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Why do we "hate" Microsoft Office so much?

C

Cybernanga

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 27, 2004
201
0
Essex, United Kingdom
Let me start off by saying I am a long time Mac user (bordering on being a fanatic, or so I'm told). When I use "we" in this post, I mean myself and other similarly minded Mac-fanatics

I can totally understand why we all have a dislike for Windows. However, I was just thinking today, why is it, that we all seem to want Apple or some other company to produce an alternative to Microsoft Office? Apart from the fact that one company having a virtual monopoly over "Office Suite" of apps, is there really a need for an alternative?

As far as I know, the original Microsoft Excel was available for the Mac before it was available for PC's. (I don't know about Word) Also, I've always found the Mac versions of MS Office to be better than the PC versions (We do get some feature that are Mac only, I just can't remember which).

If we (however grudgingly) accept reality, and understand that there are may more PC's out there a than Mac's, and that these PC's are most probably going to have MS Office on them, shouldn't we be happy that we have it too, and that it works well?

I don't really want Apple to waste time, money and energy in developing an Office Killer, I'd rather that they spent those resources on improving OS X, iLife, and their other great programs. (Plus I'm sure it's more challenging and enjoyable for the Apple developer to create stuff like iTunes, iMovie, QuickTime etc)

I guess I also feel that if Apple did create an Office Killer, it would have so many innovative ideas and functions that our speadsheets and text documents, while being amazingly functional and visually stunning, would then not be compatible with the "rest of the world". This would naturally mean that "iOffice" would never actualluy be able to kill MS Office.

Any thought's from anyone would be greatly appreciated, I'm really looking forward to the replies to this.
 
Cybernanga said:
As far as I know, the original Microsoft Excel was available for the Mac before it was available for PC's. (I don't know about Word) Also, I've always found the Mac versions of MS Office to be better than the PC versions (We do get some feature that are Mac only, I just can't remember which).
Click to expand...
The original Excel was made before MS-DOS existed, Word did as well.
 
I personally don't hate Office I use it.It is massively bloated and complex and so if anyone develops a suite that does everything I want and is smaller faster,easier to use,prettier etc I'll use that(providing its Office compatible).I doubt Apple is trying to develop a "office killer" it wants better more accessable programs and if they get one there'll be a market for it.I don't think every developer at Apple is beavering away at a "office killer".
 
Lots of Mac lovers love Office. Especially 2004. We just love the fact that the Mac version is better than the PC version. I don't hate Microsoft. I hate Windows. Microsoft makes excellent software, but Windows isn't an example. Office is.
 
I think it is more that we as Mac-users dont want to be using software of the "enemy". I for one have actually no problem with Office, but if apple were to make a similar product i would drop Office in a heart Beat. Not because i think office is bad; it isnt, but because i would feel better using a product that apple made. Pages is on the right track but still needs a bit of work...and obviously apple also needs to make a spreadsheet app...
 
As pretty much the rest of the world, I like Microsoft Office as well. It's futile for Apple to develop an Office-killer app, unless MS kills support for the mac.
 
Firstly, I don't hate Microsoft Office. I use Excel day in, day out at work and I like the functionality it offers in terms of functions/pivot tables etc. Anything serious competitor to Office would have to support opening/saving Office formats otherwise it would be unlikely to get very far.

Having said all that, MS Office is bloated with features that 95% of its users probably don't know exist or how to use effectively; I'm our office's Excel expert and I know I don't use/understand all its features. It's overkill for most people which is why I think people want Apple to simplify things.

I too would prefer Apple to keep working on the iLife apps but I can see why people would like an updated Appleworks package - but with more than iWork. A basic spreadsheet for those wanting to do household accounts would be useful to have included in the base package - just like Text Edit is there as a basic word processor.
 
I don't like MS Office because of these reasons:

• Microsoft breaks several Mac UI rules with Office - they refuse to fully follow the Mac application style

• They refuse to use true Mac OS controls in Office - Just like they did in IE and WMP for Mac, their dumbass developers refuse to use standard system widgets and instead write their own

•*Incompatiblilty with standard Mac OS X services - Namely OS X's spell check and dictionary, I like them better than Office's.

• Because it's a Microsoft product
 
I don't use Office because I don't really need it. For me, it's a desire to not use software of "the enemy" on my Mac.
 
iindigo said:
I don't like MS Office because of these reasons:

• Microsoft breaks several Mac UI rules with Office - they refuse to fully follow the Mac application style
Click to expand...

Sure, but Apple does too.

Regardless, I think Office 2004 is one of the better application suites ever made for the Mac, behind iLife, Creative Suite, and Studio MX. I can't think of any other set of applications as well done.
 
Cybernanga said:
Let me start off by saying I am a long time Mac user (bordering on being a fanatic, or so I'm told). When I use "we" in this post, I mean myself and other similarly minded Mac-fanatics

I can totally understand why we all have a dislike for Windows. However, I was just thinking today, why is it, that we all seem to want Apple or some other company to produce an alternative to Microsoft Office? Apart from the fact that one company having a virtual monopoly over "Office Suite" of apps, is there really a need for an alternative?

As far as I know, the original Microsoft Excel was available for the Mac before it was available for PC's. (I don't know about Word) Also, I've always found the Mac versions of MS Office to be better than the PC versions (We do get some feature that are Mac only, I just can't remember which).

If we (however grudgingly) accept reality, and understand that there are may more PC's out there a than Mac's, and that these PC's are most probably going to have MS Office on them, shouldn't we be happy that we have it too, and that it works well?

I don't really want Apple to waste time, money and energy in developing an Office Killer, I'd rather that they spent those resources on improving OS X, iLife, and their other great programs. (Plus I'm sure it's more challenging and enjoyable for the Apple developer to create stuff like iTunes, iMovie, QuickTime etc)

I guess I also feel that if Apple did create an Office Killer, it would have so many innovative ideas and functions that our speadsheets and text documents, while being amazingly functional and visually stunning, would then not be compatible with the "rest of the world". This would naturally mean that "iOffice" would never actualluy be able to kill MS Office.

Any thought's from anyone would be greatly appreciated, I'm really looking forward to the replies to this.
Click to expand...
This can be a large conversation or a small one. I will stick to the small one. If you have ever used MS Word for anything other than glorified text editing, then you know that it is one of the great productivity killers of all time. How many Word users have lost their formatting just for hitting a single [DELETE] key? How many times? Word [and the other Office applications] are object lessons in what happens when you add people to a project just to give them something to do. As for compatiblity, have you ever shared a complex Word document among users of differing versions of Word for Windows? In many respect, Office:mac users have it better than Office:win users. This is a tribute to Microsoft's monopoly power on the Intel platform. It is also a tribute to Mac users who demand higher quality in their applications. The really sad truth is that MS Office--particularly Word and Excel--have no commercial competion. There was a time when superior products existed, but Microsoft has driven them out of the market.
 
mkrishnan said:
Lots of Mac lovers love Office. Especially 2004. We just love the fact that the Mac version is better than the PC version. I don't hate Microsoft. I hate Windows. Microsoft makes excellent software, but Windows isn't an example. Office is.
Click to expand...
Exactly. Office is for the most part an excellent piece of software. Windows is not...
 
Couldn't live without it...

In my field of work we have two alternatives excel or fortran (usually). And since I hate fortran with a passion, excel is the program I use. Engineers use office 99% of the time. It saves a ton of time and it's easy to use since I've been using it for years.

I don't believe I would switch to something else since I know how to use it and it widely used in my field. So not all Mac users hate office. It's mainly windows that is hated the most. Oh and for what MS does with there licensing crap, there inability to develop a decent OS, and taking away our rights as a computer user.

Nuc

P.S. office is not perfect but nothing else is really close to it.
 
I really like Office '04. I'm not an apologist, it's just the only app which does what it does, as well as it does. It's not perfect, but my list of gripes with iLife is somewhat longer.
 
I like MS Office. It does everything I need it to, and is one of the reasons I initially switched over to Mac - I needed Office, so if Mac didn't have it, it would have made my decision a little tougher. The fact that Office seems to be better on Mac than on Windows, and that it is fully compatible and does everything I need, results in me giving it a big thumbs up, MS product or not.
 
the reason i dislike office for mac is because it reminds me of windows, and there are better products for mac for almost all of offices apps, pages,keynote,mail are all better. Only spreadsheets are better in office
 
Pages is simply NOT better for word processing than Word is. There's absolutely no way around it, it is simply not as good.

Now, some people would say it's overall a better app because of its layout features... I disagree, but to each their own.
 
I don't like Office because of the fact it is just so expensive. It's $149.95 for the student edition. And for me, that's a tonne of money. The OSX discs are cheaper than Office for Mac.

I got iWork for $50 off the Apple Education site. Pages does everything I need it to AND will export to a PDF file so everyone can read it (I've not used word in a long time...maybe it does this too?). I never have the problem of my work turning into text blocks that don't form words when I send documents to colleagues and the such.
 
mkrishnan said:
Lots of Mac lovers love Office. Especially 2004. We just love the fact that the Mac version is better than the PC version. I don't hate Microsoft. I hate Windows. Microsoft makes excellent software, but Windows isn't an example. Office is.
Click to expand...


I love Office. Like you said, I love the fact that the Mac version is better than the Windows version.

I hate Windows as well.

But I ALSO hate Microsoft. "Microsoft makes excellent software"...rofl. Sorry. The only good software from Microsoft IMO are Office, the PocketPC operating system, and MSN Messenger 6 and above for Windows.

Before someone points out anything for XBox, almost ALL of their good games are made by companies they bought, such as Rare, Bungie, Ensemble, Bruce Artwick Organization (the Flight Sim dudes), etc.

Almost all their products are either total crap, or just outright stolen or bought off using their monopoly power. I direct you to Windows Media Player for Mac, Internet Explorer for either OS, Windows, etc, etc.
 
zap2 said:
the reason i dislike office for mac is because it reminds me of windows, and there are better products for mac for almost all of offices apps, pages,keynote,mail are all better. Only spreadsheets are better in office
Click to expand...

The only Office apps I use are Excel and Word. As you have already said, Mac has no Excel offering, and as for Word, Pages does not compare - not yet at least - a lot more work needs to be done. I don't need to create fancy layouts with embedded images, etc. in my Word documents, which seems to be one of the selling features of Pages, so it doesn't really interest me.

So I would expand your statement to say that spreadsheets and word processing are better in Office - and I would argue that those are the 2 apps that the majority of Office users use more than the others, which makes that significant.
 
I don't like MS Office because you really have to wrestle with it sometimes, well really, just word. Have you ever tried putting an image in a Word document? You move it half an inch and all of a sudden your four-page document is five pages even though there is plenty of room on the fourth page for everything. It's near impossible to use the text-wrapping. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just try it and you'll know what I mean.

Another example I can think of is using spell check with other languages. I'm taking an Italian course at my university, so I installed the Italian dictionary. I can't for the life of me get it to check my spelling. I change the language to Italian, but it doesn't work. I even double checked to see that I had the dictionary installed, and yep, it's there. Every once in a while I can get it to correct a word or two, but it's the biggest pain ever. I have to copy it over to TextEdit, spell check it there, keep track of the changes made, then make the changes in my Word document. It does check my grammar in Italian, though, which is sort of interesting.

And I'm sure there are other things. Office has tons of great features. It's just that a lot of them don't exactly work very well.

EDIT: I'm also learning Norwegian and I can get that spell checker to work. Figure that one out. I do absolutely nothing different between the two.

EDIT 2: Sorry to sort of change the topic, but can anyone help me on this one? It is really frustrating. I've tried everything. I reinstalled the proofing tools to no avail. And it's only Italian that doesn't work. Everything else works perfectly. Can someone else try Italian and tell me if it works. This is really frustrating.
 
Applespider said:
Having said all that, MS Office is bloated with features that 95% of its users probably don't know exist or how to use effectively; I'm our office's Excel expert and I know I don't use/understand all its features. It's overkill for most people which is why I think people want Apple to simplify things.

I too would prefer Apple to keep working on the iLife apps but I can see why people would like an updated Appleworks package - but with more than iWork. A basic spreadsheet for those wanting to do household accounts would be useful to have included in the base package - just like Text Edit is there as a basic word processor.
Click to expand...

I think many Mac users want to have an MS-free system. I too use Excel just about every day and I agree that 90%+ of MS Office features are above and beyond the common end-user's needs but they still have to have it. It is really no different than the person who goes out and buys a new PC every three years even though their main (possibly only) tasks are surfing the web, email and the occcasional letter - all of which can be accomplished with a P-II processor.

I too would rather have Apple concentrate on the iLife apps instead of wasting R&D on reinventing the wheel so to speak with Office apps.

But if they decide to continue developing an office suite, I'd really like to see them bundle Pages with Keynote and Filemaker (which I like a lot).

Nonetheless, there is always OpenOffice which I think I'm gonna check out this weekend.
 
GFLPraxis said:
Almost all their products are either total crap, or just outright stolen or bought off using their monopoly power. I direct you to Windows Media Player for Mac, Internet Explorer for either OS, Windows, etc, etc.
Click to expand...

Yes, those are all examples of MS software that sucks too. ;) Which doesn't negate the fact that someone there can write good software (such as Office). :) We just need to clone that someone and salt the ground out of which the people who are developing MSIE arose.... :rolleyes:
 
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