and can't do without outlook or old Windows programs like winzip (!) I'd agree with the author that you should wait, though I don't agree that it's a big problem to do so or this is somehow a failing of the new Macs. Pretty sure this isn't going to be a problem for longer than a few weeks anyway, as MS have already announced the office suite working fine on early betas of M1 and new beta builds for the architecture: https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/microsoft-office-big-sur-m1-macs-3797952/ https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/microsoft-office-big-sur-m1-... In fact on checking I see the betas have already arrived: https://twitter.com/Schwieb/status/1326728712948076545 https://twitter.com/Schwieb/status/1326728712948076545

jason0597 6y ago

Microsoft applications are a massive staple in the business world. The fact that Microsoft went as far as to port them natively to the MacOS platform goes to show how important these applications are.