Not Replacing Microsoft Office
The users who have likely had the most “success” (using the term loosely) with replacing Office are likely the individual users I mentioned early on who are simply using Office documents as containers, not using any Office specific features to much depth, and can likely survive just using the document export features in Google Docs, iWork, or any other Web/mobile productivity suite not from Microsoft. Admittedly, Microsoft surely sees this scenario, and as such has made the Office Web Apps for consumers freely available and interconnected with SkyDrive.
Even the Mac version of Office is not always a viable substitute. And I’ve seen iWork documents destroyed when moving from Mac to iPad, to say nothing of using it to edit actual Word or Excel documents.
1 Comment RSS · Twitter
"Even the Mac version of Office is not always a viable substitute."
It's true that, especially since the Intel switchover, one can make a case that the best way to run Office on a Mac is just to do it in Windows emulation. Especially if you are collaborating, and need robust support for all features.
However, Office for Mac is still pretty sweet if you're a lone user producing output that can be repurposed in other means. Got crucial features far beyond the competition, if you are aware of and willing to work around the known outstanding bugs.
A word processor with a robust outliner and quite flexible paragraph styles? What a concept!
