Why MS Office for Mac 2008 fails to impress

To say that I was surprised to read Matt Asay's blog on CNet extolling Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 is an understatement. Asay likes MS Office for Mac's UI and integration and despite its downsides, like the fact that it uses OOXML, not ODF, and does not synchronize with his Blackberry (or much else, though I'd guess it does fine with Microsoft products, but that's just a guess), he believes that the "upgrade was worth the price."

Really? I guess when I think about an application I think, to be sure, about the pleasure of using it and whether it is easy to use. No one likes an application that obtrudes and prevents fluid thought (which is hard enough to get, anyway).

But I also think about how my work using it will affect others. Would my colleague, for instance, be able to read what I send? Would I be able to read what they send me? How long can I trust the format to last? Ie, will I (or others) be able to freely access it decades from now? And this raises the question: Why would I want to use something that implicitly is exclusive? Sure, I use a Macintosh, but the work I do on it that is public employs free software and open standards, and that's where MS Office for Mac fails. Okay, I confess I have not personally tried out MS Office for Mac 2008--I cannot justify buying it--but I am aware that MS Office hasn't really changed from earlier versions in a crucial way: It still doesn't play well with others and in fact, as Matt admits, effectively forces the user to dive into the MS universe and close the door after him. That isolationist attitude is predicated, to be sure, on file format, but also on the philosophy of interoperation that differentiates MS's logic of development from Foss' and in particular OpenOffice.org's.

Our philosophy is to work with others. We do not insist that our application must do everything. We do insist that it be open--use open source and open standards, so as to allow (and indeed encourage) effective interoperation of different applications, big and small. The result is that there is no real limit to OOo and the application ecosystem (on the desktop, on the Web) it centres. And there is a limit to what MS Office (and others of its ilk) can do.

But can OOo match the UI that Matt loves so much? Yes. Can it also have the level of integration (or interoperation) that he likes? Yes. Okay, when? Well, 3.0 is slated for the end of summer, and when released, it will be able to work with Mozilla's Lightning calendaring application--which integrates with Thunderbird, the email client. And as OOo already supports lots of extensions and will support even more as time goes on, the wealth of options and tools can only increase. And most are likely to be free.

Freedom here is not the price one pays for mediocre software. There is nothing mediocre about Mozilla, OpenOffice.org or so much other Foss. Freedom is rather the tool that underlies the working of superior software, and that includes making it as pleasurable to use as to develop.