Macopinion

Why Office?

by Marc Zeedar macopinion@designwrite.com

I don't know about you, but I was surprised when I read recently that the new version of Microsoft Office for the Mac is the fastest-selling ever. Frankly, I'm not an Office fan myself, and my impression in the Mac community was that Microsoft had taken so long to release the new version that most people had switched to iWork or one of the open source competitors. It seemed like Microsoft had missed the boat. If record sales are to be the judge, however, that's apparently not the case.

As I began thinking about this it occurred to me that it shouldn't have been a surprise. First of all, the "Mac community" has been growing like a wildfire the last couple of years and no longer represents the same set of people it once did. Long-time Mac users have felt gypped and abandoned by Microsoft and want to avoid the company's products out of spite. Those users are also proficient at finding workarounds to Office compatibility.

But with so many new Mac users, many switching from the PC, Microsoft has a lot of fresh wallets to pluck. These users aren't aware of alternate solutions and are comfortable with products that say "Microsoft" on the box. I bet many were using a Windows version of Office on their Macs via Parallels or Fusion and thought getting a native Mac version was a treat.

I don't have a problem with this. While there's a part of me that wants to help these people avoid the Microsoft hegemony and to point out convenient alternatives to Microsoft products, there's another part that thinks it's a good thing for Mac Office to be successful. If nothing else, it prevents Microsoft from trashing the Mac too much: the Mac application business is significant even to a company the size of Microsoft.

However, I still wonder why people think they need Office. My suspicion is that the vast majority don't need it at all -- they just think they do. After all, Office is the "standard" for business and so people assume they need it if they're going to do "real" work.

That's the thing about Office that annoys me. I'm a bit of a contrarian, I suppose: I just don't like being told "you have use this software." When I hear that, my first thought is to figure out a loophole or alternate solution.

Like in the graphic design world, my favorite drawing program was (and is) Aldus Altsys Macromedia FreeHand (sadly now killed by Adobe). Other designers would ask for an Illustrator file, so rather than argue or explain the superiority of FreeHand, I'd just do it in FreeHand and export an Illustrator file for them. They never had to know I wasn't using Illustrator.

Sure, working with an alternate program has some disadvantages. There are extra steps involved in converting files and not all files convert properly. Sometimes you have to change the way the document is created in order for the doc to convert correctly. There's some trial and error and learning involved. For a geek like me it's not a big deal, but I can understand why Joe Consumer would rather just use Genuine Office.

However, those minor difficulties are outweighed by the benefits of using superior software. I have never been impressed by Office: it is slow, bloated, awkward, difficult to use, often incompatible, buggy, and frustrating.

I'm also not the biggest fan of software suites: while there are conveniences to using several related software programs, I prefer to use the best-of-breed of each product, not simply use mediocre packages just because they're included in the bundle. I may pay more buying separate packages, but I also gain productivity because I'm using better and more capable software.

The bottom line is that Microsoft Office is popular not because it is good, but because Microsoft used their operating system monopoly to foist it on consumers. Worse, because Office uses proprietary file formats, Microsoft has locked in users who think that they can't use anything else for fear of incompatibility.

Granted, I'm not the kind of Office user Microsoft wants anyway: though I'm an author, I would rather use a stone tablet than Word, and I don't use Excel for anything more than totaling up columns of numbers. I wouldn't go near PowerPoint if you had a gun to my head (I rarely need presentation software; I've used Keynote just a few times).

A bigger question is whether Apple still needs Office. For many consumers, Apple's iWork is sufficient and Office isn't needed. For business people who use Office at work and want Office at home, for Switchers, or for people who want to use Macs in business, Office still has important mind-share. So at the moment, I think the answer is still yes. There are many myths about the Mac that prevent people from switching and as the iPod momentum helps PC users try Macs, we don't need another myth -- "Macs can't run Office" -- becoming true.

However, Office is becoming less critical to Apple. Perhaps ironically, as the sales of Mac Office grow and profits from Windows fade, Mac Office will become more critical to Microsoft. That would only

macopinion@designwrite.com