Company is closing so I am looking for a new job. Virtually every company I look at wants MS OFFICE experience which I use everyday at work but at home I mostly use iWorks and a Mac. A few bigoted employers may not like that I have a Mac at home but that’s okay. Do most of you have Windows 10/7 in a boot amp partition or do you use parallels?
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Macs in a PC world
- Thread starter jwolf6589
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Why would any employer care or know what computer you use at home? If a potential employer requires the usage of MS Office when you are not at the office, they should provide you a laptop for the purpose.
I have used Macs at home and work for 8+ years. I use Office 365 (at work) and Office 2019 (2011-2016 before) and share\collaborate with co-workers, customers, and partners who use Office on PC primarily. Never had a compatibility problem. The only things that are issues for me are limited functionality for Outlook (voting buttons, recall, etc).
The only time I used Office on PC as a Mac workaround was on rare occasions when I had to retrieve archived emails at work. But, now with Office 365, they have a new archive solution that is supposed to work with O365 on any platform.
Chances are, most companies don't care what you use at home, many don't even care what you use at work.
From what I know of your situation (I recall you used to have a link to your work site or blog), many organizations in your profession welcome Mac use. Don't assume they will have a problem with it. Most want to know you can work with Word, Excel, PPT with some level of proficiency because that is how they consume or collaborate. But the incompatibilities are inconsequential in most cases.
I am somewhat familiar with the organizations in CO Springs in your line of work, I have investigated working for many and they all seem to have Mac support requirements in their IT shops. Many of the top execs from these organizations use their Macs for presenting to audiences globally.
The IT world is responding favorably to Mac use in general. Sure, old school, backwards companies may be stuck in PC traps, but those who cherish young workers have come to realize their IT staff needs to be flexible and allow workers to use the tools they are most comfortable with. Some forward thinking shops have even embraced Mac in the workplace because they are far less headaches for IT. IBM concluded Mac users are more self sufficient, perhaps because they have had to figure stuff out, than PC users who have to be handheld through most issues. IBM concluded that despite higher hardware costs for Macs, support costs more than made up for the difference over a 1-2 year period, and came ahead in the typical 3-5 year hardware refresh cycle.
Why not use Microsoft Office for the Mac or Office 365? There's no reason to run Windows at all to use Office (unless you need Microsoft Access, but you probably don't and most companies that use that would mention it specifically). The files are compatible, so you can exchange them with your PC colleagues without any loss of formatting. https://products.office.com/en-us/mac/microsoft-office-for-mac
Also, many companies now allow remote access to a virtual desktop via something like Citrix. If you end up in a job with that capability, you can log onto your work system -- with all of the software they provide -- directly through your Mac. I use that all the time and it works beautifully. Many companies also provide preferred pricing on MS Office products for home. For example, I purchased MS Office for the Mac through my employer for $9 to use on my home computer.
I agree, I've found 99% of the functionality works fine and I use it in a OPC based environment with no issues most of the time. The only issues I have occur with some of the more advanced merge features. For example, I have a report that pulls in details from an excel spreadsheet. I cannot send it to someone and have it work. Mail merge with things like multiple items on a page are also a bit wonky. However, for most use cases there are no issues.
Go to gs.statcounter.com (or probably any other site that shows web use data; I don't have any vested interest in that one but it's the one I use). Click "edit chart data," select daily data and a time frame short enough to see day to day fluctuations in the chart (like two months). You'll see Safari usage, which is highly correlated with Mac usage, spike on weekends and holidays. The reason: millions of people like yourself. Choosing Mac for personal use is NOT a problem.