Competition
Are Apple going to abandon their product ? iWork was significantly updated in 2009 - embarrassing.
Microsoft has increased the price of Office for Mac by up to 17 per cent, another move in the software giant's territory battle with Apple in the personal computing market. The new pricing structure, which was not officially announced by Redmond, asks Mac users to hand over around the same amount as users of Office 2013 for …
all of this talk about Office 365, Google Docs, and other cloud services -
is missing a very important issue -
THERE IS NO EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY
with any cloud based service. If you (collective you) are a Gov't, or business putting your daily correspondence and business documents in a cloud service is ASKING for trouble. Gov't (inter agency as well) spying*, competitor spying*, police spying*.
This is not to mention the issue of directed adverts, looking at you Google
* spying - in this instance, reading copying documents/information that the originator did not intend to for the 'spy' to see/read/have.
I work for an EU-based multinational whose IT department moved all corporate email to Outlook 365 six months ago. Now the specific EU government with whom we have some defence development contracts is very pointedly asking our corporate lawyers why on earth they thought it was legal to store EU government email on US-controlled servers...
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Now the specific EU government with whom we have some defence development contracts is very pointedly asking our corporate lawyers why on earth they thought it was legal to store EU government email on US-controlled servers...
Yup, this is the kind of stuff we clean up on a daily basis.. We have also done some interesting research on the legality of Google services, and the conclusion is that not only is there quite a risk using Google for an EU company, looking at the *cough* "help" offered by Google, it appears Google itself may know full well they are on the wrong side of EU law.
The problem with *business* use of Google is that you inherit that liability as a company..
I sure never have and probably never will... I can always find a hacked copy, black copy (genius MS versions with no copyright in them), or a spare key from any number of places. Some of the keys I have used are even legal.
Last time I used a Mac (was it slow leper?) the office software didn't require any activation, just downloaded and installed.
Paris - as some things in life are not free.
Most people posting seem to stop their consideration of Office before reaching Outlook. Integrating mail and calendar better than any other app I've tried (most of them). Oh but Google Docs is... blah blah blah. GMail interface is ass unless you connect via IMAP from ... whoops, Outlook.
While email is falling into the legacy area for most personal use, in a corporate and SMB environment it's still the king. The increasing uptake of BYOD programs* means that people want/need a real mail client that talks to their Exchange clusters**. Or they're just like me and want to keep a good calendar integrated with a solid email platform.
Anyway, do what you will.
* In which they should only be using applications via Citrix anyway and ignoring their local apps for work use (small business is a special case, and they need helmets).
** Exchange, because lulz Domino.
Well, I guess that it works well in comparison to any web-based solution, particularly (shudder) Microsoft's own OWA. But Mac's own mail and calendar applications now integrate seamlessly with corporate Exchange servers and Outlook 365, so it's hard to think of a reason for using Outlook on a Mac, unless you're a long-time Outlook user who doesn't want to switch.
Mail.app may not have as many features as Outlook, but filtering rules are easier to set up and (I would argue) more powerful; and best of all, it handles email formatting properly, properly implementing Internet (RFC 3676) quoting (which has been completely broken in Outlook since 2003) and avoiding the line wrapping errors that Outlook is so famous for.
Yes, that and the dead weight of the business logic encapsulated in the VBA and macros embedded in more Excel spreadsheets and Word templates than I would care to count, analyse, debug and re-implement.
For corporation-wide email nothing is as integrated or effective as Exchange. For everything else there is a viable no-Microsoft alternative, but not for Exchange. As soon as there is, then Microsoft is hosed.
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Isn't most Mac software much more expensive than corresponding software for the Windows platform, because of the lack of competition? So this doesn't seem like too much of a disaster for Mac users. Who, of course, can always use Open Office, just like everyone else, since it's available for the Mac as well as for Windows and Linux.