Well, I mainly use Word for very simple documents. If things are going to get any more complex than that I pull out InDesign. So
I have to say, I don't know.
I know I like Entourage 2008 though. Seems a better experience to me than 2004.
We have very different usage levels: Once I open Word, nothing I am doing qualifies as 'simple'. Most of it is technical writing, journamism, or other, very heavy writing. I wouldn't consider ID for that, as ID is really meant for layout/DTP.
If I need something more robust, I drop into
Framemaker, which still kicks ID in the trousers for any technical literature creation environment.
I use
ID for magazine layout work, and essentially for naught else beyond that. Most of the critical features that I need for writing manuals simply don;t exist in ID, such as simple anchors for generating auto indexes. it is also geared for DTP, and uses the wrong from of visual environment
for technical writing.
Word 2004 gives me most of what I need, to write and proof content, after which I can easily import it into Framemaker, and add anchors, do layout, etc..
I'd murder for a current version of FM
for OSX, on
any hardware.
I've also no real use for Entourage: I use
Eudora, which I find to be the most remarkable, and robust, feature-rich and reliable e-mail client ever devised. The auto filtration of messages, either by content, keywords, 'from' e-mail addresses, 'to' e-mail addresses, subject, etc., is simply amazing.
The earlier, PPC versions, are also fully-featured
without registering.
I care. I'd love continued software updates and support for PPC. The only thing that lets my iMac G4 down is the fact that the software is near obsolete. If it wasn't for TenFourFox I doubt it could even browse the web. But even then it has a lack of flash. XP was released long before Tiger and supported for long after it too, and it shows since you can do a lot more without having to search hard for obscure software alternatives.
Aye, but most of what you desire is third-party support, and the sad fact is, that even when PPC was new and shining, the kind of application support that you want didn't exist.
Do you remember how tedious it could be to play various WMV and non-MP4 video files on OSX, reliably? Sure, VLC would handle most of them, but for a variety of codecs, that were proprietary, you had to use a terrible, and old build of WMV, and no QT plugins existed for more than half the video codecs, that were often
Intel specific.
Apple don't develop Flash:
Adobe/Macromedia develop flash. Even if Apple put a hand in, and worked on a cross-port, you would still be without other plugin content types, such as
Silverlight, which I admit is a horrible platform, and a
necessary evil.
I actually don't have much of a problem with general browsing on 10.4 and 10.5. Only media-intense websites such as YouTube give a problem; and for those, I either rip content and play it in VLC, or I use XP to view them. You can always use XP in VPC with IDM+FF and download all YouTube content to a local directory, no cross-encoded needed.
Bloody hell, the YouTube website is crap on XP now, slow and buggy, so downloading the videos is a better solution, for anyone on older HW.
Have you tried
Flash 11.5 for PowerPC?
JAVA RTE 7 exists for Linux PPC, as do newer versions of Firefox/Mozilla, and other useful code. What we need is more people willing to cross-compile and port open-source software. VLC is a good example, as is OpenVNC. Both are open, and both are years out of date for PPC.
What you may also want to consider is installing both MacPorts
port and Homebrew
brew. From there, you can install GTK (for Quartz) and Gnome, and run Gnome/GTK+ software on PPC by running a makefile and compiling it with GCC.
That opens you up to some more modern software.
Most XP support is due to third-party developers, as there is essentially little difference between deploying a programme for W7 as there is for XP/W7. The hardware and APIs haven't changed. This applies towards porting to Intel OSX in a way: A JRE is still compiling to the same architecture, a video codec is translating for the same architecture.
PowerPC tosses a spanner in the works, as it is a Big-endian platform, like IBM z/A (System z).
Bi-endian operation doesn't exist in the 400-series, 7400-series, and 900-series PPC processors, used on Apple HW, which is a major hurdle to overcome, and thus, why porting from clean C code, using a GCC compiler, or cross-compiling PPC Linux software, is really the way to go, if you want PPC support.
All the support you would see from Apple would be aimed at OS-level, and Apple product support. Thus, iTunes, QT, and the iSeries programmes, but little else. The rest of it comes down to third-party support, and that falls to convincing companies that a market exists, and that there is a large-enough market to sustain a commercial product. Honestly, open-source projects are far more realistic, and if you are desperate, setting up a porting bounty may be prudent.