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Best word processor for Mac OS

Which is your favorite word processor for Mac OS?

  • Microsoft Office Word

    Votes: 139 40.9%

  • Apple Pages

    Votes: 140 41.2%

  • Nisus Writer Express

    Votes: 1 0.3%

  • Nisus Writer Pro

    Votes: 3 0.9%

  • Mellel

    Votes: 3 0.9%

  • Mariner Writer

    Votes: 1 0.3%

  • OpenOffice.org Writer

    Votes: 8 2.4%

  • LibreOffice Writer

    Votes: 14 4.1%

  • Scrivener

    Votes: 26 7.6%

  • Bean

    Votes: 5 1.5%
  • Total voters
    340
For just writing, I'd say MS Word, but on a Mac (every Mac I've ever had including this 2011 iMac & my 2011 MBP) it's slow and laggy.

But, I use a lot of graphics and Apple Pages wins for me. Super fast too!
 
My favorite word processor ever was WordPerfect (for Windows) version 8, dating back to 1997. It went downhill from there, but it did everything I ever wanted (or still want) from a word processor.

Back to the present. I don't use just one. There is no "best".
  1. Pages - used for most documents. Those I don't share except as PDFs, and are short (say 20 pages or less).
  2. Microsoft Word -- only for shared documents.
  3. Libre/Open/Neo Office -- I tried to like them. Even tried the original Star Office back in my OS/2 days. It would be nice if Neo, the non-free one of the three, truely embraced OS X like it claims, but it's implementation of the latest OS X features autosave, resume, versions is poor to pathetic and it still doesn't integrate well. So why are these on my list? I've got them to handle Open-document format files I receive, plus it does an excellent job importing my hundreds of old WordPerfect documents.
  4. Scrivener -- for long documents. Nothing like it. Well actually I had a good writing program called Kamas that was on CP/M in the early 1980's.
  5. Epsilon - for "plain text". It's based on EMACS, and is multiplatform (OS X, Windows, Linux, and at one time I also used it in OS/2 and MS/DOS).
  6. Adobe Dreamweaver -- I write in HTML. Not just my website, but I've also written a "E-book" in HTML -- wrote it over 10 years ago and still revise it annually. I started out using WordPerfect for this, then switched to a (now defunct) IBM product, Now I use Dreamweaver.
 
LibreOffice. I just need something to write with. I don't do any kind of "advanced" formatting, and it's free.
 
Actually, if you don't don't do anything "advanced" the TextEdit application, that comes in every Mac, is fast and of course free.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned it.
 
Pages for actually using it and creating very decent looking docs but in real life scenarios it would have to be MS Word due to compatibility issues with clients/other companies/etc.

However if i was to send out/share pdf versions of the docs then definitely create them in pages and then print to pdf
 
It is InDesign, and even that is crippled.
The linear approach of Word processors sucks to begin with. In Design steps out of that, but it is really hard to work with formatting rules. People should be forced to work with styles instead of formatting ribbons to begin with, and to make that happen, working with styles should be fun and ease from the first click.

I think we should have CSS from the Web meet InDesign, and then we are getting somewhere.
 
... 🙁 I just use text edit.

----------
talmy said:
Actually, if you don't don't do anything "advanced" the TextEdit application, that comes in every Mac, is fast and of course free.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned it.
Click to expand...

This guy knows what's up!
 
blanka said:
It is InDesign, and even that is crippled.
The linear approach of Word processors sucks to begin with. In Design steps out of that, but it is really hard to work with formatting rules. People should be forced to work with styles instead of formatting ribbons to begin with, and to make that happen, working with styles should be fun and ease from the first click.

I think we should have CSS from the Web meet InDesign, and then we are getting somewhere.
Click to expand...

But InDesign is not even a word processor. And it's not meant to be...
 
Of all the 147 votes so far, Apple Pages and Microsoft Word got a combined 114. They seem to be far more popular then the other word processors.
 
skaertus said:
Yes, it is true. However, one word processor may fit the needs of more people than others. If sharing documents is needed, Microsoft Word may be the best choice, for instance.
Click to expand...

True enough, I don't write much any more but when I did and printed them I like the old MacWrite, I never did have any demanding requirements. Now however, Word is my favorite because that's what I have and it works well for what I occasionally have to do.
 
I just tried Grandview (available on the Mac App store for free) and find it surprisingly very productive. Unlike the name suggests, the "view" you get is usually just the word you are typing!

Try it -- you may like it!

(I used Grandview to create this post.)
 
talmy said:
I just tried Grandview (available on the Mac App store for free) and find it surprisingly very productive. Unlike the name suggests, the "view" you get is usually just the word you are typing!

Try it -- you may like it!

(I used Grandview to create this post.)
Click to expand...

Well, not exactly what I'm looking for here. I'm getting tired of these "distraction-free", "focus-on-writing" word processors. They have no features at all and this is a "feature" announced as an advantage over the full-featured word processors. What if I want to use cross-references and styles and indexing?
 
It's good for getting words on "paper". If you really want to format as you go, then it isn't for you. However since it does write directly to the clipboard, you can paste your way through building a document in another word processor. It is insanely light weight, being small and instantaneously responsive.
 
The pole is mistaken.

Most answers come from users writing from left to right.
Most word processors mention here, especially, Pages and Word know to write only in one direction, L2R.
Only Mellel and Nisus pro, and LibreOffice/Open/Neo, know to write on both directions and are able to write in tenth of languages.
 
ixodes said:
For work I don't need to share across platforms, I like Pages. Been using it since Apple first released it and it's one of my favorites.

For other times when I'm working across OS X, Windows & Linux I like OpenOffice.
Click to expand...

Pages can export into Word documents anyway though, for cross platform use?
 
riklar said:
Most answers come from users writing from left to right.
Most word processors mention here, especially, Pages and Word know to write only in one direction, L2R.
Only Mellel and Nisus pro, and LibreOffice/Open/Neo, know to write on both directions and are able to write in tenth of languages.
Click to expand...

Well, I think Microsoft Word for Windows supports writing from right to left. However, Word does not appear to support this feature in the 2011 Mac version (that seems to be one more way in which Word for Windows is definitely superior to the Mac version). You will really have to rely on other programs such as Mellel or Nisus in order to have this feature.
 
Vote has to go to Microsoft word. I would love to use Pages but since i'm at college and alot of my work requires cross referencing for max results, I need to stick with Word.
 
shenfrey said:
Vote has to go to Microsoft word. I would love to use Pages but since i'm at college and alot of my work requires cross referencing for max results, I need to stick with Word.
Click to expand...

It is a shame that Pages does not yet support cross-references. Every full-featured word processor out there seems to have this feature, except for Pages...
 
Nisus Writer Pro

I voted for Nisus Writer Pro, because I can do more on it than I can on Pages and because it will open WordPerfect documents. Personally, I would love to see WordPerfect on Mac. Maybe, its about what we're used to: with WordPerfect I feel I have most control over my document.
Recently, I downloaded Ulysses and Scrivener to give them a go, but I haven't got my head around their productive usefulness yet - not enough time!
Eric.
 
Eric Best said:
I voted for Nisus Writer Pro, because I can do more on it than I can on Pages and because it will open WordPerfect documents. Personally, I would love to see WordPerfect on Mac. Maybe, its about what we're used to: with WordPerfect I feel I have most control over my document.
Click to expand...

I've still got WordPerfect 8 on my Windows virtual machine. I always liked the control codes and "reveal codes" but I've gotten quite used to using styles and don't really care to go back now. LibreOffice or NeoOffice will also open WP docs. For some reason the latest OpenOffice doesn't have the converter anymore
 
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