Existing users, 
I saw the back-and-forth below when I came to see how Microsoft Office 2008 was being reviewed. It seems someone wrote something "outrageous" and started a wave of feedback. I found the threads hard to follow and am not condoning anything said below, but everyone should speak out about his or her experience since big vendors fail, in a lot of instances, to put forth products and services that perform effectively or even as advertised.
I'm not sure if the person prompting all the feedback below spoke directly about Office 2008 or Microsoft, but all the feedback prompted my commentary. Responding and reviewing can warn others about what to expect and potential dangers. It enlightens about vendors who might not have users best interest at the forefront. It might help mitigate user abuse by bringing some abusing marketers to justice!
I have not tested Microsoft Office 2008 yet but I definitely have used Microsoft products in the past AND I have used Apple hardware and software. I left the Windows platform for the Macintosh platform, as Microsoft could certainly stand to get a lot of its technology together. But I feel now that Apple leaves much to be desired with its hardware and software as well.
On the Mac platform, using Office 2004 (I cannot speak to Office 2008, yet.), I do not see Microsoft doing any worse job than Apple. Jobs and company seemingly are marketing wizards, foremostly, that put the "next new, slick 'i-MoneyMaker'") before an ever-waiting public to the detrimental lack of follow-through of its existing products. There is so much work that should be done with Apple's existing hardware and software products - the PPC, Tiger, iPod, Safari, Mail, iCal, Backup, on and on). Now, Leopard is here, needing lots of fine-tuning. But, Apple does not seem to focus on these things.
The Macintosh platform - which I really like - is much easier to use than Windows, in my opinion, but Apple software and hardware needs sorely lacking at this time dedicated company maintenance and trouble-shooting - not a slick marketing face for the next new thing! While the entrenched products labour in error under lack of efficacious company trouble-shooting and maintenance, Jobs and company are off cooking up "one more half-stepping new thing" to shine before us - hungry wide-eyed baby birds, sitting in the nest, waiting for caring Big Daddy to drop anything down into our waiting, wide-open, fully trusting craws!
Perhaps the reviewer below was saying that he helped build (Didn't we all?) the lavish corner offices behind which (and this includes other big vendors that release "not really ready yet" products for a gazillion dollars) Apple management hides itself in Cupertino so it does not have to hear the toil and trouble of users, individually or collectively, struggling with any one of its offering.
Where's The Feedback That Started The Stuff Below?! - AikiDavid
What on Earth started your anti-Macintosh/Apple Inc. rant??Office is one of the most horrible creations ever made, and you go off on how Apple & Steve Jobs are just shining us stupid consumers off by slight of hand and fooling us with gimmicks??
I use Office and both Macs & PC's also, and I know why PC's are called PC's - because they are pieces of crap! To me Office is an excellent example of the arrogant attitude of the people in Microsoft, who think they know better than anyone else what works & how to do things. For example, when I write an email, and want to shorten the line I'm writing to less length than the default, I hit return, then after typing one word on the next line, it automatically capitalized it. This is insane!! It reads a carrage return as if it were a new sentence. They should have had the common sense to realize if you haven't finished the sentence yet, you don't want the word capitalized. I could give dozens more examples, and go on about how you go to look into preferences and settings and they have maybe 300 different settings, most of which have names that are so obscure you have no idea what they really do, so you can't easily change the settings. My rant against Microsoft is based on not only years of dealing with their shoddy products, but also on my knowledge of several very promising software products developed by brilliant people in the late 1980's and the 1990's. These people had great ideas which still haven't been developed because when they announced them, MS announced they would produce something similar, so nobody bought the products, wanting to wait for the MS version. Then MS, maybe a year later, abandoned the idea, and by then the companies had gone bankrupt due to lack of sales, due to Microsoft's lies about how they would produce a similar product. Their meanness caused lots of grief to good people. With that to compare to Apple, how can you say such negative things about Apple? Especially now, when they have iWork '08 which has great software, and even an excellent competitor (finally) for MS Excel.
Reply to This
Tuesday, January 22 2008 @ 12:00 AM PST