Microsoft Office vs Apple Office Apps

[mailbuoy]

Libre Office.
Pages and the assoc. Spreadsheet have been gutted.
Spreadsheet chokes on over 32k per column.
Office is bloated, and they really want me to subscribe as well as store sensitive info in their cloud. That is NOT happening.
That leaves me Libre Office which is reasonably lean and reasonably zippy. I could use a bit more power, but There's really not much choice anymore, as compared to 25 years ago when I could choose seperate WP and Spreadsheet Apps.

I mostly use Pages & Numbers, in part because they have their iOS versions, too. I like Libre Office. As a LO user, what do you use on your mobile devices?

 

[Partron22]

[QUOTE="mailbuoy, post: 28138800] what do you use on your mobile devices?[/QUOTE]
Mostly I use "notes" or whatever comes with the iOS/Android device. I Don't do any serious writing on mobile devices are too outward facing for my taste .Just visited a hospital, where they were nice enough to tell me that their public WiFi had NO security of any kind. I do little writing, and NO bank apps etc. On those devices. I will go so far as to email myself. Getting card numbers and passwords stolen is too much of a hassle to mess with in that sort of environment. As far as I'm concerned, It's a lot like pulling my pants down and flashing eeveryone. Call me paranoid, but I'd sooner be safe.

 

[dogslobber]

Libreoffice and OpenOffice are virtually the same thing.

 

[honestone33]

Libreoffice and OpenOffice are virtually the same thing.

There are a few differences. The two important ones are 1) LibreOffice supports more file types than OpenOffice, and 2) one can download (and thus install) individual OpenOffice modules.

 

[topcat001]

Spreadsheets are useful, and I sometimes use them. Fortunately I don't have a file sharing requirement so the Apple apps work for me.

In my physics/mathematics work we write all our papers in Latex. I understand it is not practical for many people but Latex is a truly wonderful tool: Text based file format which renders into beautiful formatted documents which will never get corrupted or become incompatible. Excellent support for tables, images, and mathematics (equations).

I write all my documents (not just math) in Latex and store them in a git repository. That way I have full version control and, being a text based format, git can easily show changes. git is vastly superior to a Time Machine/backup scheme for versioning (the right tool). I can still Time Machine/iCloud backup my git repository itself, but don't use those tools to actually access it.

 

[firelighter487]

I've seen too many folks have issues with Apple's Mail program. Thunderbird is free, and just works.

it's always worked ok for me... thunderbird was a slow mess though, and it looks like it's from the 90's...

 

[honestone33]

it's always worked ok for me... thunderbird was a slow mess though, and it looks like it's from the 90's...

I have read too many horror stories about folks having issues with Apple's Mail program. Yeah, Thunderbird looks like something from the 90's, but it works.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

I use Microsoft Office on my Mac for two main reasons:

1. The first is familiarity and inertia: when I moved over from Windows to the Mac in 2012, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote weren't free at the time. I was already familiar with Office, so I bought Office 2011 for the Mac instead of buying Apple's suite which I wasn't familiar with.

As I used Office more, I slowly learned more of its features and I don't know how to do many of the things in Apple's suite that I use in Office. Even if I was willing to spend the time to learn Apple's suite, there's one feature in Word that I need for my job which Pages doesn't do: line numbers. That's a deal breaker for me. If Apple adds line numbers into Pages, I'd be willing to give it a shot.

I even spent time figuring out how to do things in Numbers that I do in Excel, to help a Mac-using friend at work who doesn't have Office. So I'll be willing to try if it does what I need.


2. The second is that I have to share files with coworkers who use Windows. You can export to Microsoft Office file formats from Apple's suite, but the conversion isn't perfect and that can be a problem. Formatting is very important in these files that I share, so I need Office to be able to work smoothly with the Windows ecosystem.

You can send PDFs to preserve formatting, but then they can't edit the files. None of us have the expensive Adobe software to edit PDFs, so that's not going to work either.


I also looked at LibreOffice, which does do line numbers in its word processing program, but the line numbers move around when the files are opened in MS Word in my experience. Sigh.

Excellent post.

When I first switched to Apple computers, in 2008, the chap who sold my MBP to me enthused about Apple's software systems, arguing (I don't doubt correctly), that they were far better, and that I didn't need Office for Mac.

My argument by way of reply was that everyone else in my professional universe used Word, and thus, anything I wrote (or received) had to be compatible with that.

It wasn't just inertia and familiarity (though I don't discount them); it was that everyone else professional used Word, and easy compatibility (without endless, added effort) was a necessity, because Word was (and is) the industry standard, not an added luxury.

Ever since then, I have bought Macs, usually MBAs. But they have all come complete with Office for Windows.

 

[honestone33]

Excellent post.

Yes, very well written.

Ever since then, I have bought Macs, usually MBAs. But they have all come complete with Office for Windows.

Do you mean Office for Mac? If it is Office for Windows, what about the Windows OS, which would be needed by Bootcamp (and other emulation software like Parallels)?

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Yes, very well written.


Do you mean Office for Mac? If it is Office for Windows, what about the Windows OS, which would be needed by Bootcamp (and other emulation software like Parallels)?

Office for Mac; apologies, my mistake.

 

[honestone33]

Office for Mac; apologies, my mistake.

A Arnie says:

 

[DanielDD]

sorry for the OT question, but one of the most features I used in Word is the format painter where I can select a word or phrase using the format painter brush, then easily apply the same formatting to other test, lines, paragraphics, etc. in one go. How can this be done in Pages?

There’s is a copy style/paste style option you can access on the menu bar (and thus assign a shortcut), as well as two buttons that you can add to th

Pages and Numbers are fine for me, but I’m told by those who use spreadsheets extensively that Excel is still unbeatable.

here’a my breakdown:

If you need something more powerful than Numbers, then you shouldn’t be using Excel. Stata, R, Python are much better.

If you need something more powerful than Pages, then you shouldn’t be using Word. LaTeX is much better.

If you need something more powerful than Keynote, then PowerPoint is not for you. Actually, I actually think Keynote is much more feature rich. Some people even use it as a vector app.

The only advantage of using office is the network effect - other people use it and so you are forced to do the same

 

[harriska2]

I'm a windows/office user since 1990s. I switched to macOS a year ago. I even had switch keyboard shortcuts so Ctrl is Cmd and I think I made my Windows key into Ctrl. That way I can Ctrl-C (copy), Ctrl-V (paste) like I have for over 20 years. I have MS Office 2016 installed on my macMini but have, over the year, gotten accustomed to Pages (which I love) and Numbers (took a LOT of googling). I'll have to try Keynote for vector graphics - it's what I used Powerpoint for