If Microsoft eliminated the Mac version of Microsoft Word tomorrow, would it matter?
That's a silly question. Of course it would matter. Word is an essential tool for many Mac users -- especially those who interact with Word for Windows users in a business environment.
That said, the growing number of alternatives to Word is making me wonder about the future of Word and Office for Mac.
Office alternatives
I got thinking about this topic today after spending some time with two Mac applications: Merlin (project management), and Mellel (a word processor).
Merlin makes a good first impression.. if you like Gannt charts and you speak a little German. (There's still some translation required in the help files and dialogue boxes.) If you've been dying to get something like Microsoft Project for Mac OS X, take a look.
I'm a writer, not a planner. Let's move on.
Word killer?
I use TextEdit for most of my writing. TextEdit can open and save documents in Word format, and I prefer to save files in Rich Text format, which can be understood by all modern word processors, including Word.
Since the switch to TextEdit, I rarely use Word unless I need a feature not offered by TextEdit, such as columns or footnotes or correction tracking.
Mellel may not be a Word killer, but it's going to knock TextEdit off my Dock. It offers many features not available in TextEdit, most notably tables (and therefore columns), headers and footers, word count and a bibliography tool.
Mellel also tiptoes into Word territory with long document features like Table of Contents and Auto Numbering. (You can read the full list of features here.)
I also think Mellel is also more "Mac-like" than Word. I won't dwell on this point because it's intangible and unprovable, but compare the formatting palette in Mellel to its counterpart in Word and you'll see what I mean.
(I also won't dwell on the fact that Mellel's spell-checker uses OS X services, so I don't have to add "flavour" and "colour" to yet another custom dictionary -- another Word pet peeve of mine.)
Mellel costs US$39. A free 30-day demo is available.
Text Editors
If you're more interested in scripting and programming than in writing the great American novel, take a look at TextMate. This little program is generating a great deal of excitement from Mac users who have previously "made do" with command line editors or general purpose word processors.
In spite of the existence of AppleWorks, Keynote and OpenOffice (which is Not Yet Ready for Mom, as far as I'm concerned), there are still plenty of reasons to buy Office. But I think the growing list of viable alternatives is making Office for Mac less essential than ever before.
1. mark on November 23, 2004 01:12 AM writes...
I've always felt that applications like Word are really what they say they are: word processors, not writing programs. Word is really good at producing business documents, but far too bloated and cumbersome for actually writing. I'd love a program that combines Mellel's simplicity with a built in note pad -- I want to open a project I'm working on and have my notes right there.
There's a text editor called Ulysses that seems like it's going in an interesting direction, but the interface is too cluttered for my taste. It's a cocoa app, and has the built in note pad, but it's kind of clunky. I know it's difficult to build tools that have simple, elegant interfaces, and also have useful, powerful features, but as a Mac user, my expectations have been raised. It would be interesting if someone developed a program that had some sort of plugin architecture that allowed you to add features you need for particular vertical markets. I can see how screenwriters and playwright's might need different functionality than a novelist or journalist.
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