Why does Microsoft Office suck on the Mac?
The more people who ask this question, the more it gets noticed.
The best answer from everyone
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I think Microsoft has done so much co-engineering between Windows parts of the code and the applications, that for Office to work on other platforms they have to carry with them a lot of what otherwise would be system code (and shared). That triggers all manner of performance and bloat issues. It also prevents them from doing a good job of performance tuning. Remember also that for x86 platforms, both MSFT and INTC have excellent performance tuning tools, not to mention third party stuff. This was never the case for PPC platforms. Of course, MSFT has not yet announced native x86/Mac support for Office (gee, wonder why).
I've installed Parallels (the VM) and Office 2007 on my MacBook Pro and I'm reasonably happy with it (the VMWare product is supposed to work reasonably well, too). Office 2007 is (gag!) actually quite elegant (much more intuitive) and supremely feature-rich. But of course this is a huge resource hog - you need the whole XP stack. So you really need a second generation (+) of a Core 2 Duo system with max RAM to expect it to be practical. In reality I go sit by my PC when I want to do some serious work on Office documents, but at least now I can access and do minor changes when on the road.
If MSFT actually did a proper port of Office 2007 to MacOS X, it would be awesome. They announced in January that Mac Office 2008 will be available in the second half of this year, and will support both PPC and x86 Macs. See their press release at [http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/pr...]. It remains to be seen how genuine an effort at making a top-notch product they will deliver. But Apple has doubled their market share in laptops, so MSFT might actually care.
So I'm looking forward to Q4. Leopard + Mac Office 2008 has the potential to be seriously cool!
Note that both the VM software (Parallels as well as VMWare) have evaluation licenses, as does Office 2007, so I highly recommend trying out the combo (if your HW allows it).
5 people say
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Had to laugh at this one because a friend I work with for several years (actually Leslie's old boss) used a Mac and is actually really good with Excel. But I do remember him cussing at his machine when we worked on spreadsheets in his office. Leslie - you should get Peter into this discussion.
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Inappropriate?Office works fine for me except for how it starts reporting corrupt fonts every once in a while. Totally gunks up my computer. But I found a free program called FontFinagler that finds and cleans up all the font caches in your computer, and that always fixes the problem.
Of course, it would be nice if Office didn't incorrectly report corrupt fonts to begin with (and why does it always start with the "V" fonts?) but this is the next best thing.
I’m thankful
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Inappropriate?I think Microsoft has done so much co-engineering between Windows parts of the code and the applications, that for Office to work on other platforms they have to carry with them a lot of what otherwise would be system code (and shared). That triggers all manner of performance and bloat issues. It also prevents them from doing a good job of performance tuning. Remember also that for x86 platforms, both MSFT and INTC have excellent performance tuning tools, not to mention third party stuff. This was never the case for PPC platforms. Of course, MSFT has not yet announced native x86/Mac support for Office (gee, wonder why).
I've installed Parallels (the VM) and Office 2007 on my MacBook Pro and I'm reasonably happy with it (the VMWare product is supposed to work reasonably well, too). Office 2007 is (gag!) actually quite elegant (much more intuitive) and supremely feature-rich. But of course this is a huge resource hog - you need the whole XP stack. So you really need a second generation (+) of a Core 2 Duo system with max RAM to expect it to be practical. In reality I go sit by my PC when I want to do some serious work on Office documents, but at least now I can access and do minor changes when on the road.
If MSFT actually did a proper port of Office 2007 to MacOS X, it would be awesome. They announced in January that Mac Office 2008 will be available in the second half of this year, and will support both PPC and x86 Macs. See their press release at [http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/pr...]. It remains to be seen how genuine an effort at making a top-notch product they will deliver. But Apple has doubled their market share in laptops, so MSFT might actually care.
So I'm looking forward to Q4. Leopard + Mac Office 2008 has the potential to be seriously cool!
Note that both the VM software (Parallels as well as VMWare) have evaluation licenses, as does Office 2007, so I highly recommend trying out the combo (if your HW allows it).
5 people say
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?I so completely agree. I use Excel a lot and it has been my biggest frustration since switching from my Vaio to my Powerbook.
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Great input, Peter. So, to digest what you just said - you find that the Windows version of the Office suite on Parrallels works better than the Mac version directly on a Mac, but it's a resource hog. And you're anticipating that the next version of Office for a Mac will have improved functionality. Is this accurate?
I’m thankful
1 person says
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?That's pretty much it, especially if you have an Intel Mac since Mac Office 2004 runs in emulation mode if it's not a PPC platform (on the "Rosetta" technology, which is actually licensed from Transitive). Parallels' emulation is "virtualization", using the VT support on the newer Intel chips, whereas the Transitive technology is runtime binary translation, which is slower (pardon the geek talk). The short version of the difference is that emulation (Rosetta) actually slows down the CPU, whereas virtualization (Parallels/VMWare) just requires more RAM and disk space.
2 people say
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?I added sooo many fonts the other day, now Excel and Word won't even open.
This is crap.
I’m without MS Office.
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Inappropriate?I'm done with MS. NeoOffice does everything that I need, not to mention that it's compatible with all the latest office file formats.
I’m much happier with the free product.
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Inappropriate?Muller, you must truely be a moron. I'm a teacher at a Jr. High and a High School. My students use MS Office on our Macs, their own Macs at home and I've used MS Office since OS 9 and no one complains like you do.
My answer to you and why you are failing is that it's not MS Office ... you're just to stupid to pass and you have to blame something else.
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Are you really a teacher? If so, what are you trying to demonstrate by calling me a moron and stupid? Furthermore, if you read the rest of the responses my experience is validated by several other folks. -
ouch... i hope you're not that mean to your jr. high kids.
The truth is this: the applications that are part of Microsoft Office have flaws that are especially apparent on the Macintosh operating system. The people who have run into these problems have expressed them in this thread. You are not one of those people. Go teach something. -
Yeah, office has been great on the Mac for some time (the older versions on up to v.X), but recently I've encountered tons of problems specific to intel macs and Office 2008. -
Inappropriate?To answer @Thor Muller comment and I guess all the rest - Just because a FEW Mac users on this thread that have expressed that they can't handle Office 07 or 08 (compared to the thousands that buy Office 2008, or more than the Millions that bought the previous versions) proves nothing other than you are too lazy to read the support material to LEARN how to use it. This is definitely a platform (Mac) problem user wide I've observed.
Look, Apple invented Macs and OS X for the simple minded, that's pretty obvious. I've yet to meet a Mac owner who has ever read a manual other than flip through the pages, you people prove that point. MS Office is a real business application, maybe it doesn't belong on your Mac's; so if you want something for the adle-brained, go use iWorks, even our 5th graders can handle that .... maybe even Dylan O can too, though I doubt it. It has that cutesy little kid look you'll probably like too.
As for running "clunky" or starting slow - I have Office '08 on a old 2004 G4 1.78GHz PowerBook with 1GB of RAM and it launches just as fast as any other "professional" applications like Adobe CS3 or Keynote; it even launches as quickly as Office X did and runs with 100% reliability. Like I insinuated, it looks like real business software is just too tough for you people.
The "Mac Community" badgers MS every year to make available to them a serious updated business suite in Office, so that Mac's can have some semblance of acceptability in the Education and Enterprise sector. Sometimes I think that with all the snotty, rude and lies that Apple perpetrates in their childish TV and print ads, and ones clowns like you perpetuate, Microsoft should pull any support for OS X. Lets see how far OS X gets with their iSuck office application?
Ps. Kids have an excuse for being stupid, they are still learning and maturing into adults that don't make excuses for not learning to master life, let alone a proven application that Millions of others use every day. Adults have no excuses to complain about nothing but their mental laziness. Muller, you and the other complainers should be embarrassed that 13 to 17 year olds can master something you can't, apparently.
I’m laughing at you.
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Best of luck to you in all of your future endeavors. -
Webster: I'm the community manager at Get Satisfaction. We tolerate a lot on our site, but please read our community guidelines and know that posts with abusive language (name-calling, etc.) will be removed: http://getsatisfaction.com/community_... -
Inappropriate?100% reliability is absolutely untrue. Only Jesus was 100% reliable... everyone knows that.
Also, have you ever asked your self "perhaps it is I that is clunky and slow?" My Father has a G4 and thinks its the best computer he has ever used, its perfect for him, he writes a few emails, surfs the web and word processes in Office 2004... he has never expressed any problems to me. I, on the other hand, cannot stand working on it. Although I am impressed by how long we've had the G4 it is ridiculously slow on my terms.
See Webster, "us kids" move at a much faster pace than most(i.e. baby-boomers who bought a computer in the late 90's and use it primarily for web, email, spreadsheets, slide shows and word processing.)
My work flow (on my lightning-fast 2.6ghz Macbook Pro) is near perfect and THE ONLY applications that stutter are those of Microsoft Office. I use these applications daily, and would not switch to any other suite of office applications BUT they just do not perform as well as other applications.
Peter S. Magnusson gave a good answer for a good question,
Please don't laugh at me it hurts my self esteem.
I’m feeling much less confident now that I've been laughed at
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Inappropriate?I can see that a lot of people have a lot of ire to share about Mac/PC alliances. That's fine, but it doesn't get us very far to argue at the periphery when we all know that there is surely a real reason Office has problems on the Mac. Why is that? It may be hard to say, but perhaps if we focus on it hard enough, and turn away from the easy pot-shots, we might be able to figure it out.
It's heartening to see that Microsoft tries to support Office for Mac, but perhaps Microsoft doesn't devote enough brainpower to doing it as well as they could. They cut back their staff on the Mac side quite a bit, and I bet those Microsoft folks that create Office for the Mac wish that wasn't the case.
But, I bet they're working as hard as they can to make Office for Mac as good as it can be. I'm sure they can do better (and want to). I'm also pretty sure that Apple can find a way to reach PC users who aren't wooed by design and functionality in the same way that many of us in this conversation are.
Let's try to remember that we all wish Microsoft Office for Mac worked better.
Don't we?
I’m hoping to see it improve
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I agree withyou all the way.
I like to argue with Webster because he believes that Office for Mac is "100% percent reliable" and "just too tough for you people."
God, Its like arguing with my stubborn dad. it will never end either.
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