Why do some continue using Microsoft Office on Mac?

[MacBH928]

The latest version of iWork components has advanced in some ways beyond iWork '09 versions, but in other ways there are still functions that are missing. When Apple redesigned iWork their intention was to have a consistent look and feel across web/MacOS/iOS. From that perspective, they hit a home run.

Neither LibreOffice nor MS Office have that level of consistency across platforms.

Well if that is the aim then I guess yeah they have done their job, the problem is if you have read this thread not many people want this product. Most people here use or prefer Ms office, and those who don't are forced to sometimes. Others use stuff like Google Docs, Libreoffice, and ZOHO maybe which leaves a very slim userbase of the iWork software.

Lets put it this way, if iWork was paid, how many people would pay for it?
I am against MS Office simply because I hate monopolies and wish Apple could create a counter to it. I believe more competition is better. Yet iWork continue to be the "just to get by" software, I wonder why they put the effort to keep it around. Maybe the userbase is huge and we do not know, I wish if Apple had any numbers it would share them.

pretty much

numbers is a good entry level spreadsheet for home user type stuff. And that’s fine. It’s apple’s bread and butter market. for many people numbers will probably do the job.

it has no real place in an enterprise dealing with large data sets, connectivity to SQL databases, etc.

any comparison to excel is like comparing a Cessna to an f-16 in terms of complexity and flexibility.

and apparently not many want a Cessna, not to mention you can get a free web version of the f-16.

 

[sracer]

Well if that is the aim then I guess yeah they have done their job, the problem is if you have read this thread not many people want this product. Most people here use or prefer Ms office, and those who don't are forced to sometimes. Others use stuff like Google Docs, Libreoffice, and ZOHO maybe which leaves a very slim userbase of the iWork software.

Lets put it this way, if iWork was paid, how many people would pay for it?
I am against MS Office simply because I hate monopolies and wish Apple could create a counter to it. I believe more competition is better. Yet iWork continue to be the "just to get by" software, I wonder why they put the effort to keep it around. Maybe the userbase is huge and we do not know, I wish if Apple had any numbers it would share them.

That's a hypothetical that assumes that nothing changes other than Apple charging for iWork.

There was a time when Apple DID charge for iWork. It was regularly updated and it modeled how productivity software could and should work like on OSX. That was the Apple philosophy at the time... they knew that in order to sell the hardware, they needed software that showcased the hardware. Because the user base was so small, there was no financial incentive for software developers to spend the time and energy to develop world-class apps... so Apple had to do it themselves. The out-of-the-box experience of Mac computers was legendary... and rightfully so.

As OSX devices gained popularity, Apple has been shrinking back from being the main mover-and-shaker on the software.

It might sound like it, but I'm not some blind fanboy of iWork. I generate a LOT of documents and heavily use MS Office, LibreOffice, Google Docs suite, and yes iWork. I've learned the in's and out's of each and the design philosophy of each. I know that from a spec sheet perspective, iWork on paper looks weak.

In my travels, I've found that most of the people who use MS Office don't use the MS Office-exclusive features of the suite.... heck, they don't even use basic features like character and paragraph styles... but instead manually change the text's appearance on-the-go.

 

[mjt57]

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

As stated above, I use Office at work. I'm used to it. I also like the way that Outlook integrates email, notes, calendars and so on into one package. And as I'm allowed two copies of Office on my home computers due to how our work licence works I have it installed on the Macbook and the Mini. I use an outlook.com account for calendars, notes and so on, but it combines emails from outlook.com, gmail and my personal ISP email account.

With Outlook calendar what I really like about it is that I can assign categories to events. For example, as a shiftworker I have a yellow label assigned to Dayshift, a dark blue for Nightshift, different ones for events, appointments, motorsport and so on.

 

[MacBH928]

In my travels, I've found that most of the people who use MS Office don't use the MS Office-exclusive features of the suite.... heck, they don't even use basic features like character and paragraph styles... but instead manually change the text's appearance on-the-go.

In fact, most people just need to know:-

• Paragraph alignment
• change font
• change size
• Bold, Italics, Underline
• insert image

I don't know whats in those fat books about learning how to use MS Word.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Yes, there probably is that advanced features used in some corporate environment but I am 100% sure none of it used personally or even for many small businesses.

Conditional formatting is one exception.

It is super useful even for someone who is just using a spreadsheet to track home finances or their investments.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was some sort of graphical, colored indicator if you went over budget? Or seeing ROI on various investments via colored bars in cells?

A few examples here:

https://www.myonlinetraininghub.com/how-to-use-excel-conditional-formatting

Conditional formatting is one feature that Excel on Windows does FAR better than Apple Numbers, LibreOffice, Google Sheets, whatever.

For this reason alone I run Excel for Windows. A year ago I did so in a Windows 10 virtual machine via VirtualBox. Today I have a suitable Windows PC for MS Office and have deleted VirtualBox from my Mac.

For the past 5+ years, every six months or so I open one of my spreadsheets with Numbers and promptly see half of the conditional formatting vanish. Poof, gone.

Numbers is an atrociously poor replacement for Excel (Windows) if you are a heavy user of conditional formatting.

 

[MacBH928]

Conditional formatting is one exception.

It is super useful even for someone who is just using a spreadsheet to track home finances or their investments.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was some sort of graphical, colored indicator if you went over budget? Or seeing ROI on various investments via colored bars in cells?

A few examples here:

https://www.myonlinetraininghub.com/how-to-use-excel-conditional-formatting

Conditional formatting is one feature that Excel on Windows does FAR better than Apple Numbers, LibreOffice, Google Sheets, whatever.

For this reason alone I run Excel for Windows. A year ago I did so in a Windows 10 virtual machine via VirtualBox. Today I have a suitable Windows PC for MS Office and have deleted VirtualBox from my Mac.

For the past 5+ years, every six months or so I open one of my spreadsheets with Numbers and promptly see half of the conditional formatting vanish. Poof, gone.

Numbers is an atrociously poor replacement for Excel (Windows) if you are a heavy user of conditional formatting.

Understandable, such feature should not be too tough on Apple to implement. After all they design their own CPUs but will they? who knows.

 

[mjt57]

I'm lost. These comments about conditional formatting, do you mean if a value goes negative that it'll show red, for example? Or in the case of dates to strikethrough and turn light grey past dates? If so, I'm looking at this right now in two spreadsheets. However, these spreadsheets were created in Excel running under Windows.

 

[panzer06]

I use Office 365 at both jobs. Not going to use anything else on my Mac.

 

[James_C]

I'm lost. These comments about conditional formatting, do you mean if a value goes negative that it'll show red, for example? Or in the case of dates to strikethrough and turn light grey past dates? If so, I'm looking at this right now in two spreadsheets. However, these spreadsheets were created in Excel running under Windows.

Yes conditional formatting can change the format of the cells based on the value of the cell. Very handy for Heatmap analysis of sales variances of products to show visually where problems are and what is working well for example.

 

[mjt57]

Yes conditional formatting can change the format of the cells based on the value of the cell.

And herein lies the confusion for me. My copy of Excel for Mac does this. But it is an Office365 version, recently installed. Why are others saying that it doesn't work?

 

[James_C]

And herein lies the confusion for me. My copy of Excel for Mac does this. But it is an Office365 version, recently installed. Why are others saying that it doesn't work?

They are referring to Numbers, Apple’s spreadsheet, not Excel.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Understandable, such feature should not be too tough on Apple to implement. After all they design their own CPUs but will they? who knows.

Well they sure are taking their time. It's not like conditional formatting is a feature that was just released on Excel for Windows.

It's been there for years.

 

[MacBH928]

Well they sure are taking their time. It's not like conditional formatting is a feature that was just released on Excel for Windows.

It's been there for years.

for reasons I don't understand developers are hesitant to add simple features. For example, Mozilla Firefox just a couple months ago added "pin-to-zoom" . I don't know how many years this was possible on Safari.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

It's rather pointless to try to figure out the motivations for any given software development team's actions.

In the end actions speak louder than words.

If Developer A creates Feature X and Developer B creates Feature Y and Joe Consumer finds Feature X more useful, it really doesn't matter why Developer B created Feature Y instead of prioritizing their efforts in creating Feature X.

Apple doesn't seem to care about conditional formatting. They have the right to deprioritize that. And consumers have the right to deprioritize Apple as a software vendor.

In the end, this is really Apple's problem since Joe Consumer (like me) has a viable superior option.

This underscores the basic tenet that no one can please everyone all the time.

 

[BeatCrazy]

Office on Mac is fine. For the past 4+ years, I've made my living on a Mac using Office. Most of my work "output" is PowerPoint, Word and some Excel. Never struggled to create, or use it.

 

[MacBH928]

It's rather pointless to try to figure out the motivations for any given software development team's actions.

In the end actions speak louder than words.

If Developer A creates Feature X and Developer B creates Feature Y and Joe Consumer finds Feature X more useful, it really doesn't matter why Developer B created Feature Y instead of prioritizing their efforts in creating Feature X.

Apple doesn't seem to care about conditional formatting. They have the right to deprioritize that. And consumers have the right to deprioritize Apple as a software vendor.

In the end, this is really Apple's problem since Joe Consumer (like me) has a viable superior option.

This underscores the basic tenet that no one can please everyone all the time.

You are not wrong, but I don't like the idea that there is only 1 superior software aka monopoly, and that is MS office. If you followed this thread you will see most favouring the MS Office and specifically Excel and I wish Apple(or someone else), offered an equal alternative.

 

[Hazmat401]

Unfortunately.... its what the rest of the world uses

 

[AZhappyjack]

Bottom line to all of this... why not? It works for me. YMMV.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

You are not wrong, but I don't like the idea that there is only 1 superior software aka monopoly, and that is MS office. If you followed this thread you will see most favouring the MS Office and specifically Excel and I wish Apple(or someone else), offered an equal alternative.

Well it's really up to the competition to step up their game, isn't it?

If no one else can implement conditional formatting in their spreadsheet software as well as Microsoft does with Excel, that certainly is not Microsoft's fault.

Let's face it: Microsoft Office (the Windows version in particular) is the de facto office productivity standard for enterprise/government worldwide and has been for decades.

I would be happy to see some other organization give Microsoft a run for their money concerning office productivity software. Waiting... Waiting... Waiting...

As much as I would like this to happen someday, the reality is it's not here now. And I need to get certain things done now that can only happen with MS Office.

And I'm willing to pay $35-40 for a non-subscription software key for MS Office 2019 Home & Student (Windows version) to get the job done.

I'm also willing to accept a half-baked, partly implemented cheaper/free version of certain software packages but not for office productivity even if it's for my own personal use.

As I mentioned before, I open up my Excel spreadsheets with heavy conditional formatting with competitors' spreadsheet apps occasionally to see if they are getting close in terms of matching features. They are still lagging tremendously.

 

[James_C]

I am old enough to remember when MS Office was not dominant as it is now. It was a right pain sending files to others. "I can't open that - do you have Wordperfect" ? "We use Lotus 1-2-3". Thank god everyone uses MS Office now.

 

[SmOgER]

I'm sure it was mentioned but many people use google docs, sheets, slides.. if being online is not an issue. It's also safer since it's autosaving everything to cloud rather than internal storage which theoretically could fail any minute.

 

[playtech1]

On the rare times I use my Mac for business purposes I use Office as it pretty much matches my Windows version, with which I am very familiar.

For personal stuff I tend to choose Google Docs and Sheets, as the cloud aspect is very convenient across platforms.

Pages and Numbers seem fine, but too limited (and different) for my business needs (lots of long documents, many cross-references and, on Windows, plug-ins galore) and perhaps too complex and tied to the Mac ecosystem for personal stuff.

I can see those apps working for many users, but for me they fall between two stools.

Also Office 365 is pretty decent price-wise, as it includes not just the software but 1TB of OneDrive - plus MS allow you to share with up to 5 family members who each get their own 1TB of storage (plus access to the apps). Apple doesn't sell 1TB of iCloud, but the 2TB plan is about the same price as Office 365 and I believe the 2TB is shared among all family members.

 

[PlayUltimate]

Don't mind Pages vs Word. But Excel is FAR superior to Numbers. For a basic spreadsheet, Numbers is ok; albeit I still find it clunky. (editing a formula is a pain). Excel is so easy to create complicated spreadsheets/formula.

 

[panzer06]

I am old enough to remember when MS Office was not dominant as it is now. It was a right pain sending files to others. "I can't open that - do you have Wordperfect" ? "We use Lotus 1-2-3". Thank god everyone uses MS Office now.

As a former law firm IT person I know those days well!

 

[MacBH928]

I am old enough to remember when MS Office was not dominant as it is now. It was a right pain sending files to others. "I can't open that - do you have Wordperfect" ? "We use Lotus 1-2-3". Thank god everyone uses MS Office now.

Even better, if we had a standard that can be opened and edited in any app like pdf, html, jpeg.

Also Office 365 is pretty decent price-wise, as it includes not just the software but 1TB of OneDrive - plus MS allow you to share with up to 5 family members who each get their own 1TB of storage (plus access to the apps). Apple doesn't sell 1TB of iCloud, but the 2TB plan is about the same price as Office 365 and I believe the 2TB is shared among all family members.

I have to agree, Microsoft price is on point. I know it says "family" members, but could it be 6 friends getting in on it? That would give each 1TB of storage and MS Office for $17/year.