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MICROSOFT GIVES THE MAC A HANDNew software gives Macintosh an Office suite that is the equal of Windows'Of the many problems facing Apple Computer's Macintosh, perhaps the most serious is the reluctance of software developers to write for a system whose share of the market has fallen to 3% of sales. Even such Mac stalwarts as Adobe Systems and Quark have been shifting the weight of their graphics and publishing software to Windows. So there is real irony in the fact that the most important new Mac software package in a long time comes from Microsoft, a company many Mac fans consider evil incarnate. Office 98 gives the Mac a business productivity suite--software for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and other functions--that is at least the equal of the Windows version in performance and features. A new Office for Windows won't be out before late this year. Historically, this update is not such an odd move. Microsoft's first important application was Excel for the Mac in 1989. Office began life as a Mac product. And Mac Office is profitable: Microsoft executives have long annoyed their Apple counterparts by pointing out that the software giant makes more money off of each Mac sold than Apple does. But Mac Office hasn't been updated since 1994, and even Microsoft executives admit the last version was not one of the company's better efforts. Not only were its applications, especially Word, sluggish, but it drove Mac fans crazy with menus and dialog boxes that looked disconcertingly like the Windows version. Microsoft, however, vowed to do better with Office 98--and it has. The main features are brand-new editions of Word, Excel for spreadsheets, and PowerPoint for presentations. This version also includes the Internet Explorer 4.0 browser and Outlook Express, an E-mail and Internet newsgroup program. There are no Mac versions of the Access database manager or the Outlook calendar and contact manager that are part of Office 97 for Windows. The new Office costs $450, or $250 as an upgrade from an earlier version of Office or any of its components. A Gold edition, for an extra $100, adds the FrontPage Web-page editor, the Encarta Deluxe encyclopedia, and the Bookshelf reference set. The new Office programs are reasonably zippy even on an aged Power Mac 6100 and fly on a 300-megahertz G3 computer. And they now feel like proper Mac applications, not Windows transplants. For example, Word's main menu now offers a ''Font;'' earlier versions didn't. And the file-save dialog box offers the Macintosh choice of ''save'' and ''don't save'' instead of the Windows ''yes'' and ''no.'' Mac Office includes all of the goodies that have been added to the Windows version. Probably the most important, especially for businesses running a mixed environment of Macs and PCs, is Visual Basic for Applications, a powerful programming language for customizing applications. Programs written for Windows Word and Excel will run on Macs, often without modification. You can read and write Windows Office 95 and 97 files and save your documents as well in the Web-ready Hypertext Markup Language. The Mac suite also features the excellent spell checker introduced in Windows Office 95 and the decent grammar checker from Office 97. In a feature unique to the Mac, clicking on a word while pressing the control key (an awkward maneuver that leaves me puzzled by Apple's staunch refusal to adopt a two-button mouse) brings up a list of synonyms. Click on a choice in the list, and it replaces the word in your text. Some other Office 98 features are mixed blessings. The suite includes the Office Assistant, a cartoon character that offers you tips as you work. Windows users tend to either love or hate the Assistant; fortunately, it's easy to make it go away. And it wouldn't be a new Office release without bugs. Under some conditions, using the ''uninstall'' feature can render a Mac unbootable. You can find an explanation and a fix at www.microsoft.com/macoffice. A less serious problem, also explained on the Microsoft Web site, can cause Word to quit unexpectedly when certain macro programs are run. These are relatively minor problems in an otherwise solid release. Microsoft's commitment to the Mac, which predates the company's $150 million investment in Apple last summer, may not be enough to make programming attractive to less well-endowed software publishers. But it's a step in the right direction. It's also a useful tool and a sign of hope for the beleaguered Mac community.
BY STEPHEN H. WILDSTROM RELATED ITEMS
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Updated Apr. 9, 1998 by bwwebmaster
Copyright 1998, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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