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Posted on 12/31/2005 10:29:19 PM PST by goldstategop
It seems the choices for Mac OSX Tiger users in the way of office suites are few between. There's AppleWorks 6, Open Office 2.0 that runs on X11 but can be a hassle to set up for all but techies, NeoOffice that's behind OOO.org latest but runs natively in OSX. And of course there's Microsoft's 2004 Office suite in two flavors. Since this is a vanity and given the options, what do Freepers running OSX use for every day productivity work? Recommendations are welcome.
For basic stuff, you can get away with Appleworks or NeoOffice. MS Office is by far the best, though.
I use AppleWorks (have since it was ClarisWorks 1.0.3) and Keynote.
Ditto to post 2
Agreed. People want to get away from Microsoft but Apple hasn't bothered so far to release its own office suite software. AppleWorks was fine for its day but is now long in the tooth. So Microsoft Office is definitely the way to do Word and Excel documents across operating system platforms.
Unfamiliar with Apple, but I'm using Windows XP, and I've got Open Office 2.0.
Ping!!!
iWork '06 should be announced in early January, and may include a spreadsheet application.
If they could throw in a database application, that would help. Mac users don't have Access but they do have Filemaker Pro. Mac OSX does come with very good programs and that's partly why Apple machines have been more expensive than PCs. The choice of software available is limited but what's installed is more than enough for most people's needs.
Its as good as Microsoft Office Professional. That's the one I have running on my Windows computers. The problem with Mac is that since there's a smaller market for it, there's not that much software to buy. On the other hand, that makes it less attractive to people writing, worms, viruses and spyware. I don't have an anti-virus program on my Mac Mini and the only thing I turned on is the built-in firewall. Besides being nearly crash-proof, its also pretty well sealed against hackers.
MySQL is another good database than runs on Macs. Mac OS X includes the Apache web server and PHP with extensions to support MySQL.
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Now how did that happen?
Here I am talking to myself again, as well.
TextEdit for my quick stuff and in Mac OS X 10.4 it even saves in MS Word format.
Microsoft Office for things that need special formatting and foot notes.
NeoOffice is slow on older machines. I wasn't impressed with its performance on a dual 2Ghz G4, or on a dual G5. Definitely faster than on the single processor machines, but still sluggish.
OpenOffice isn't bad, if you don't mind feeling as if you're using a fully functional windows hack of Microsoft Office.
Microsoft Office is still the king of office applications for the Mac. It is snappy and responsive, fully functional, with all the features most people could possibly need.
(I do believe Apple has an MS Office killer in the bowels of their R&D department at Cupertino. All the signs are there, and it is a complete package with the backend/network features that make MS Office so popular in Windows enterprise environments.)
The day Apple does release one people can really say good bye to Microsoft. iWorks is nice but it isn't a full featured office suite. Try finding one for the Mac for less than $200. Open Office 2.0 sounds perfect but until it can be ported natively into NeoOffice, its not ready for use by any one. No question about it, Microsoft as you said, is still king of office applications for the Mac.
I find less and less need for using Word. For me, most communication is now via email. If I were writing a book or a proposal, Word would be the way to go.
I use MS Office for OSX - great product.
Back when I was still using Windows, I paid $340 for Windows Word for Office. I hated it with a passion.
I could never get numbers to line up in a simple column. Oh, I'd get the column ok, but here and there numbers would be too far to the left or the right. I longed for a (gasp) typewriter.
Now, I can line them up just fine with AppleWorks 6, but it doesn't show which line you're on from the top. For casual correspondence, that's all right, but often the presentation of the page is important. In my opinion, that's a big mistake by Apple.
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