Micro$haft Gets Shafted From My Mac
Today has been a good day. Nay, it has been a great day! Today I banished Microsoft from my MacBook. For the past couple of months, my copy of Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac has been acting slower and fussier than normal. I figured it was because of my upgrade to Mac OS X Leopard, and the fact the Office 2004 runs in the Rosetta emulation layer, as it isn’t a Universal Binary for Intel Macs. Well, for the past week, neither Word, Excel, nor PowerPoint would even load past the splash screen.
Now, I could go and buy Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, as it should run more swimmingly than not on my Intel MacBook. But…well…it’s $150. And I have been using iWork, Apple’s office suite solution. It has comparable apps to Mr. Softy, called Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.
Pages and Keynote are veterans and are very well developed. Numbers is new in the latest version of iWork, and approaches spreadsheets in a whole new way. The best part, is that iWork can read the new Office XML format, something that my Office 2004 couldn’t do.
Long story short, I was fed up with Office 2004 taking up hard drive space if it’s going to be completely and utterly useless. Therefore, I nuked it off my hard drive. Gone. Kaput. Heck, I even threw the new Messenger 7 for Mac in the trash, too. Say hello to a wonderful Apple experience in iWork. For the MSN Messenger needs, I’ll use Adium.
Here’s to a Microsoft-free life. Mr. Softy, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Disclaimer: I still love my XBox 360. It doesn’t feel like a Microsoft product. Though it has been neglected since Mario Kart Wii came out. The 360 is the one and only thing Microsoft has done right. Other than the 360, though, Microsoft is gone. I wash my hands of it.
