How do you see Imacs switching to ARM architecture

[ADGrant]

As to the other productivity fields: photo/video/audio editing, software development etc., Mac is doing quite strong there and will continue to do so. One challenge will developing x86 code on the new Macs (but Rosetta will help), but then again, I expect it to be a bit factor in a surge of popularity for ARM-based cloud computers.

Your last point is what concerns me. The "cloud" basically runs on x86 Linux VMs and a large portion of those are running x86 Linux Docker images. A lot of developers use Macs to write the code that runs on this x86 Linux infrastructure.

AWS now offers ARM Linux VMs but that's pretty much it for ARM in the cloud right now and the ARM Docker ecosystem is just getting started. Apple was unable to make any announcements about Docker on Apple Silicon at WWDC.

iOS developers will love using Apple Silicon Macs to develop their apps. Other developers are probably lining up to buy the new 2020 27" iMac.

 

[leman]

Your last point is what concerns me. The "cloud" basically runs on x86 Linux VMs and a large portion of those are running x86 Linux Docker images. A lot of developers use Macs to write the code that runs on this x86 Linux infrastructure.

This is also something that concerns me. Apple Silicon Macs won’t affect the front end developers, but backend (or any kind of development that deploys to x86) will be affected.

 

[Woochoo]

FTFY.

No, Maya wasn't emulated. That was binary translated which is really different. Don't be deceptive. Only some real time stuff like JS in browsers will be executing emulated, most software will be binary translated during installation.

 

[Janichsan]

No, Maya wasn't emulated. That was binary translated which is really different. Don't be deceptive.

Oh, FFS. Don't be bloody obtuse. I obviously was keeping the terminology in line with the one JMacHack was using:

- Shadow of the Tomb Raider working emulated on the Apple DTK

Maybe read the context next time before you make yourself look even stupider.

 

[dmccloud]

There is no office for Apple silicon. I’m not even sure why MS would bother. This isn’t exactly a platform with millions of users. Who would buy Apple silicon right now? Only the most loyal apple fans. Most devs won’t bother with it and will continue to support intel versions instead.

My point previously, that seems to have got lost, and is relevant to this is that the Mac apps are not as good as windows on intel.
Yes, they showed apps running, but I don’t want already sub par apps being emulated/ translated on the fly. That is not acceptable for professional work.

I really hope the developers who make my current apps get on board as I cannot find a shred of evidence they are moving to AS !
It’s good that MS will have office, but is that just the iOS version on steroids or new? I bet the former.

It certainly will take several years before all this is resolved .

The Surface Pro X also runs on ARM, and Microsoft definitely has the desktop version of Office running on that device. Furthermore, since the Mac and Windows versions of Office share the same code base, it is relatively trivial to convert the Mac version from x86 when the work has already been done. Plus, Apple showed Office running on an Apple Silicon Mac at WWDC, so the bulk of the work has already been done. Also, Rosetta 2 translates the x86 instruction set to ARM on installation, not execution, so they are NOT being translated on the fly.

Ex-Windows boss: Apple's Arm-based 'Mac will be the ultimate developer PC'

Former Microsoft exec Steve Sinofsky says developers will flock to new Arm-based Mac – but it needs a touchscreen.

www.zdnet.com

Apple Silicon: Why developers don't need to worry about the transition from Intel-based Macs | TechRepublic

Ditching Intel in favor of in-house chips, like the new M1, is a big move, but Apple has already built tools to make the transition easier. Here's what developers need to know about M1 and Big Sur.

www.techrepublic.com

 

[LonestarOne]

[

My point previously, that seems to have got lost, and is relevant to this is that the Mac apps are not as good as windows on intel.

That is arguable. And, frankly, if you believe that, you’re not the target customer. You should be buying a Wintel machine, not a Mac.

 

[dmccloud]

Haha - 20 years a mac user and remain so. You just read what you want to read, and ignore what I am actually saying.

HERE IT IS AGAIN IN BIG LETTERS FOR YOU.

THE PRO APPS I LISTED DO NOT RUN AS WELL IN MAC OS AS THEY DO IN WINDOWS.

SIMPLE ?

Try running a business battling this. Yes there are loads of pro apps that are great on MacOS, no one questioned that, I was highlighting the fact that a lot of pro 3D and CAD apps are not great on the mac, and with the transition to AS I am concerned it will get worse.
So I got a PC to ensure my business can remain in business, as investing in Intel Macs is buying end of line computers, plus it is a lot faster for rendering without spending a fortune on a Mac Pro.

That OK for you, or do you require more business reasons? FFS

IN YOUR OPINION, the Mac versions do not run as well as their Windows counterparts. Now that we've clarified your OPINION, let's look at all of the creative professionals who disagree with you and use the Mac platform exclusively. The actual trends in the industry do not match up with your opinions, and you've already proven you do not understand how the x86 to ARM transition will work, even in the light of Microsoft and Adobe already having done that with the Surface Pro X.

 

[Tech198]

It has both positive and negative affects .

By this step Apple can lead the industry as it will no longer rely on Intel .

But there will be a lot less Applications to begin with .

Swtching from PowerPC to Intel was a boom, and the face everyone good on oard was good... The added bonus, was you have Intel as well, so more people were probably drove to that..

But now? I think this will actually be the kill switch for developers more, because you distance yourself.. by using your own chip..

iOS apps survive only because they never used Intel from the very beginning. People will get used t it, but i reckon allot more apps will go (mainly free ones) on iMac or any as products, as result..

'The killing' started with 64-bit no longer with Cataliina, and already your seeing popular apps may not work like Photoshop as some of the shared/plugins are still 32-bit.. so its more cross app support with same components used.

If we're seeing this now with a slight 32/64 bit change, how will a new chip be like to developers? It won't suffer, but even VMWare is not gonna work.. Apple's already decided Bootcamp doesn't get as much % on Mac''s so we can leave those to rust.

People hate change when we get used to things.. Expect free apps to die first.

 

[Woochoo]

Oh, FFS. Don't be bloody obtuse. I obviously was keeping the terminology in line with the one JMacHack was using:

Maybe read the context next time before you make yourself look even stupider.

You literally said Maya was working emulated, and I'm telling you it wasn't. I haven't talked about Tomb Raider, so again stop trying to trick people with your mental gymnastics. Have a nice day

 

[Janichsan]

You literally said Maya was working emulated, and I'm telling you it wasn't. I haven't talked about Tomb Raider, so again stop trying to trick people with your mental gymnastics. Have a nice day

Too dumb to see where you messed up, but still flinging accusations. Just wonderful.

 

[theorist9]

My point previously, that seems to have got lost, and is relevant to this is that the Mac apps are not as good as windows on intel.

Sorry to break it to you but all these toopls ran just fine on Intel on Mac. Our Office users have no issues at all and neither do our marketing people who use Creative Suite. Office for Mac has been extremely good for a while now really the only couple of features still missing only have a tiny user base.

There's clearly some strong views on this. Let me offer my own experience:

I can't speak to the "creative" tools like Adobe CC. And as far as Mathematica goes, while I've not used the Windows version, I can say the Mac version works great.

But then there's Office. I regularly use Office on both the Mac and PC and, IME, overall, the Windows version continues to be more stable and better-featured, such that the Mac version seems to me like a "poor man's" version of Office.

Specifically:
Word and Excel: The main advantage of the Windows versions are better stability. When my documents become large and complex, they crash all too frequenly in MacOS, but rarely in Windows.

This has been true historically as well. I initially tried to write my thesis (a complex document with TOC, chapters, subchapters, sub-sub-chapters, references, biblography, equations, imported flat graphics, and imported vectorized graphics) in Word for Mac. After it got to about three chapters in length, the document began to crash repeatedly, forcing me to switch to LaTeX. Out of curiosity, as an experiment, I tried working with the same (abandoned) document in Word for Windows, and had no issues. [Given the choice between LaTeX in MacOS and Word in Windows, I chose the former, because I far prefer working in MacOS.]

Features are also less for the Mac versions. I can't recall the specifics, but from time-to-time I go onto the MS forums to ask "How do I do this"?, and on a couple of occasions it turned out the desired functionality is available in the Windows version but not in the MacOS version.

Outlook: Outlook for Mac has good stability (finally!), but is not as nicely-featured as Outlook for Windows. For instance, niceties like the ability to perform calculations directly within an email are available for the Windows version, but not the Mac version.

So I'd say if you're a serious user, you'll definitely notice the difference; if you're a more casual user, you might not.

....frankly, if you believe that [Mac versions of apps not as good as the Windows version], you’re not the target customer. You should be buying a Wintel machine, not a Mac.

Not so. Office works better for me in Windows than in Mac yet, given a choice, I will work on my Mac because the general (and, for me, overwhelming) benefit of working in MacOS over Windows outweighs the deficiencies of Office for Mac (unless Office for Mac becomes unusable, as with my thesis, in which case I'll switch to a different app to stay within MacOS). So I am definitely the target audience for a better-performing Office for Mac.

It would be great if, with AS, Office for Mac will get enough love to remedy these deficiencies. But I'm not optimistic. Note that, even with over three decades (!) of experience developing Office for Mac, MS still hasn't managed to bring it up to the level of its Windows counterpart. Given this, I don't see why they would suddenly do a better job with AS. If anything, I would expect the AS version of Office-for-Mac to be worse than the x86 version for some time to come (unless they write the apps from scractch in a way that remedies the stability issues).

 

[LonestarOne]

Not so. Office works better for me in Windows than in Mac yet, given a choice, I will work on my Mac because the general (and, for me, overwhelming) benefit of working in MacOS over Windows outweighs the deficiencies of Office for Mac

Then what is it you’re bitching about?

You are under the impression that “feature rich” equals quality software. That is not the case. One of our biggest problems at Microsoft was the inability of development groups to say no to any feature request, with the result that we ended up with a raft of features that customers rarely used but we still needed to test and support. Especially during the Steve Ballmer era. We really needed someone like Steve Jobs who could stand up to the marketing people and say, “I don’t care if four guys from Timbuktu are asking for this, the customer is not always right. We‘re not going to do it.”

 

[theorist9]

Then what is it you’re bitching about?

You are under the impression that “feature rich” equals quality software. That is not the case. One of our biggest problems at Microsoft was the inability of development groups to say no to any feature request, with the result that we ended up with a raft of features that customers rarely used but we still needed to test and support. Especially during the Steve Ballmer era. We really needed someone like Steve Jobs who could stand up to the marketing people and say, “I don’t care if four guys from Timbuktu are asking for this, the customer is not always right. We‘re not going to do it.”

I wasn't "bitching" about anything. That's an obviously false characterization, which I'd consider a form of trolling.

My principal point is that Office is more stable on Windows than on the Mac. That clearly does equate to quality. You said that, if you're someone that finds Windows versions of apps superior, then you're not the target market for the Mac versions. I politely explained why that's incorrect. Many of us are much more efficient working in MacOS than Windows, and thus will put up with the inferior Mac app versions in order to gain the efficiency benefits of working in the Mac OS environment. It's about making the best trade-off. Your defensive response suggests you can't handle being told you're incorrect.

And regarding my other point, about the difference in features: It's not logical to make a blanket generalization that all added features are cruft just because some are.

Furthermore, think it through: If the added features in the Windows version (vs. the Mac version) were really a problem when it came to producing stable code, the more feature-poor Mac version would be more robust than its Windows counterpart. Yet the opposite is the case. The bottom line is this: MS produces a product for PCs that is both more more stable and more featured than its Mac version.

 

[Boil]

Kinda funny how Office is 'better' on Windows than Mac, but the very first piece of the Office pie, Excel, was created for the original Macintosh in 1985, the Windows version came along two years later...

 

[the8thark]

Quality features always trumps quantity of features. Though more features can be a good thing if they are useful and properly coded in, just there for the sake of having more features.

Also this arguement has devolved into
Person 1: I think Office is better on Windows
Person 2: No I think Office is better on MacOS, you are wrong
Person 1: No no. I am right, you are wrong.

And so on and so on, the revolving circle with no end in sight.
Lets just say both sides are correct. You feel one is better than the other for what you use Office for and leave it at that.

 

[Boil]

But we all all know the suite of office tools (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) from Apple is best...!

 

[theorist9]

Also this arguement has devolved into
Person 1: I think Office is better on Windows
Person 2: No I think Office is better on MacOS, you are wrong
Person 1: No no. I am right, you are wrong.

And so on and so on, the revolving circle with no end in sight.
Lets just say both sides are correct. You feel one is better than the other for what you use Office for and leave it at that.

So now we get to argue about arguing . That's OK, I don't mind a small dose of meta.

What you said would make sense if this issue were purely subjective (which ice cream flavor is better -- cookie dough or rocky road?). But it's not. Frequency of crashing/freezing is objective, not subjective. [Whether instability matters is subjective, but I think most would agree it does.] That's why I was careful, in writing my initial post on this, to focus not my opinion, but my experience. And my experience is that Office is less stable on the Mac.

Granted, one person's experience is anecodotal, but there are other independent reports supporting this. For instance:
"Microsoft's Office Suite, which includes apps like Word and Excel, are still best used on a Windows PC instead of a Mac. The Windows version comes with more features and is more stable than it is on the Mac version."

10 reasons you should buy a Windows PC instead of an Apple Mac

If a lot of these points resonate with you, you'll be better off with a Windows PC.

www.businessinsider.com

[Note: This is not BI having an axe to grind against the Mac; they published this together with a companion piece titled something like: "10 reasons you should buy an Apple Mac instead of a PC."]

And I'm sure I could find more. And what's notable is I've never heard anyone claim the opposite -- that the Mac version is more stable. So the two camps are those who find the Windows version more stable, and those who don't find a difference. If they really were equivalent in stability, you'd have a third camp; but you don't.

So, with all due respect, I think your characterization of this argument as being purely about subjective opinion is incorrect.

Quality features always trumps quantity of features. Though more features can be a good thing if they are useful and properly coded in, just there for the sake of having more features.

But that's just stating the obvious, right? In my post I was careful to give a specific example of a feature difference, so people could assess for themselves whether it was useful or not.

 

[Joelist]

Office has been at parity between Windows and Mac for a while now. Both are nice and fast, stable, do what we need them do and the files they output have correct fidelity and are completely interchangeable. We run a VERY large user base (in excess of 70,000) that is heterogenous in their OS of use (we use both Macs and Windows). Everything plays together very well.

Something to remember is that while Apple and Microsoft users sometimes still are at odds the two companies nowadays work together more often than not. One result was seen at WWDC where full Microsoft Office was shown off running natively on Apple Silicon - obviously Microsoft was brought in on the AS move early enough that they have their AS version all set for launch day.

So back to the actual thread topic - I would imagine AS for an iMac is not going to differ radically than AS for, say, a Macbook Pro. It is an interesting question in that it leads into the question of how many "lines" will there be in the Mac AS family.

 

[the8thark]

@theorist9

In relation to your BI article many of those points are just not true. Also the same with their companion Mac piece. It's just pushing stereotypes and generalisations.

Also yes the subject of stability and frequency of crashing is objective, when you have contradictiry accounts, both can't be equally correct.

Also I'm not saying the arguement is purely subjective. I'm just saying when both sides claim the objective facts which are mutually exclusive to each other, well in most cases the reality lies somewhere in the middle.
I don't disagree with anyone's statements here. They all sound legit based on what you've all experienced. However the sample size of "my experience" is just way too small to definitively say one is objectively better than the other.

@Joelist
I happen to agree with you, that I also feel the AS Macs for everything that is not a Mac Pro will be very similar. Probably different clock speeds and different ports / battery life (for the portables) but that's it. It soulds like Apple want to bring all the features that the iOS silicon has and is on the intel co processor to the Mac. I don't think Apple would limit these core features to one type of Mac over another.

 

[theorist9]

Office has been at parity between Windows and Mac for a while now. Both are nice and fast, stable, do what we need them do and the files they output have correct fidelity and are completely interchangeable.

I'd been meaning to get back to this but haven't had the time to find the data I wanted. Here it is. I did this test back in 2015. I took a 3 MB text file (5 words per line, 114K lines), copied it to the clipboard, and then copied it to several-then current programs. Word (and probably the other programs as well) need to process the text after pasting. This is not an disk I/O limited operation. I chose this task because it takes long enough to reduce the percent measurement error in timing the process.

You know when Word has finished its processing because the word count at the bottom stabilizes, which happens at the same time Word's CPU usage in Activity Monitor drops from 100% to ~10%. Here is how long this operation took in OSX 10.10 (Yosemite), using various word processsing programs:

Time to copy contents of 3 MB text file (114K lines) into:
TextEdit (Yosemite): < 1 sec
Pages (Yosemite): 10 sec
Word 2016 (Preview): 121 sec

Using Boot Camp, I repeated the test in Windows 7:
NotePad (text editor, similar to TextEdit): < 1 sec
Word 2016 (Preview): 18 sec (8 x faster than under OS X)

All tests were performed on the MBP listed below in my profile.

So, at least by this measure, there was a striking difference in how well-optimized Word for Windows was vs. Word for Mac in 2015. Alas, I can't easily repeat that test with current software, because my Parallels subscription has expired, and I don't have Bootcamp on my current machine. But if you are able to do that comparison yourself, using the methodology I described above, and using the current versions of Word for Mac in Big Sur, and of Word for Windows in Windows 10, I'd be interested to hear what you find.

We run a VERY large user base (in excess of 70,000) that is heterogenous in their OS of use (we use both Macs and Windows). Everything plays together very well.

Do your users push the programs into regimes in which they can show instability (e.g., Word docs hundreds of pages long with lots of imported graphics, both vectorized and flat) and, if so, does your system collect data on crash rate for the Windows and Mac versions of these apps? If not, then just the fact of having a large user based that employs both isn't going to tell you if such differences exist since, if crashes are infrequent, most people will just restart the program and never inform you.

In addition, unless your users switch back and forth between the Windows and Mac versions of these programs on the same machine, they are not going to have any way to know if there are differences in performance.

@theorist9
In relation to your BI article many of those points are just not true. Also the same with their companion Mac piece. It's just pushing stereotypes and generalisations.

Also yes the subject of stability and frequency of crashing is objective, when you have contradictiry accounts, both can't be equally correct.

Also I'm not saying the arguement is purely subjective. I'm just saying when both sides claim the objective facts which are mutually exclusive to each other, well in most cases the reality lies somewhere in the middle.
I don't disagree with anyone's statements here. They all sound legit based on what you've all experienced. However the sample size of "my experience" is just way too small to definitively say one is objectively better than the other.

If you want something less fuzzy, please see the results I posted above.

 

[richinaus]

I'd been meaning to get back to this but haven't had the time to find the data I wanted. Here it is. I did this test back in 2015. I took a 3 MB text file (5 words per line, 114K lines), copied it to the clipboard, and then copied it to several-then current programs. Word (and probably the other programs as well) need to process the text after pasting. This is not an disk I/O limited operation. I chose this task because it takes long enough to reduce the percent measurement error in timing the process.

You know when Word has finished its processing because the word count at the bottom stabilizes, which happens at the same time Word's CPU usage in Activity Monitor drops from 100% to ~10%. Here is how long this operation took in OSX (Yosemite, I believe), using various word processsing programs:

Time to copy contents of 3 MB text file (114K lines) into:
TextEdit (Yosemite): < 1 sec
Pages (Yosemite): 10 sec
Word 2016 (Preview): 121 sec

Using Boot Camp, I repeated the test in Windows 7:
NotePad (text editor, similar to TextEdit): < 1 sec
Word 2016 (Preview): 18 sec (8 x faster than under OS X)

So, at least by this measure, there was a striking difference in how well-optimized Word for Windows was vs Word for Mac in 2015. Alas, I can't easily repeat that test with current software, because my Parallels subscription has expired, and I don't have Bootcamp on my current machine. But if you are able to do that comparison yourself, using the methodology I described above, and using the current versions of Word for Mac in Big Sur, and of Word for Windows in Windows 10, I'd be interested to hear what you find.



Do your users push the programs into regimes in which Word for Mac can show instability (hundreds of pages long with lots of imported graphics, both vectorized and flat) and, if so, does your system collect data on crash rate for the Windows vs. Mac versions of Word? If not, then just the fact of having a large user based that employs both isn't going to tell you if such differences exist since, if crashes are infrequent, most people will just restart the program and never inform you.

If you want something more definitive, see the above.

I cannot think of a single app that runs better on MacOS than windows, that was first developed on windows.

My impression is that far more attention is provided to the optimisation of windows apps than mac apps [of the same version]. This can be seen in ALL the apps I use, and I got sick of it to a point, where my work computers are all shifting to PC. I am not compromising my business anymore for Apple.

I dont like to repeat myself, but the success of AS moving forward is purely down to developers.

 

[theorist9]

I cannot think of a single app that runs better on MacOS than windows, that was first developed on windows.

My impression is that far more attention is provided to the optimisation of windows apps than mac apps [of the same version]. This can be seen in ALL the apps I use, and I got sick of it to a point, where my work computers are all shifting to PC. I am not compromising my business anymore for Apple.

Interestingly, as I understand it, the Office-for-Mac programs weren't developed for Windows and then ported to OSX, so that wouldn't explain the difference in performance. For instance, Excel for Mac preceeded Excel for Windows. And the first Word for Mac was a different program from the first Word for Windows, with (at least according to Wikipedia) a WYSIWYG interface the Windows version lacked. I.e., I think that, in general, Office for Mac was developed directly for the Mac.

When it comes to Office-for-Mac generally, I wondered if the issue(s)/explanations could be one or more of the following:

• Office-for-PC and Office-for-Mac were developed by different teams. Did MS put its best engineers on the Office-for-PC team rather than the Office-for-Mac team? [Given the vast difference in market size, that would certainly make sense.]
• Since MS created Windows, they (presumably) had a far better in-house understanding of Windows than OSX. Did this enable them to better optimize for it?
• Did the Office-for-Windows team work collaboratively with the Windows devs to (in some cases) tweak Windows in such a way that it would make it easier for Office to perform at its best? It wouldn't be surprising if, in developing each new version of Windows, MS made sure that Windows didn't create problems for Office. I imagine such close, synergistic collaboration would not be possible between the Office-for-Mac team and the MacOS devs.

I dont like to repeat myself, but the success of AS moving forward is purely down to developers.

I would modify your last sentence to say it comes down to both the app developers, and how collaboratively Apple is willing to work with them. Some makers of popular Mac apps have said that Apple can create roadblocks that make it difficult for their apps to work optimally, some of which are intentional, and some of which are not.

And part of that is just about how good the QC is in MacOS. Like, for instance, not removing documented functionality without informing developers, as it did with 10.15.5:

A bug in macOS 10.15.5 impacts bootable backups, but we've got you covered | Carbon Copy Cloner | Bombich Software

bombich.com

According to https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/macos-catalina-known-issues,
"Apple resolved this issue in macOS 10.15.6. Apple made this "bug" a permanent change, however, in macOS Big Sur."

 

[richinaus]

Interestingly, Excel was first developed for Mac!

When it comes to MS Office generally, I wondered if the issue(s)/explanations could be one or more of the following:

• Office-for-PC and Office-for-Mac were developed by different teams. Did MS put its best engineers on the Office-for-PC team rather than the Office-for-Mac team? [Given the vast difference in market size, that would certainly make sense.]
• Since MS created Windows, they (presumably) had a far better in-house understanding of Windows than OSX. Did this enable them to better optimize for it?
• Did the Office-for-Windows team work collaboratively with the Windows devs to (in some cases) tweak Windows in such a way that it would make it easier for Office to perform a its best? I imagine such close, synergistic collaboration would not be possible between the Office-for-Mac team and the MacOS devs.

I would modify your last sentence to say it comes down to both the app developers, and how collaboratively Apple is willing to work with them. Some makers of popular Mac apps have said that Apple can create roadblocks that make it difficult for their apps to work optimally, some of which are intentional, and some of which are not.

And part of that is just about how good the QC is in MacOS. Like, for instance, avoiding breaking certain app functionality like it did with 10.15.5:

A bug in macOS 10.15.5 impacts bootable backups, but we've got you covered | Carbon Copy Cloner | Bombich Software

bombich.com

I do agree that Apple have to help the developers, as I am not sure it is financially viable for developers to spend too much time on optimising in comparison to windows [where the user base will be massively more].
And now they will have to do it again for AS.

My issue is with 3D apps, however I do also agree with your MS office comments.

Apple have spent time with Octane, and then they come out with a metal supported app.
Same with Unity.

 

[ninecows]

I'd been meaning to get back to this but haven't had the time to find the data I wanted. Here it is. I did this test back in 2015. I took a 3 MB text file (5 words per line, 114K lines), copied it to the clipboard, and then copied it to several-then current programs. Word (and probably the other programs as well) need to process the text after pasting. This is not an disk I/O limited operation. I chose this task because it takes long enough to reduce the percent measurement error in timing the process.

You know when Word has finished its processing because the word count at the bottom stabilizes, which happens at the same time Word's CPU usage in Activity Monitor drops from 100% to ~10%. Here is how long this operation took in OSX (Yosemite, I believe), using various word processsing programs:

Time to copy contents of 3 MB text file (114K lines) into:
TextEdit (Yosemite): < 1 sec
Pages (Yosemite): 10 sec
Word 2016 (Preview): 121 sec

Using Boot Camp, I repeated the test in Windows 7:
NotePad (text editor, similar to TextEdit): < 1 sec
Word 2016 (Preview): 18 sec (8 x faster than under OS X)

So, at least by this measure, there was a striking difference in how well-optimized Word for Windows was vs Word for Mac in 2015. Alas, I can't easily repeat that test with current software, because my Parallels subscription has expired, and I don't have Bootcamp on my current machine. But if you are able to do that comparison yourself, using the methodology I described above, and using the current versions of Word for Mac in Big Sur, and of Word for Windows in Windows 10, I'd be interested to hear what you find.



Do your users push the programs into regimes in which Word for Mac can show instability (hundreds of pages long with lots of imported graphics, both vectorized and flat) and, if so, does your system collect data on crash rate for the Windows vs. Mac versions of Word? If not, then just the fact of having a large user based that employs both isn't going to tell you if such differences exist since, if crashes are infrequent, most people will just restart the program and never inform you.

If you want something more definitive, see the above.

Very interesting measurement and great work

It’s likely that the office for Mac apps doesn’t receive the same attention from MS as those made for Windows. I also have functionality missing in the Excel for Mac that are in the windows edition. Perhaps try testing the same in Pages? It’s not word and you can’t do a reference on windows, but you can see if it’s closer to the word on Mac or word on Win.

Just two anecdotes from a relativel new Mac user:

Since ‘12 I have had one program crashing on my Mac: Microsoft excel. The rest just run stable.

My (recently replaced) iMac 2011 would from day one and till the end several OS versions later, start up in around 15 s. My various windows work PCs (laptop) only reached the same in 2019 with a brand new PC and clean Win 10 install.

 

[theorist9]

Very interesting measurement and great work

It’s likely that the office for Mac apps doesn’t receive the same attention from MS as those made for Windows. I also have functionality missing in the Excel for Mac that are in the windows edition. Perhaps try testing the same in Pages? It’s not word and you can’t do a reference on windows, but you can see if it’s closer to the word on Mac or word on Win.

Just two anecdotes from a relativel new Mac user:

Since ‘12 I have had one program crashing on my Mac: Microsoft excel. The rest just run stable.

My (recently replaced) iMac 2011 would from day one and till the end several OS versions later, start up in around 15 s. My various windows work PCs (laptop) only reached the same in 2019 with a brand new PC and clean Win 10 install.

Thanks . Actually, I did include a result with Pages. Not surprisingly (both since since it is written by Apple for Apple, and since it's a lighter program with much less functionality than Word), it was quite a bit faster.

I'd really like to retest with the current versions of Word for Mac and Windows. I could try installing Bootcamp and Office, but that would be a bit of a project.