Why do some continue using Microsoft Office on Mac?

[jfreedle2]

"great, capable, and intuitive" is highly subjective. I'm not saying it won't serve your needs. I'm saying that it completely pales in comparison to what's out there and isn't even close to comparing to Google Sheets or Excel.



I agree and wonder the same. I don't know what all they've added to Numbers lately, but if Apple was really trying to provide a serious alternative to Excel or Sheets, they've...really not put in the required effort to do so.



There are a bunch of books out there for the various iWork apps. Apple also has free user guides in the Apple Books store. Although, to your point, the availability for such resources for these iWork apps still pales in comparison to what one can find for any given version of Excel.



Have you used Google Sheets? It's pretty full-featured. I'm sure an Excel expert will find plenty of features that it's lacking, but it's WAY more feature-rich than Excel. Like, it's at least in the same ballpark. Same is true of Google Docs in relation to Microsoft Word. The fact that it's browser-based means nothing; it's still plenty powerful.

Google is great at analyzing your data and selling it advertisers. Pretty much everything Google makes is Garbage. I only tried out Google sheets back around 2012 as a pilot at my company before they moved to Office 365 due to security issues with Google Apps. I reminded me of Windows 3.1 and it was no where near as functional as Microsoft Office. I cannot try it now because I do not agree with Google’s terms of service. From what I remember, even Microsoft Works is far superior to Google Sheets. Numbers definitely exceeds the functionality of Google Sheets.

 

[Digital Dude]

Granted, I don’t use all the modules of Microsoft 365, but I prefer MS Word, Outlook, and CoPilot over any similar product that Apple produces. 🤷‍♂️

 

[throAU]

Numbers does have some pretty good functionality, I find the Pivot table functionality better than Microsoft Excel’s. Sorting and filtering I find much better than Microsoft Excel’s, probably because might store the data in SQLite tables whereas Excel probably deals with the inefficient XML.

Yeah it has its benefits, but when it comes to large spreadsheet number crunching it isn't even close.

Numbers is great for making small amounts of data look pretty, or for ease of use for non-spreadsheet people.

Which is most of apple's target market when you think about it - home users and content creators. People who don't live as enterprise accountants.

 

[polyphenol]

Yeah it has its benefits, but when it comes to large spreadsheet number crunching it isn't even close.

Numbers is great for making small amounts of data look pretty, or for ease of use for non-spreadsheet people.

Which is most of apple's target market when you think about it - home users and content creators. People who don't live as enterprise accountants.

Should enterprise accountants be using spreadsheets?

This is just one of many articles expressing concern about the use of spreadsheets:

Spreadsheet errors can have disastrous consequences – yet we keep making the same mistakes

Spreadsheet-related errors can have serious consequences in the private and public sector. But what can we do to overcome them?

theconversation.com

Adding this related story:

Putney election result had missed out 6,500 votes

A "spreadsheet issue" led to more than 6,500 votes being missed from the declaration of the election result in Putney.

Labour's Fleur Anderson held the south London seat in the 4 July contest, receiving what was announced on the night as 20,952 against Conservative Lee Roberts' total of 10,011.

But on Wednesday, Wandsworth Council revealed that it had mistakenly failed to include 6,558 votes in the totals, publishing revised results on its website.

The missing votes did not affect the overall result, with Ms Anderson still emerging as the winner and with a larger majority of 12,488 votes over Mr Roberts.

Putney: General election result missed 6,500 votes

The error was due to a "spreadsheet" malfunction but did not affect the overall result.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[throAU]

Should enterprise accountants be using spreadsheets?

This is just one of many articles expressing concern about the use of spreadsheets:

Spreadsheet errors can have disastrous consequences – yet we keep making the same mistakes

Spreadsheet-related errors can have serious consequences in the private and public sector. But what can we do to overcome them?

theconversation.com

In fantasy land utopia no they should not.

Back here in the real world, almost all ERP software is in some ways trash and excel is the glue that holds the financial world together.

 

[Slartibart]

And in relation to the linked article - forgetting to sanitizers your documents before making them e.g. publicly available is completely independent of (most of) the software which is used.

 

[MacBH928]

I agree and wonder the same. I don't know what all they've added to Numbers lately, but if Apple was really trying to provide a serious alternative to Excel or Sheets, they've...really not put in the required effort to do so.

They are not. Their aim is personal use not corporate. Its probably there just as an added advantage to purchase an Apple product that "You do not have to buy MS Office license" .

There are a bunch of books out there for the various iWork apps. Apple also has free user guides in the Apple Books

I am not going to purchase and read a book on how to use Apple Numbers. If I will do that, I will do it for excel. At least I can use it in my resume.

Have you used Google Sheets? It's pretty full-featured. I'm sure an Excel expert will find plenty of features that it's lacking, but it's WAY more feature-rich than Excel. Like, it's at least in the same ballpark. Same is true of Google Docs in relation to Microsoft Word. The fact that it's browser-based means nothing; it's still plenty powerful.

I have not but I am very privacy conscience and hate how Google spy on the user so I keep their use to a minimum. Previously, I found all browser apps to be lacking and pain to use. Again, maybe my machine is old.

And in relation to the linked article - forgetting to sanitizers your documents before making them e.g. publicly available is completely independent of (most of) the software which is used.

what you mean sanitize documents?

 

[jlc1978]

They are not. Their aim is personal use not corporate. Its probably there just as an added advantage to purchase an Apple product that "You do not have to buy MS Office license" .

Which is a plus for many such Mac users; and many small businesses could do just fine with iWorks as well.

I am not going to purchase and read a book on how to use Apple Numbers. If I will do that, I will do it for excel. At least I can use it in my resume.

In addition, websites like MrExcell provide tons of free and some paid resources.

I have not but I am very privacy conscience and hate how Google spy on the user so I keep their use to a minimum. Previously, I found all browser apps to be lacking and pain to use. Again, maybe my machine is old.

In addition, if your internet access is poor or nonexistent they are useless; so why not use a local tool from the beginning.

what you mean sanitize documents?

Delete sensitive information, i.e. redact.

 

[MacBH928]

Should enterprise accountants be using spreadsheets?

This is just one of many articles expressing concern about the use of spreadsheets:

Spreadsheet errors can have disastrous consequences – yet we keep making the same mistakes

Spreadsheet-related errors can have serious consequences in the private and public sector. But what can we do to overcome them?

theconversation.com

Adding this related story:

Putney: General election result missed 6,500 votes

The error was due to a "spreadsheet" malfunction but did not affect the overall result.

www.bbc.co.uk

In fantasy land utopia no they should not.

Back here in the real world, almost all ERP software is in some ways trash and excel is the glue that holds the financial world together.

I do not work in enterprise, but I was told all accountants use Excel to an extent. While my simple mind will probably not able to work with more than 300 rows, people who do work in enterprise said that excel sheet can grow huge (1M+) .

So I have no idea how someone manages a spreadsheet with 50,000 rows and 50 columns, as any wrong entry will ruin the whole thing. Good luck finding that cell.

 

[MacBH928]

In addition, websites like MrExcell provide tons of free and some paid resources.

Exactly what I am talking about. On Apple suite side, the only source I found is MacMost , which is great btw. Otherwise, its scarce info here and there.

 

[jlc1978]

I do not work in enterprise, but I was told all accountants use Excel to an extent. While my simple mind will probably not able to work with more than 300 rows, people who do work in enterprise said that excel sheet can grow huge (1M+) .

One use I have seen that exploits the power of Excel is connecting to corporate ERP systems which provide data to Excel for manipulation and display. The ERP system collects data and performs calculations that are then exported to Excel for use by staff.

 

[Cirillo Gherardo]

Are the apple equivelant apps such as numbers, keynote and pages not good or the same as Microsoft office?

Work.

That one word basically ends the thread.

Apple's own programs are fine, and free to Apple users. Average consumer does not pay for Microsoft Office, and they get excellent document-creation programs from Apple that enable them to do the things they do.

People who WORK, however, are only going to encounter office docs and sometimes Google docs in the work place. People who work get company paid for versions of Office. Plenty of other people will also pay for it in order to interact with documents they share or receive from others.

 

[H2SO4]

Work compatibility is the sole reason for most I think. Pages and Numbers are just fine for the vast majority of people, including most but not all professionals.

This, but I think the answer is only half what it should be.
M$ Office is such complete software package, in addition there are integrations that don't appear on other office packages.
For me as much as it cost massively more than the Apple suite it was way worth it. I tired the Apple version and it just seemed rubbish, (probably also down to a bit of muscle memory).

 

[H2SO4]

Work.

That one word basically ends the thread.

Apple's own programs are fine, and free to Apple users. Average consumer does not pay for Microsoft Office, and they get excellent document-creation programs from Apple that enable them to do the things they do.

People who WORK, however, are only going to encounter office docs and sometimes Google docs in the work place. People who work get company paid for versions of Office. Plenty of other people will also pay for it in order to interact with documents they share or receive from others.

Not really.
I like the way M$ Office works more than the Apple suite, but I do get that work is a big reason.

 

[Cirillo Gherardo]

Not really.
I like the way M$ Office works more than the Apple suite, but I do get that work is a big reason.

IDK what "like the way it works" means. They both do the same thing. One has more advanced features and is used in professional environments. The other is a home tool that is more than adequate for non-professional use.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

I do not work in enterprise, but I was told all accountants use Excel to an extent. While my simple mind will probably not able to work with more than 300 rows, people who do work in enterprise said that excel sheet can grow huge (1M+) .

So I have no idea how someone manages a spreadsheet with 50,000 rows and 50 columns, as any wrong entry will ruin the whole thing. Good luck finding that cell.

One problem with Excel is that it is not accurate enough (does not encode numbers accurately) for large numbers (i.e. if your business is worth $1,000,000,000 or more), especially if you are using iterative calculations (as you would if you were calculating interest on a daily basis).

The last time I coded an application for these types of calculations I used Binary Coded Decimal, which always makes the cents come out properly, no matter how many calculations you do. If your Excel spreadsheet loses one cent with every iteration, and you make 10 million calculations (not unheard of) you have just lost your employer $100,000.

And of course, that assumes your spreadsheet is 100% correct. One study has shown that over 66% of spreadsheets used in big business have at least one serious error.

If you are calculating big bucks, you should be using a hand-coded, verified system that is written with Binary Coded Decimal.

 

[throAU]

So I have no idea how someone manages a spreadsheet with 50,000 rows and 50 columns, as any wrong entry will ruin the whole thing. Good luck finding that cell.

It's typically automatically exported/imported. People aren't manually editing cells with millions of rows.

The wrong entry is only wrong if it came out of the source data, and generally it isn't a case of "ruining the whole thing" any more than it is already incorrect inside the line of business app.

 

[throAU]

IDK what "like the way it works" means. They both do the same thing. One has more advanced features and is used in professional environments. The other is a home tool that is more than adequate for non-professional use.

Saying office and numbers do the same thing is like saying that hang-gliding and flying to the moon is the same thing.

 

[H2SO4]

IDK what "like the way it works" means. They both do the same thing. One has more advanced features and is used in professional environments. The other is a home tool that is more than adequate for non-professional use.

Two cars can do exactly the same job but 'work' in different ways and one is easier and nice and quicker.
M$Office is the easier, quicker, nicer and more functional one for me.

So much so that I'd rather pay for it than use a free one.
Heck, I can even get a cheaper last years model that will suffice to make the cost difference smaller.
I'm saying this as someone that used Office way before work had any measurable input on the decision, however as I mentioned earlier I recognise that part of a decision to moving to x new method can be blamed on that actual process of change.

 

[bzgnyc2]

I do not work in enterprise, but I was told all accountants use Excel to an extent. While my simple mind will probably not able to work with more than 300 rows, people who do work in enterprise said that excel sheet can grow huge (1M+) .

So I have no idea how someone manages a spreadsheet with 50,000 rows and 50 columns, as any wrong entry will ruin the whole thing. Good luck finding that cell.

As someone else pointed out one does not manually fill out giant spreadsheets like that. More than likely data is loaded whole from a file / extracted from a database and then formulas/pivots are done on tables (though people often don't use the actual table feature so in practice a "table" is just a hardcode rectangular range of cells). However, it is still a very error-prone design.

Assuming someone imports the data correctly, it is still very easy to corrupt. Many years ago I was given a junior analyst to "fix" and one of their assignments was to analyze some data (de facto we used Excel). I couldn't figure out what they did to it. Best guess is they tried to sort the table but only included some of the columns in the sort so at that point the data looked like it went through a blender. Plus somehow the column totals were still off from the original in ways I couldn't figure out either...

Putting that aside, formulas typically have to be repeated for every row using a filldown logic. So instead of something like NewVar := OldVar1 + OldVar2 in real data analysis systems, one writes "=A1 + B1" in cell C1 (row 1, column 3) and then "fills down" (the 3rd column) letting Excel update the formulas as it goes along to "=A2 + B2", "=A3 + B3",.... Don't forget to get your cell anchor references right in more complex situations. And yes your formula for C25313 could accidently get corrupted to "=A25131+B25313" and Excel will happily chug away (it will flag such cell with a little mark though if you happen to notice while scrolling through it).

There are best practices to avoid the most common mistakes like the above and various new features designed to make it work better with "big data" but I go back to my thesis: the spreadsheet model is very error-prone design.

 

[Cirillo Gherardo]

Saying office and numbers do the same thing is like saying that hang-gliding and flying to the moon is the same thing.

Nope. They both produce documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. They "do" exactly the same thing. It is only the details that are different.

 

[Slartibart]

Nope. They both produce documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. They "do" exactly the same thing. It is only the details that are different.

this is not the argument you think it is towards what @throAU said 🤣😂🥹

 

[seek3r]

Nope. They both produce documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. They "do" exactly the same thing. It is only the details that are different.

Office does a *lot* more than that. I get that for the general consumer the collaboration tools and the deep integration with the rest of MS' tools arent a big deal, which means a lot of the value-add for office isnt there, but for any of us in the corp world that's *huge*.

Know how one reason most of us here like using Apple gear is the ecosystem? MS has the same thing with their suite of products. Not all of them are the best at what they do (I still prefer slack to teams if you were to consider them as standalone products for ex) but they work together in an incredibly well integrated way that makes collaboration, especially on a team like I'm on where we're significantly distributed across the country and work with a lot of teams distributed globally, much much easier.

Apple offers a nice office suite for general document use by consumers but Microsoft is offering a much broader suite of integrated software for work that happens to include an excellent office suite. It's not the same at all. They dont do the same thing.

 

[jlc1978]

Putting that aside, formulas typically have to be repeated for every row using a filldown logic. So instead of something like NewVar := OldVar1 + OldVar2 in real data analysis systems, one writes "=A1 + B1" in cell C1 (row 1, column 3) and then "fills down" (the 3rd column) letting Excel update the formulas as it goes along to "=A2 + B2", "=A3 + B3",.... Don't forget to get your cell anchor references right in more complex situations.

A new paradigm for how spreadsheets do calculations would be nice, and to be fair you could do that in VBA; but we're stuck with a model that is basically the old paper and pencil way converted to a program. Much of our tools are similar as well because of their roots.

And yes your formula for C25313 could accidently get corrupted to "=A25131+B25313" and Excel will happily chug away (it will flag such cell with a little mark though if you happen to notice while scrolling through it).

There are best practices to avoid the most common mistakes like the above and various new features designed to make it work better with "big data" but I go back to my thesis: the spreadsheet model is very error-prone design.

Of course, which is why error checking is a critical, but often overlooked part of a good design. Something as simple as when adding across columns like you are to get a sum , and then adding the results for a total, you can also add all the underlying columns, add those results and compare to the total to see if they match. Not fool proof but at least it's a layer of defense.

 

[MacBH928]

Not really.
I like the way M$ Office works more than the Apple suite, but I do get that work is a big reason.

Thats because you probably know your way around Office. When I first started using both, I found Apple Pages+Numbers much easier and I had to look up on how to do things much less.

One problem with Excel is that it is not accurate enough (does not encode numbers accurately) for large numbers (i.e. if your business is worth $1,000,000,000 or more), especially if you are using iterative calculations (as you would if you were calculating interest on a daily basis).

For software that all it does is calculate numbers, this sounds ironic that it can't do calculations right. Can't imagine how all businesses rely on it.

If you are calculating big bucks, you should be using a hand-coded, verified system that is written with Binary Coded Decimal.

what would that system be? and why is not everyone using it instead of excel?