Does Apple Still Need Microsoft Office? By Aug 18, 2009 - 11:00 AM CST • • • On August 6th, 1997, and promised to continue to develop Office for five years. While the crowd reacted as if had he announced his love of Pabst Blue Ribbon, it’s one of the moves that’s widely regarded as having helped Apple recover as a company.

I'm having trouble installing Office Professional Academic 2010 on my MAC book air. I'm a college student in a computer class and the software disc came with the Technology in Action 8th Edition text book that I purchased. No, Microsoft Word doesn't come with the MacBook Pro 13'. Fl studio download for mac free. However, you can get Pages from the AppStore for only $19.99. And if you aren't willing to spend any extra bucks, you can use Google Docs or download Open Office, which is a free documenting software.

— although the scant details make me think this was really just a “No, no, don’t go use the Exchange features in Snow Leopard; we’ve got you covered” move. Which begs the question: Does Apple (s aapl) still need Office for the Mac, like they did 12 years ago? No, of course not. They have iWork and online services like Google (s goog) Docs and Zoho. But I need it. I can imagine myself staying in Apple’s Romper Room, only using iWork and iLife, only as long as I never, ever need to exchange files or collaborate with another person. Like it or not, Office and especially the.doc file structure has become the industry standard.

The better I can adhere to that standard, without jumping through a ton of hoops, the easier my life is. Sure, I can print to PDF, but that’s hard to collaborate from. That’s not to say I’m a slave to Microsoft. For simple layout I use Pages; Numbers is an acceptable spreadsheet; and Keynote is a totally kicking presentation program. When I write fiction, I use. For my work at TheAppleBlog, I can use any sort of text editor I want.

However, when I need to exchange files with other people — especially if I want them to make in-line comments or changes — I will default to the Office suite for the sake of simplicity, even for complicated files transfer without any noticeable issues between the PC and Mac versions of Word. As much as I love hearing about Apple’s plans, and its commitment to OS X at keynotes, as a frequent user of Microsoft Office, in many ways I look forward to the affirmation that Office for the Mac’s development isn’t lagging too far behind its PC counterpart. Invinciblegavin Office is not a standard, nor are its file formats.

Last September, the International Standards Organisation rejected Microsoft’s attempts to promote the Office Open XML (OOXML) format as standard. Office is dominant in the productivity realm, but that’s about it. IWork is a premier-class suite of productivity tools. It can read and write to Office formats like a lot of other applications can (OpenOffice, Star Office, NeoOffice, TextEdit) and does a good job at it. It must be said that there are very legal and technical reasons why iWork can’t do “exactly the same thing” as Office, and why would you want it to? Your comment “only as long as I never, ever need to exchange files or collaborate” is simply rhetoric, and illustrates how little you know about iWork. On the collaboration side, let’s focus on Pages.

You can export and import (open) Word documents in Pages, no sweat. You can use the Export option in the File or Share menus, or simply choose that option when you save your document. If your recipient uses Word and you’d like to track changes in the document, just turn-on that feature! Check the Edit menu and select “Track Changes”.

These comments and mark-up persist through conversion to.doc and back again. When not collaborating, there is simply no need to send a Word document to anyone. Once you have finished with your document, share it as a PDF. That way, anyone can read it. In the event that mark-up or collaboration is needed on a PDF, those tools exist in both Preview and Acrobat. Office is a nice thing to have when making the switch from Windows.

What file type is quicken for mac 2017. Microsoft’s regard for Mac users is extremely low, and the quality of their flagship products for the Mac lack simplicity of iWork. Does Apple need Office? Does an end-user need Office? No, not at all.

Brian Yes, so far, no one has out-officed Microsoft. By that, I mean, the monopoly mess they created is well managed. It’s very difficult, even with.DOCX to imitate all the shenanagans Microsoft pulls to keep everyone out of it’s favorite and very proprietary formats.doc(x) and.xls. Apple could do it, but would then get in a cat and mouse with MSFT, and MSFT holds most of the cards there with it’s PC monopoly and ability to indroduce compatibility issues for any theoretical Apple.doc.xls derivative. Apple is FINE with Microsoft being an APPLICATION vendor, but should continue to push them back in the OS arena, where they really compete. I think it’s WONDERFUL that Apple has managed to FORCE MICROSOFT to develop Outlook!