Why do some continue using Microsoft Office on Mac?

[SnowCrocodile]

Pages is actually closer to Publisher than Word. Its a lot better for creating rich documents which Word is rather poor at. Microsoft seem to have given up on Publisher altogether, barely advertising it anywhere. I believe its still included in a $6/m 365 sub. Pages is free, works just as well on iCloud.com (meaning its just as good on Windows, Linux and Chrome) and has some lovely templates.

Most things you might use Word for, such as a resume for a job Pages is just as good. Digital submissions tend to be PDF so it has full compatibility.

For personal documents, any Office suite is more than sufficient as far as features go. The biggest issue is that by using Apple suite, one is committing themselves to Apple devices, as there’s practically zero support for Apple documents on any other OS. Well there’s always online office but it’s slow and inconvenient. So there’s a vendor lock in.

With Microsoft Office or Open Office / Libre Office set to save files in Microsoft formats, the documents can be edited on any OS using apps native to that OS. No lock-in.

For business use, the choice of Office suite is driven by (a) the established industry standards and (b) collaborative features. In my over 20 years in business working with clients from across multiple diverse industries, I’ve seen mostly Microsoft Office (a vast majority), some Google suite use, and some Open Office use (especially with overseas companies). I encountered exactly one vendor sales guy trying to pull up a Keynote presentation in an onsite meeting, and it didn’t go well - the state-of-the-art wireless projector would not connect to his Mac, and he had to resort to printing a PDF and having one of our engineers share the screen. Lost almost 20 minutes out of 45 minutes he had to do his sales pitch.

 

[Ctrlos]

For personal documents, any Office suite is more than sufficient as far as features go. The biggest issue is that by using Apple suite, one is committing themselves to Apple devices, as there’s practically zero support for Apple documents on any other OS. Well there’s always online office but it’s slow and inconvenient. So there’s a vendor lock in.

With Microsoft Office or Open Office / Libre Office set to save files in Microsoft formats, the documents can be edited on any OS using apps native to that OS. No lock-in.

For business use, the choice of Office suite is driven by (a) the established industry standards and (b) collaborative features. In my over 20 years in business working with clients from across multiple diverse industries, I’ve seen mostly Microsoft Office (a vast majority), some Google suite use, and some Open Office use (especially with overseas companies). I encountered exactly one vendor sales guy trying to pull up a Keynote presentation in an onsite meeting, and it didn’t go well - the state-of-the-art wireless projector would not connect to his Mac, and he had to resort to printing a PDF and having one of our engineers share the screen. Lost almost 20 minutes out of 45 minutes he had to do his sales pitch.

This is all certainly true. Maintaining a level of platform agnosticity requires standardised filetypes.

 

[eduardodfj]

I think you and I have different definitions of "walled garden".

I can use Microsoft Office files on pretty much any OS, any device, and I don't necessarily need MS Office to use them (although I may lose some formatting).

On the other hand, I can only use Apple Office files on Apple devices and via Apple office apps.

Moreover, if you look at some OS's (say iOS / iPadOS) and count the number of apps that can use MS Office format files, vs the number of apps that can use Open Office files, you'd probably find that MSO is significantly better supported by the 3rd party developers, and there's more user choice in the apps that can work with MSO formats than the apps that can work with Open Office formats, or especially apps that can work with Apple Office formats.

This, to me, is the opposite of a "walled garden". MSO has become an industry standard across most industries, but it's also a very wide open field as far as accessibility and user choice.

They are just different walled gardens, but both are walled gardens nonetheless. Apple forces (or tries to, let's say) you to use their hardware, Microsoft their software. I'm not even considering the Apple office suite, which is a walled garden within a walled garden.

Yes, Office file formats are universal and industry standard, but that's not really significant because you still have to use Office in the workplace. The most glaring example of this is the fact that Linux in the desktop is just not happening... Mostly because there is no Office for Linux. Which I think MS will never make, just like they tried to kill Office for Mac via removing workable macros in Excel, because their bottom line (i.e. Windows licenses) might suffer.

So yes, you can use LibreOffice but the moment you step out of single-user and basic needs, it's not really a solution and you are forced to use MS Office.

 

[bzgnyc2]

They are just different walled gardens, but both are walled gardens nonetheless. Apple forces (or tries to, let's say) you to use their hardware, Microsoft their software. I'm not even considering the Apple office suite, which is a walled garden within a walled garden.

Yes, Office file formats are universal and industry standard, but that's not really significant because you still have to use Office in the workplace. The most glaring example of this is the fact that Linux in the desktop is just not happening... Mostly because there is no Office for Linux. Which I think MS will never make, just like they tried to kill Office for Mac via removing workable macros in Excel, because their bottom line (i.e. Windows licenses) might suffer.

So yes, you can use LibreOffice but the moment you step out of single-user and basic needs, it's not really a solution and you are forced to use MS Office.

Agree with much of what you say but the question I have is which file format is most likely to be readable 40 to 50 years from now?

Some documents I create are like memos or text messages -- barely a step above conversation that can be lost to the ages like most random utterances we make throughout the day. Others may feel like a bit of history that we wish to preserve (without consciencious and manually converting each document upon a tech migration).

For read-only documents, I am hoping PDF is sufficient. For editable documents I am hoping .DOCX will make it that far at this point -- both because of its ubiquitousness and that it is a Zip of reasonably well-documented XML files.

The problem with all the "app" model is that the "content" I create seems to be treated as a preference file -- something specific and belonging to the app to be deleted/forgotten once I tire of the app or the platform it runs on.

 

[SnowCrocodile]

They are just different walled gardens, but both are walled gardens nonetheless. Apple forces (or tries to, let's say) you to use their hardware, Microsoft their software. I'm not even considering the Apple office suite, which is a walled garden within a walled garden.

Microsoft isn't forcing me to use their software. There's a healthy choice of applications that can read and write MS formats on all platforms.

Yes, Office file formats are universal and industry standard, but that's not really significant because you still have to use Office in the workplace.

Only if you need to use Office specific features that don't work in exactly the same way on other suites. MS provides the file format code that the 3rd party developers need to be able to use the documents and spreadsheets created in MS Office. MS is under no obligation to provide the application code to help these 3rd party developers with writing their programs. It's up to the Open Office / Libre Office / whatever developers to invest the resources necessary to have feature parity with MS Office suite.

The most glaring example of this is the fact that Linux in the desktop is just not happening... Mostly because there is no Office for Linux. Which I think MS will never make, just like they tried to kill Office for Mac via removing workable macros in Excel, because their bottom line (i.e. Windows licenses) might suffer.

Libre Office can work with most MS Office files, it just can't ensure 100% formatting compatibility or feature parity.

For MS to adopt MS Office to Linux environment, there should at the very least be market for it. And I mean a market of people willing to pay for MS Office on Linux.

Which, given the dotCommunist nature of Linux crowd, is simply not going to happen.

And companies aren't going to adopt Linux desktops for the simple reason that the cost of maintaining Linux-based desktop environments company-wide, and retraining the workforce, would far exceed the relatively mundane cost of Windows licenses.

It just doesn't make any sense to create a whole different package for an OS that is not likely to produce enough sales to justify the sunk costs.

Once they are successful in making Office a web-first suite, this may change.

So yes, you can use LibreOffice but the moment you step out of single-user and basic needs, it's not really a solution and you are forced to use MS Office.

You are not forced to use MS Office unless you need full compatibility with it. And if you do, then you need MS Office. This is not a "walled garden". It applies to any commercial soft.

 

[MacBH928]

Pages is actually closer to Publisher than Word. Its a lot better for creating rich documents which Word is rather poor at. Microsoft seem to have given up on Publisher altogether, barely advertising it anywhere. I believe its still included in a $6/m 365 sub. Pages is free, works just as well on iCloud.com (meaning its just as good on Windows, Linux and Chrome) and has some lovely templates.

Most things you might use Word for, such as a resume for a job Pages is just as good. Digital submissions tend to be PDF so it has full compatibility.

This is very important to understand. Most people think "word processor" is actually a "page layout" app. Hence why its so frustrating to deal with MS Word and others. I think what most people want is a page layout app, but should people start using apps like InDesign to create their pages?

I encountered exactly one vendor sales guy trying to pull up a Keynote presentation in an onsite meeting, and it didn’t go well - the state-of-the-art wireless projector would not connect to his Mac, and he had to resort to printing a PDF and having one of our engineers share the screen. Lost almost 20 minutes out of 45 minutes he had to do his sales pitch.

This is shocking since Mac is the most plug-n-play os I have dealt with.

Agree with much of what you say but the question I have is which file format is most likely to be readable 40 to 50 years from now?

I actually tried to research this and the answer seems to be .txt

For MS to adopt MS Office to Linux environment, there should at the very least be market for it. And I mean a market of people willing to pay for MS Office on Linux.

Actually, there should be. Since Microsoft are after the lucrative $10 subscriptions, any linux user would either have a work assigned Office license or a student. So making a Linux Office should enforce MS Office to be even more the defacto standard in work environment. That $7/Month comes with superb suite and 1TB of cloud storage. The price is outstanding. Its basically the price of every other cloud storage + office suite bundled with it.

 

[Ctrlos]

This is very important to understand. Most people think "word processor" is actually a "page layout" app. Hence why its so frustrating to deal with MS Word and others. I think what most people want is a page layout app, but should people start using apps like InDesign to create their pages?

Microsoft need to fold Publisher into Word and have one app for both options (like Pages does)

They decided nobody needed a desktop publishing app and instead went with Sway as a way of building richer online content instead.

 

[MacBH928]

Microsoft need to fold Publisher into Word and have one app for both options (like Pages does)

They decided nobody needed a desktop publishing app and instead went with Sway as a way of building richer online content instead.

Maybe I am wrong but I have a feeling if they incorporate publisher in Word it won't work because it was not planned to be there in the first place. Some things needs to be planned from the start.

As I mentioned earlier, people think Word is a layout app and use it as such and Microsoft is playing along. I myself just recently realised this is the wrong tool for that.

 

[SnowCrocodile]

Actually, there should be. Since Microsoft are after the lucrative $10 subscriptions, any linux user would either have a work assigned Office license or a student. So making a Linux Office should enforce MS Office to be even more the defacto standard in work environment.

Except there’s no Linux work environment to speak of. It has about 2.8% share of desktop OS market. And a very large part of that are individual FOSS enthusiasts, various local governments or academia in places like EU, hospitals that run specialized / customized software, none of whom are going to pay for Office. By developing Office for Linux, MS would both spend more money than they are likely to make back in subscriptions, and be helping to promote an alternative to their OS. Why would they want to do that?

That $7/Month comes with superb suite and 1TB of cloud storage. The price is outstanding. Its basically the price of every other cloud storage + office suite bundled with it.

Yes, Office is a great deal. And if you’re in the US and qualify for HUP (or whatever they call it now), it’s like $50 a year.

 

[Ctrlos]

Maybe I am wrong but I have a feeling if they incorporate publisher in Word it won't work because it was not planned to be there in the first place. Some things needs to be planned from the start.

As I mentioned earlier, people think Word is a layout app and use it as such and Microsoft is playing along. I myself just recently realised this is the wrong tool for that.

It might work better if we're just had better layout tools!

 

[Jonnod III]

It might work better if we're just had better layout tools!

And proper spelling and grammar help.

 

[barracuda156]

It will be hard to get rid of Microsoft office

Unless one needs Excel, it may not be really hard. As noticed above, Keynote is just better than PowerPoint, and Pages is tolerable.

 

[SnowCrocodile]

Unless one needs Excel, it may not be really hard. As noticed above, Keynote is just better than PowerPoint, and Pages is tolerable.

It's the matter of compatibility in a collaborative environment. You use the same tools as the rest of your industry.

E.g. part of my job requires providing extensive reports to clients at the end of major project phases. These reports are written by several teams each responsible for their slice of the overall pie. Aboit third of clients are OK getting a PDF version, but majority ask for Powerpoint that they can use as a basis for their own internal reporting. Some require us to use their own templates for reporting. Using any other presentation tool, no matter how good, will simply not work.

Same thing with Word. Most companies have templates and standardized documents, and many complex documents are written collaboratively (e.g. while producing detailed engineering specifications for equipment procure packages, I typically have a team of two or three people working on the same document simultaneously.)

It would simply be impossible to have one person or even a company using something other than the industry standard when they have to collaborate with others.

 

[MacBH928]

Except there’s no Linux work environment to speak of. It has about 2.8% share of desktop OS market. And a very large part of that are individual FOSS enthusiasts, various local governments or academia in places like EU, hospitals that run specialized / customized software, none of whom are going to pay for Office. By developing Office for Linux, MS would both spend more money than they are likely to make back in subscriptions, and be helping to promote an alternative to their OS. Why would they want to do that?

Yes, Office is a great deal. And if you’re in the US and qualify for HUP (or whatever they call it now), it’s like $50 a year.

Well if they utilize some of that proton (or whatever its called) and WineHQ magic maybe they can get it to work on Linux for very cheap. Full 3D windows games are running on Linux now.

As why would Microsoft promote a competing OS, I guess same reason I would ask why they made .docx open standard. If they kept it closed source, people will be forced to use MS Office. Same reason to ask why they release a MacOS version at all.

As for FOSS users not paying, I see your point but there seems to be a group that insist on using Linux specially in the tech companies. So better play nice with them before they create an alternative and this MS will create its own monster.

It's the matter of compatibility in a collaborative environment. You use the same tools as the rest of your industry.

E.g. part of my job requires providing extensive reports to clients at the end of major project phases. These reports are written by several teams each responsible for their slice of the overall pie. Aboit third of clients are OK getting a PDF version, but majority ask for Powerpoint that they can use as a basis for their own internal reporting. Some require us to use their own templates for reporting. Using any other presentation tool, no matter how good, will simply not work.

Same thing with Word. Most companies have templates and standardized documents, and many complex documents are written collaboratively (e.g. while producing detailed engineering specifications for equipment procure packages, I typically have a team of two or three people working on the same document simultaneously.)

It would simply be impossible to have one person or even a company using something other than the industry standard when they have to collaborate with others.

If they require PP specifically you are out of luck, but for collaborative work there seems to be a market for other than MS Office. There seems to be companies out there that have collaborative office suites like OnlyOffice, Collabora, Google Docs, Dropbox Paper. I believe even Apple Pages has collaboration capability.

How many users it has and how good is it is a different story.

 

[SnowCrocodile]

Well if they utilize some of that proton (or whatever its called) and WineHQ magic maybe they can get it to work on Linux for very cheap. Full 3D windows games are running on Linux now.

WineHQ "magic" is a bunch of half assed bandaids. It doesn't work more often than it does. If MS decides to release their flagship commercial product on any system, they must have it working - they may limit features (like they do on Mac) but they can't afford for it to keep breaking.

Also, don't forget that Linux is very fragmented. What are they going to release their office for ? Ubuntu ? OpenSUSE ? RedHat ? What flavors ? Does it have to work with all desktop environments ?

Just tell me - who is their core potential customer on the Linux side ? A bunch of geeks running home setup and changing distros every 6-12 months ? They aren't MS prime market. They are hardly a "market" at all, at least when it comes to business product (they will indeed pay for games, if they can't pirate them). And red hot hate for "M$" is one of the defining traits of this subculture, so any problem with Office is guaranteed to be exaggerated and publicized.

So MS releasing Office for Linux would be asking for a giant headache without any commercial potential, in the absence of a real market.

If I was running Microsoft, I wouldn't touch this mess with a ten foot pole.

As why would Microsoft promote a competing OS, I guess same reason I would ask why they made .docx open standard. If they kept it closed source, people will be forced to use MS Office.

They were forced to make it an open standard by EU. Basically, EU gave MS a choice - help develop an open document standard, or we'll develop our own and force you to use it (and US would likely follow the lead). And obviously it was in MS' best interests to write the standard in the way that minimized the impact to their Office. They would of course prefer to keep it proprietary, but this was not a viable option.

The same approach would not work with Suite for Linux. EU can force companies to adhere to common standards, they can't force them to develop software for all platforms.

Same reason to ask why they release a MacOS version at all.

Probably because it's a premium segment with 16% desktop OS share, a good number of Macs are used in business environments, and individual Mac users are known to spend a lot more money on apps and services than users on other platforms. As opposed to less than 3% market share for Linux, and a culture that believes that software should be free as in free beer, and that MS is an evil corporation that deserves to be punished. At the end of the day, somebody at Microsoft decided that there was a business case for producing a Mac version of Office, and no business case for producing it for Linux.

As for FOSS users not paying, I see your point but there seems to be a group that insist on using Linux specially in the tech companies. So better play nice with them before they create an alternative and this MS will create its own monster.

If Linux desktop market share jumps to 30-50%, MS would have a far bigger problem than Office sales. It would be something similar to the mobile market exploding and MS getting caught with their pants down.

If Linux share stays at the current levels below 3%, they can create any alternatives they want, it's not going to make any significant impact.

If Linux share slowly yet steadily grows, MS would have plenty of time to develop and sell Office for it.

In other words, they need a viable Linux market to sell Office, but it's in their best interests to not help with creating that market.

As to the threat of someone creating a super-duper Office for Linux - to date, the only real alternative that actually made a dent in commercial sales of Office is Google Workspace, which was produced by another tech behemoth with resources comparable to what MS has, and is platform-independent. Open Office is not really a viable commercial alternative, and where it did replace MSO it was mainly as the result of political decisions, not commercial competition (European governments, NGOs, academia).

If they require PP specifically you are out of luck, but for collaborative work there seems to be a market for other than MS Office.

I am afraid you're mixing up "Market" and "Supply".

There's certainly a supply of alternative office suites that allow collaborative work.

There doesn't seem to be a significant market for them.

There seems to be companies out there that have collaborative office suites like OnlyOffice, Collabora, Google Docs, Dropbox Paper. I believe even Apple Pages has collaboration capability.

See above. They are selling, but how many are buying ?

How many users it has and how good is it is a different story.

Exactly.

 

[bzgnyc2]

If they require PP specifically you are out of luck, but for collaborative work there seems to be a market for other than MS Office. There seems to be companies out there that have collaborative office suites like OnlyOffice, Collabora, Google Docs, Dropbox Paper. I believe even Apple Pages has collaboration capability.

There are non-Office options but there are two issues that keep people on the Office platform/ecosystem:
1) It doesn't just have to work or interoperate but people need bug-for-bug compatability with the standard to join the ecosystem (or at least not be "that guy")
2) Alternatively you need everyone you collaborate with to switch to the new alternative at the same time

2 is very hard -- almost impossible when collaboration is across organizations and more resembles are interconnected web of collaborators and practically speaking the network is 250+ million people within 5 degrees of seperation.

Which then goes back to 1) which is hard not the least because FOSS developers hate to reimplement bad ideas which is almost impossible not to do when you need bug-for-bug compatability (not to mention that 1% or whatever of the target that isn't documented/correctly).

It is interesting that the next generation appears to be Google Docs first.

 

[SnowCrocodile]

There are non-Office options but there are two issues that keep people on the Office platform/ecosystem:
1) It doesn't just have to work or interoperate but people need bug-for-bug compatability with the standard to join the ecosystem (or at least not be "that guy")
2) Alternatively you need everyone you collaborate with to switch to the new alternative at the same time

2 is very hard -- almost impossible when collaboration is across organizations and more resembles are interconnected web of collaborators and practically speaking the network is 250+ million people within 5 degrees of seperation.

Which then goes back to 1) which is hard not the least because FOSS developers hate to reimplement bad ideas which is almost impossible not to do when you need bug-for-bug compatability (not to mention that 1% or whatever of the target that isn't documented/correctly).

It is interesting that the next generation appears to be Google Docs first.

Google's was the first truly collaborative suite. And when it became collaborative (2010 iirc), Google was still seen as a "cool", forward looking, "don't be evil" company. So no wonder that it was adopted by the tech startups. Back then, MS Office did not have any collaboration. They were a decade behind Google, afaik there was no real collaboration until Office 2021.

However when MS did start providing collaboration via OneDrive, it worked very well. I used it just mere months after it was released, and it saved me thousands of dollars in project costs, and eliminated quite a bit of stress.

 

[throAU]

"Microsoft: Word deletes some documents instead of saving them"
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...eletes-some-documents-instead-of-saving-them/

All software has bugs. Sometimes these bugs destroy data. Have backups - whether you use Apple, Microsoft or open software.

because you have to pay for Microsoft Office when you can get Apple suite, LibreOffice, OnlyOffice, Google Docs, FreeOffice, WPS Office for free.

Would be great if any of those alternatives provided the functionality a lot of people require from an office suite, but they just don't - if your usage extends too far beyond single user small time stuff, especially if you work with legacy on-premises data sources.

e.g., Apple have no database app in their suite. Base on OpenOffice is crap.

Numbers? Can't even connect to a database for importing data. Can't even see an option in the menu to import data from CSV (it can open CSV files individually but that isn't the same).

People who have no personal need for Office will never understand. And that's fine. You don't need it - be happy.

Those who do, simply can't use the other alternatives because they don't do the job.

Mostly this is not related to individual choice, but interoperability/collaboration with other users and the business world in general.

If you don't do that or need those features: Congratulations, use the included or free/open alternatives. A lot of us would love to be in that situation, but for various reasons - we can't. It's not necessarily due to any particular love of Microsoft or the Office platform, it's usually out of necessity.


The big big hooks to Office are Excel and MS Access. The rest of the suite (Word, Publisher, etc.) for most of the people who need it - not so much. But without workable alternatives to Excel and Access for data manipulation, it's currently no contest for those needing those features.

 

[MacBH928]

WineHQ "magic" is a bunch of half assed bandaids. It doesn't work more often than it does. If MS decides to release their flagship commercial product on any system, they must have it working - they may limit features (like they do on Mac) but they can't afford for it to keep breaking.

Also, don't forget that Linux is very fragmented. What are they going to release their office for ? Ubuntu ? OpenSUSE ? RedHat ? What flavors ? Does it have to work with all desktop environments ?

Just tell me - who is their core potential customer on the Linux side ? A bunch of geeks running home setup and changing distros every 6-12 months ? They aren't MS prime market. They are hardly a "market" at all, at least when it comes to business product (they will indeed pay for games, if they can't pirate them). And red hot hate for "M$" is one of the defining traits of this subculture, so any problem with Office is guaranteed to be exaggerated and publicized.

So MS releasing Office for Linux would be asking for a giant headache without any commercial potential, in the absence of a real market.

If I was running Microsoft, I wouldn't touch this mess with a ten foot pole.

I see your point but if I was MS CEO and I crave that subscriptions I will try to make MS Office available to any potential customers. They dont need the linux market, but its an opinion on which direction you want to go. The way I see it is more people in the future will move to Linux because Apple Mac share is not growing and Windows is becoming a more horrid privacy invasive OS.

Maybe MS can avoid the Linux option by making Windows more pleasant taking people's mind off linux as an option.

They were forced to make it an open standard by EU. Basically, EU gave MS a choice - help develop an open document standard, or we'll develop our own and force you to use it (and US would likely follow the lead). And obviously it was in MS' best interests to write the standard in the way that minimized the impact to their Office. They would of course prefer to keep it proprietary, but this was not a viable option.

The same approach would not work with Suite for Linux. EU can force companies to adhere to common standards, they can't force them to develop software for all platforms.

Europeans save the day again

Probably because it's a premium segment with 16% desktop OS share, a good number of Macs are used in business environments, and individual Mac users are known to spend a lot more money on apps and services than users on other platforms. As opposed to less than 3% market share for Linux, and a culture that believes that software should be free as in free beer, and that MS is an evil corporation that deserves to be punished. At the end of the day, somebody at Microsoft decided that there was a business case for producing a Mac version of Office, and no business case for producing it for Linux.

idk, the Apple crowd were/are pretty anti-Microsoft.

As to the threat of someone creating a super-duper Office for Linux - to date, the only real alternative that actually made a dent in commercial sales of Office is Google Workspace, which was produced by another tech behemoth with resources comparable to what MS has, and is platform-independent. Open Office is not really a viable commercial alternative, and where it did replace MSO it was mainly as the result of political decisions, not commercial competition (European governments, NGOs, academia).

Game makers didn't care about Linux either, but with Winehq and Proton even people who kept Windows PC for games no longer see a need for it. You do not want that to happen with MS Office. Since Google Docs is in browser, it will seem like a good replacement for MS Office for linux users and slowly we will hear "I use Google Docs, so you have to join me on Google Docs" and MS will shoot theirselves in the foot for not having MS Office version ready for Linux users.

Many moons ago, people were split between Blackberry and iPhones. Whatsapp was the only IM in common. Whatsapp turned into the de facto standard messenger for BB, iphone, android, sold for $20B, has 2B users, and their competitors left in the dust: BB Messenger, Vyper, SKype etc.

I am afraid you're mixing up "Market" and "Supply".

There's certainly a supply of alternative office suites that allow collaborative work.

There doesn't seem to be a significant market for them.

See above. They are selling, but how many are buying ?

Exactly.

alternatives can live in niche markets. Tutanota is a privacy centered email service(GMail and Outlook) , Brave browser (vs Chrome) , Duckduckgo search (vs google search) , Affinity (vs Photoshop)

 

[MacBH928]

Google's was the first truly collaborative suite. And when it became collaborative (2010 iirc), Google was still seen as a "cool", forward looking, "don't be evil" company. So no wonder that it was adopted by the tech startups. Back then, MS Office did not have any collaboration. They were a decade behind Google, afaik there was no real collaboration until Office 2021.

Not sure if they are related, but they had something called Google Wave that had multiple people work together online. At the time it seemed like magic. They deprecated it but maybe it turned into Google Docs?

However when MS did start providing collaboration via OneDrive, it worked very well. I used it just mere months after it was released, and it saved me thousands of dollars in project costs, and eliminated quite a bit of stress.

How were you able to save thousands of dollars just because you can work with another person on the same document online? Its convenient but where does the savings come from?

e.g., Apple have no database app in their suite. Base on OpenOffice is crap.

Are you talking about Access? from my search online that thing seems as dead as MS Publisher.

Numbers? Can't even connect to a database for importing data. Can't even see an option in the menu to import data from CSV (it can open CSV files individually but that isn't the same).

People who have no personal need for Office will never understand. And that's fine. You don't need it - be happy.

Those who do, simply can't use the other alternatives because they don't do the job.

Mostly this is not related to individual choice, but interoperability/collaboration with other users and the business world in general.

If you don't do that or need those features: Congratulations, use the included or free/open alternatives. A lot of us would love to be in that situation, but for various reasons - we can't. It's not necessarily due to any particular love of Microsoft or the Office platform, it's usually out of necessity.


The big big hooks to Office are Excel and MS Access. The rest of the suite (Word, Publisher, etc.) for most of the people who need it - not so much. But without workable alternatives to Excel and Access for data manipulation, it's currently no contest for those needing those features.

I do not think any one is even arguing that MS Office is indeed the best tool for corporates, but I believe that bigger user base of the market are not corporate and can do without MS Office as you have stated which I think goes back to the original poster asking why do some continue to use MS Office on the mac.

-Freelancers
-Journalists
-Students
-Teachers
-Single-employee businesses
-home users
-Small shops

what I really want to know is that does Apple use MS Office since they are corporate 😂😂

What about FOSS warrior corporates like Ubuntu and Suse? Linux Foundation?

 

[SnowCrocodile]

I see your point but if I was MS CEO and I crave that subscriptions I will try to make MS Office available to any potential customers. They dont need the linux market, but its an opinion on which direction you want to go. The way I see it is more people in the future will move to Linux because Apple Mac share is not growing and Windows is becoming a more horrid privacy invasive OS.

No offense, but that's probably why you're not a CEO.

There's not nearly enough potential subscriptions in the Linux desktop world to justify spending the resources needed to develop and maintain a separate version of Office, especially since by doing that you would be propping up your own competition that at the present time is going nowhere fast.

I am not a CEO of anything, but even I have enough business sense to turn down some projects that seem like they could be more trouble than it's worth. A true business leader knows not only where to make money, but also where NOT to even try.

Maybe MS can avoid the Linux option by making Windows more pleasant taking people's mind off linux as an option.

There's no Linux option. 2.6% of a shrinking desktop market is not an option.

For Linux to become a viable option, it would have to become a whole lot more consumer-oriented, not just as an OS, but as an entire ecosystem. I just don't see that happening anytime soon.

Europeans save the day again

As long as they can stick it up to the Americans, sure.

There's a good reason why Europe, with a larger population than the US, and great financial and technological resources, failed to produce a similar number of tech giants. And many of the the few that it did produce seem to come from Scandinavia, which is - arguably - less bureaucratic than the rest.

idk, the Apple crowd were/are pretty anti-Microsoft.

But the Apple crowd still has a habit of paying - even overpaying - for software and services.

The Linux crowd prefers to get stuff for free, and more often than not doesn't see piracy as anything bad, especially when it comes to Microsoft's titles.

Game makers didn't care about Linux either, but with Winehq and Proton even people who kept Windows PC for games no longer see a need for it. You do not want that to happen with MS Office. Since Google Docs is in browser, it will seem like a good replacement for MS Office for linux users and slowly we will hear "I use Google Docs, so you have to join me on Google Docs" and MS will shoot theirselves in the foot for not having MS Office version ready for Linux users.

Google Docs existed for 18 years. Its biggest growth was during 11 or so years when it was the only major office suite offering real time collaboration. It still failed to unseat MS Office, although it did carve a chunk of the market. Now that MS Office has its own collaboration tools, it's pushing back.

And Google Docs isn't doing much to promote Linux as a mainstream desktop OS. There's more to having a comprehensive desktop environment than an Office suite, although it's an important piece of the puzzle.

Many moons ago, people were split between Blackberry and iPhones. Whatsapp was the only IM in common. Whatsapp turned into the de facto standard messenger for BB, iphone, android, sold for $20B, has 2B users, and their competitors left in the dust: BB Messenger, Vyper, SKype etc.

This is not a good comparison. You are mixing up different things. WhatsApp is a cross-platform, consumer-friendly service. Linux is a (rather NOT consumer friendly) OS. Different animals altogether.

And as far as I know, there hasn't been and still isn't an official WhatsApp client for Linux, is there ? Only a web app. Just like with MS Office. As the matter of fact, when it comes to WhatsApp, Facebook is treating Linux the same way Microsoft does when it comes to Office. Your own example is supporting the opposite point of view.

alternatives can live in niche markets. Tutanota is a privacy centered email service(GMail and Outlook) , Brave browser (vs Chrome) , Duckduckgo search (vs google search) , Affinity (vs Photoshop)

Again, you're mixing things up.

There are already multiple alternatives to Office. This doesn't mean that they pose a threat to the Office, especially on a niche, low market share desktop platform.

Yes, alternatives can live in niche markets. So what ?

Affinity has less than 1% share of its respective market. I myself own Affinity Photo, it's reasonably priced, it's good enough for my needs, and it allows me to have the same workflow between Windows, Mac and iPadOS. But they are not a threat to Adobe. And guess what... they don't have a client for Linux. Funny how this works, eh ?

 

[throAU]

Are you talking about Access? from my search online that thing seems as dead as MS Publisher.

Yup, there are legacy applications out there that still use it.

But the bigger one is excel. ODBC import/export into excel is enterprise bread and butter.

Numbers can't do that.

 

[throAU]

I do not think any one is even arguing that MS Office is indeed the best tool for corporates,

Well, some people in thread are essentially arguing that ms office has no place on the Mac because Numbers and pages exist.

what I really want to know is that does Apple use MS Office since they are corporate 😂😂

I virtually guarantee you that Apple use MS Office internally, and I would also wager their accounts department probably run it on PCs.

Because the Apple office suite simply isn't suitable for that scale. As you mention, freelancers, home users, small business... sure. But not enterprise. For enterprise its a joke.

Because even with my limited use of excel (which is still beyond what numbers provides), the performance of Excel on the Mac is trash compared to the native windows version on Windows when working with larger data sets. It's not a platform problem with the Mac I'm sure, but more Microsoft's half-arsed implementation of Excel outside of Windows.

 

[bzgnyc2]

How were you able to save thousands of dollars just because you can work with another person on the same document online? Its convenient but where does the savings come from?

That's the thing -- for most corporations this software is a neglibible cost in the grand scheme of things. <$10/month for someone who costs >$5K/month (and likely double or more) and may be on multi-million dollar projects where days matter. On a project billing out at $500K/month, calendar days lost can be real money and time lost to version control and document reconcilation and formatting and reformatting issues can quickly dwarf the cost of the software itself. No one is going to jeopordize a 5,6,7+ figure project to save $10/month.

It is annoying since I'd like to use alternate platforms for larger reasons but there is relatively little financial incentive for large organizations (and those that collaborate with them) to switch platorms.

I do not think any one is even arguing that MS Office is indeed the best tool for corporates, but I believe that bigger user base of the market are not corporate and can do without MS Office as you have stated which I think goes back to the original poster asking why do some continue to use MS Office on the mac.

-Freelancers

Depends on the kinds of freelancers they are and whether their clients and collaborators are business/organizations that (likely) use Office. Audio/video professionals perhaps not. Graphic designers maybe unless their clients are corporations and they are creating figures, etc for presentations and the corporation wants the results in PowerPoint. Anything resembling management or technical consulting for corporate clients likely requires delivery in Office.

-Journalists

No idea what format editors and newspapers want...

-Students

I do see Google Docs active in this market.

-Teachers

Up through high school probably. Though they probably get Office free through their school and their school likely gets it highly discounted.

University, they need to collaborate with colleagues and submit manuscripts and books to publishers. Publishers generally expect documents in Word (perhaps TeX in the math world).

-Single-employee businesses

Same as freelancers. If it is someone running their own retail shop, Office probably not needed.

-home users

Home users who aren't just office workers working from/at home yes.

-Small shops

Agree retail shops are likely fine with something else that can reasonably import Word, etc documents on what are likely rare occasions.

 

[SnowCrocodile]

Not sure if they are related, but they had something called Google Wave that had multiple people work together online. At the time it seemed like magic. They deprecated it but maybe it turned into Google Docs?

No, IIRC Google bought a company that created a collaborative online Docs app, and turned it into Google Docs.

How were you able to save thousands of dollars just because you can work with another person on the same document online? Its convenient but where does the savings come from?

I had a very hot, fast paced project with a team of about a dozen or so engineers working on a long list of issues that the customer hired us to fix before a major product launch. The team was not all located in one spot. It was a large, sprawling industrial complex, and they were spread all over.

The initial list was over three hundred problems, and they kept piling up new ones as they discovered them.

The priority for fixing these problems kept changing daily as they were adjusting their plans, finding new issues, and some of the problems getting too much executive attention.

Every issue was accompanied with a long list of notes, changes, and directions.

So, here's the problem. How do you (a) distribute the work between people as soon as they become available, without any delays (b) keep track of progress (c) keep track of notes and changes for each item (that only the engineer currently working on that issue has a comprehensive understanding of, and they don't have any time to sit in meetings with you) and (c) report accurate, real-time project status to the customer every morning and on demand.

So, as a project manager, I would bear the brunt of this work. However, maintaining and updating this list having to chase people around would be a full time job, and I still had my main job responsibilities. So I would have to dedicate an engineer to doing nothing else but chasing people down and updating the master issues log. Even if I used the lowest rate person, it would still be a pretty sizable hit on project funding - 18 weeks x 40 hrs + up to 20 hrs of overtime each week, that's roughly the equivalent of 900-1,100 hours. And engineers, even the lowest paid ones, are expensive. On top of that, I would still, inevitably, have to spend quite a bit of my own time to make sure that this log was correct and up to date.

So, it was obvious that the best solution was to set up a shared spreadsheet that the team could be working on simultaneously in real time without stepping on each other's toes.

At first I was thinking about using Google Sheets, But we did not have a business account with Google, and getting one and having access approved by IT security would be too much hassle and couldn't happen quickly enough.

Then I learned that MS Office 2021 had collaboration features.

So I set up an Excel workbook on Onedrive, put the issues list in it, added a few columns, and granted access to the whole team. Every engineer would "check out" an issue by placing a checkmark, their initials and a date in the right columns, update status and notes as they worked on it, and then move out to the next available issue based on priority. If someone needed to switch to another issue (e.g. the priorities changed, or help was needed elsewhere) they would "check in" the one they were working on so someone else could pick it up in the meantime.

All I had to do with this log was updating priorities as they changed, adding new issues, and getting the latest project status every morning - which was easy to do because the log was being updated real time. All of the issue status tracking was done by the people who worked on them.

It was great - it helped to keep the project costs down, maintain a smooth flow of work assignments, have up to date status of every task and project overall at any point in the project, and (very important for me) kept my stress levels lower. It also worked out great for the team as everyone knew what was going on, where to find information, who was working on what, who would soon become available if help was needed, and so on.

Of course this was possible because it was a team of self-driven, responsible adults who knew what they were doing.

This worked so well that I've been using this approach on every project since then. Now this is all built into Teams and Sharepoint and is a whole lot easier to access.

Are you talking about Access? from my search online that thing seems as dead as MS Publisher.



I do not think any one is even arguing that MS Office is indeed the best tool for corporates, but I believe that bigger user base of the market are not corporate and can do without MS Office as you have stated which I think goes back to the original poster asking why do some continue to use MS Office on the mac.

-Freelancers
-Journalists
-Students
-Teachers
-Single-employee businesses
-home users
-Small shops

Freelancers have to use whatever tools are the standard in the industry they are working in. Unless their job deliverable is in a final form that is platform independent (e.g. PDF, or painting).

Journalists have to use whatever tools are the standard in the industry they are working in.

Students have to use whatever tools are the standard at their school or university.

Teachers have to use whatever tools are the standard at their school or university.

Single-employee businesses and small shops that have to collaborate with others have to use whatever tools are the standard in the industry they are working in. A residential / small business plumber, electrician, or a home HVAC technician can use whatever they want. A plumber shop, electrical company or HVAC company working on major corporate projects would use whatever the clients use. If you're working on one of my projects, I will provide you with a set of standard documents that you need to fill out and submit electronically. The info from these documents will then be merged into master spreadsheets used for tracking all kinds of project information. The absolutely last thing I need is to be fixing formatting inconsistencies and formula errors an hour before customer's management review, because some small vendor who's a sub of a sub decided to save a few bucks and use Libre Office.

Everybody else can use whatever they want. That's why MS Office and Google Workspace don't own 100% of the market.

what I really want to know is that does Apple use MS Office since they are corporate 😂😂

What about FOSS warrior corporates like Ubuntu and Suse? Linux Foundation?

I would imagine that they use whatever tools make sense for the task. But, they are really not collaborating with others as vendors - they are OEMs, in a way, so they get to set their own rules.