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Not a single person who uses Word and Excel daily would agree with you. Apple the “great product” company has been at it forever and so have many open source co

Not a single person who uses Word and Excel daily would agree with you. Apple the “great product” company has been at it forever and so have many open source competitors and none come close to how good word and excel are. This seems to be the problem with engineers: “I use eMacs on Linux so that’s the greatest product for everyone.”

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
Microsoft is expert at vendor lock-in. Your company got Office in the 1990s because competing office suites didn't work with Microsoft's operating system "for some reason". Now all of your accountants' macros only work in Excel and it would take thousands of hours to convert them, so no one can switch until a competitor has bug-compatibility with the highly complex and under-specified document format. But because companies can't switch, it sucks all the oxygen out of the room for competitors who are deprived of the revenue, patches and donations they would otherwise get with a larger user base. So they don't have the resources to achieve bug-compatibility and the status quo sustains, not because Excel is so great, but because Microsoft ensures that competitors don't get better. In theory Apple has the resources to do this, but "Microsoft compatibility mode" and "backwards compatible forever" are anathema to their brand, so they don't. Google, by contrast, has actually made an effort and taken a huge bite out of Office market share. You might even say the product is better. But it's still not 100% compatible, and there are companies not willing to put their most sensitive private data on somebody else's cloud, so there are still plenty of companies stuck with Microsoft -- not because it's great, but because there is no great alternative.
- Wytwwww 2y ago
  But it's not just about compatibility, open source (or any other alternatives) are just simply worse in most ways (UX/feature parity/etc.) than Excel and Word etc.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    Google Docs is not worse. LibreOffice is sometimes worse for the reason already mentioned -- companies can't switch to it when they're locked in, but user base is the source of resources for improvement via support contracts, donations and code contributions.
    - Wytwwww 2y ago
      > Google Docs is not worse It's certainly worse" than than the desktop office apps for some use cases. > improvement via support contracts Which might end up being effectively more expensive than paying for MS Office licenses.
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        > It's certainly worse" than than the desktop office apps for some use cases. You can add "for some use cases" and make the sentence true about any product in comparison to any other product. That's not what makes something great. > Which might end up being effectively more expensive than paying for MS Office licenses You're now comparing two entirely different things. With a support contract you get support. It's something different than the product itself with independent additional value.
        Wytwwww 2y ago
        > You're now comparing two entirely different things. With a support contract you get support I was thinking about you needing to pay someone to add new features/fix bugs or just help you to reimplement the workflows which you already have on Excel. > any product in comparison to any other product. That's not what makes something great I was thinking about many common workflows and general "power user" stuff that's very important for many professional users. It's like saying that Apple Numbers is not "inferior" to Excel/Sheets because it's a different product and that it's perfectly sufficient (maybe even superior) for certain workflows, however that doesn't change the fact that it's objectively inferior from the perspective of significant proportion of people who are working with spreadsheets.
mike_hearn 2y ago
I don't know. I use the iLife suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) and prefer them over Word/Excel. Obviously I'm not a power user, but for the standard tasks you need from such tools I find them much better designed. Keynote in particular stomps all over PowerPoint for anything except collaboration, where Apple's "only the Apple ecosystem exists" mentality holds them back.
mhh__ 2y ago
Excel is a great example. The idea is fantastic. Programmers are too harsh on excel. Unfortunately Microsoft haven't really updated excel in decades. They've added tweaks here and there, and made a really clumsy attempt at integrating python, but it's potential is shockingly untapped considering it's at getting on for twice as old as me.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

Microsoft is expert at vendor lock-in. Your company got Office in the 1990s because competing office suites didn't work with Microsoft's operating system "for some reason". Now all of your accountants' macros only work in Excel and it would take thousands of hours to convert them, so no one can switch until a competitor has bug-compatibility with the highly complex and under-specified document format. But because companies can't switch, it sucks all the oxygen out of the room for competitors who are deprived of the revenue, patches and donations they would otherwise get with a larger user base. So they don't have the resources to achieve bug-compatibility and the status quo sustains, not because Excel is so great, but because Microsoft ensures that competitors don't get better. In theory Apple has the resources to do this, but "Microsoft compatibility mode" and "backwards compatible forever" are anathema to their brand, so they don't. Google, by contrast, has actually made an effort and taken a huge bite out of Office market share. You might even say the product is better. But it's still not 100% compatible, and there are companies not willing to put their most sensitive private data on somebody else's cloud, so there are still plenty of companies stuck with Microsoft -- not because it's great, but because there is no great alternative.

Wytwwww 2y ago
But it's not just about compatibility, open source (or any other alternatives) are just simply worse in most ways (UX/feature parity/etc.) than Excel and Word etc.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  Google Docs is not worse. LibreOffice is sometimes worse for the reason already mentioned -- companies can't switch to it when they're locked in, but user base is the source of resources for improvement via support contracts, donations and code contributions.
  - Wytwwww 2y ago
    > Google Docs is not worse It's certainly worse" than than the desktop office apps for some use cases. > improvement via support contracts Which might end up being effectively more expensive than paying for MS Office licenses.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      > It's certainly worse" than than the desktop office apps for some use cases. You can add "for some use cases" and make the sentence true about any product in comparison to any other product. That's not what makes something great. > Which might end up being effectively more expensive than paying for MS Office licenses You're now comparing two entirely different things. With a support contract you get support. It's something different than the product itself with independent additional value.
      - Wytwwww 2y ago
        > You're now comparing two entirely different things. With a support contract you get support I was thinking about you needing to pay someone to add new features/fix bugs or just help you to reimplement the workflows which you already have on Excel. > any product in comparison to any other product. That's not what makes something great I was thinking about many common workflows and general "power user" stuff that's very important for many professional users. It's like saying that Apple Numbers is not "inferior" to Excel/Sheets because it's a different product and that it's perfectly sufficient (maybe even superior) for certain workflows, however that doesn't change the fact that it's objectively inferior from the perspective of significant proportion of people who are working with spreadsheets.

mike_hearn 2y ago

I don't know. I use the iLife suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) and prefer them over Word/Excel. Obviously I'm not a power user, but for the standard tasks you need from such tools I find them much better designed. Keynote in particular stomps all over PowerPoint for anything except collaboration, where Apple's "only the Apple ecosystem exists" mentality holds them back.

mhh__ 2y ago

Excel is a great example. The idea is fantastic. Programmers are too harsh on excel. Unfortunately Microsoft haven't really updated excel in decades. They've added tweaks here and there, and made a really clumsy attempt at integrating python, but it's potential is shockingly untapped considering it's at getting on for twice as old as me.