Office:Mac versus Office:Windows and Camino vs Firefox

[wahoo10]

I've heard Office:Mac isn't that great, and doesn't make up for what iWork 09 is missing. So I'm wondering what people think about it and why does it get such a bland reputation? Also, do people use a combination of the above? Such as iWork and Office:Windows? Both Offices? I do mainly word processing, some soft Excel work (no hardcore giant spreadsheets...yet), and general PowerPoints for presentations. I have access to cheap iWork/Offices (school discount) and a family pack of the top-level edition of OfficeC (family) so it isn't a big deal to get any of the above.

Lastly, what's the difference between Camino and Firefox? I use Firefox currently and love it, mainly due to the add-ons (weather at the bottom, Gmail alert, skins, page views, other customizations). Tabs seem to be on all browsers these days, so are there any other key differences?

 

[yoppie]

I use a combination of the two. I use Microsoft Office for Word and Excel since Word is causes me less problems with compatibility and Excel is more advanced then Numbers. I use iWork's Keynote application because it's better looking than PowerPoint.

 

[jackc]

For your needs, there's absolutely nothing wrong with Office for Mac. I use it all the time, and exchange files with a PC.

 

[Diaresi]

Mac Office 2008 got a bad reputation when it was released since they cut out VBA support and it was AMAZINGLY slow. For example Office 2004 using Rosetta or VNCing into a remote computer and opening up Office 2007 was quicker.

They have now sorted out most of these problems (especially the speed of loading) and it's a pretty damn good product IMO

The problem, if you can call it that, is that Office 2008 Mac and Office 2007 Windows are two separate products. Designed by two teams. Now, it's not like these teams don't talk to each other or share certain things. But. Problems do arise because they aren't on the same code base and simply porting Office over to Mac OS X.

Now, you're either going to get people whining that they don't always operate the same way (which is my complaint - sometimes you can get problems although with OOXML I have had a lot less than in previous versions) or that it doesn't look like a Mac app. They're a dedicated team and Mac Office 2008 is a product designed and built from the ground up for Mac OS X Which is why i can forgive it in the 0.5% chance there's a formatting problem with a file created on Office 2003 on Windows.

iWork '09 on the other-hand can't really compete. Apple ask you to pay for third party apps to get equations and bibliographies into Pages whereas Word has both included in the price. iWork* is fine if you're living in your own little Mac bubble and just need some nice and easy software to do basic "office" things. Anything more and Office 2008 is worth it.

Firefox = Gecko rendering engine with a ported interface (although in the recent version they've added some native Mac looking things like buttons)

Camino = Gecko rendering engine with a fully native (Cocoa) interface. This lacks Firefox Add-Ons though.

*Keynote is pretty awesome though

 

[Gray-Wolf]

Lastly, what's the difference between Camino and Firefox? I use Firefox currently and love it, mainly due to the add-ons (weather at the bottom, Gmail alert, skins, page views, other customizations). Tabs seem to be on all browsers these days, so are there any other key differences?

One additional difference, is Camino was made for Mac only. I have used both, but still prefer safari.

 

[MisterMe]

I've heard Office:Mac isn't that great, and doesn't make up for what iWork 09 is missing. So I'm wondering what people think about it and why does it get such a bland reputation? Also, do people use a combination of the above? Such as iWork and Office:Windows? Both Offices? I do mainly word processing, some soft Excel work (no hardcore giant spreadsheets...yet), and general PowerPoints for presentations. I have access to cheap iWork/Offices (school discount) and a family pack of the top-level edition of OfficeC (family) so it isn't a big deal to get any of the above.

We need to separate several issues that you have mixed together. Office 2008's major problem compared to Office 2007 is that it does not include Visual BASIC for Applications. Compatibility among the various versions of Office is a hope, not a guarantee. Until the release of Office 2007, Office 2004 [for the Mac] was the most compatible version on any platform. Open a file in one version of WinWord in a different version of WinWord and you will see what I mean.

Apple's iWork and Microsoft Office solve different problems. Cross-shopping these two suites make as much sense as cross-shopping a Chevrolet Corvette and a Ford F-350 Super Duty. One caveat: Keynote presentations make PowerPoint presentations look like the scribblings of a child.

Lastly, what's the difference between Camino and Firefox? I use Firefox currently and love it, mainly due to the add-ons (weather at the bottom, Gmail alert, skins, page views, other customizations). Tabs seem to be on all browsers these days, so are there any other key differences?

Camino and Firefox are both Gecko-based browsers from the Mozilla Foundation. Camino is a binary Macintosh application. Firefox is compiled to Mozilla's XUL which is interpreted by a small runtime engine. Camino is for users who believe that web browsers should browse the web. Firefox is for users who want their browsers to browse the web and do every other thing that they can think of. The additional functionality is enabled via various and sundry themes, plug-ins, and extensions.

I have versions of both installed on my Mac. However, I prefer Safari.

 

[chrisgeleven]

I do not use Camino since I find they are a lot slower with updates, even security patches (for example, there hasn't been a Camino update yet that coincides with Firefox 3.0.6's security fixes). To me, using a browser that is insecure when there is known vulnerabilities in the wild is just asking for problems. Nevermind the fact that the Camino 2 beta just now is catching up to Firefox 3's underlying architecture improvements and it will be a long time before it catches up to Firefox 3.1's improvements (like the super fast JavaScript engine).

Firefox 3 for the most part matches OS X's look and feel. It is quite fast even on my Core Duo Macbook and very stable.

Personally, I see no reason to use Camino at this point if they can't keep up with Firefox's release schedule.