[_7acn]

I recently discovered that Apple has something called "Pages" and "Numbers" - simple apps that serve as alternatives to Word and Excel. They're so straightforward and intuitive that they require no learning curve. They just work.

It seems like things like this are no longer possible for Microsoft. They keep producing clunky tools which, although functional, always come with a horribly frustrating UX (as usual).

I've been working within the Microsoft tech stack for around 25 years now (mostly SQL Server). I used to be a huge fan of their products because they were one of the best companies when it came to developer experience (developers! developers!). Unfortunately, that was a long time ago. Things are very different now. Of all the things I once liked, only SQL Server really remains (ironically, it's a technology they acquired - it used to be Sybase). I still think C#, F#, and PowerShell are great, but I actively discourage people from using most of their so-called "products" because the quality is just appallingly low.

Even something like Visual Studio is better replaced with Rider + LINQPad. Their GitHub repositories are full of open issues that have been dragging on for years. There's virtually nothing left of the old Microsoft that I still respect or admire.

That said, I have to admit that most other corporations aren't any better - there's a general trend of maximizing profit while offering the lowest quality that customers are still willing to tolerate. If I were starting IT studies today, I would go 100% down the open-source path.

[gloosx]

I'm a Macbook user, but I often have screen sharing experiences with people using Windows laptops, god, it's painful watching them. Brand new, solid book with decent specs, only used for few months and everything is visibly very slow. Opening some documents and presentations while being on screen share takes minutes, file explorer lags, screen compositor lags. Notifications with weather, STOCKS info, murders and clickbait news around just pop up mid-conferences.

The most funny part? I was debugging application .exe not starting. Reason? AVG antivirus UPLOADED EXE to their server for EXAMINATION. EXE with an 600$ Extended Validation license. There was a message for the user TO WAIT FEW HOURS before they studied it and exe could be unblocked from launching. All was completely normal to the said windows user. What a dystopian thing they are used to

[efdee]

Sounds like an AVG problem, not a Windows problem.

[bobbylarrybobby]

The very normalization of antivirus on Windows is a Windows problem. For better or worse, Mac users simply don't think about AV.

[efdee]

Like you say: "for better or worse".

FWIW, I haven't ran antivirus software on Windows (other than the included Defender, but that's not something I think about) in literally decades.

[gloosx]

I think letting certain software thrive which just blatantly disregards your own certification and validation processes is exactly Windows problem. Some developer(s) paid 600$ and emailed their passport to Microsoft affiliates to get rid of that "SmartScreen" warning, do they have to pay and email their passport copy to AVG as well so their application can be ran without uploading step and needing to wait few hours of "examination"?

[efdee]

What are you saying here, though? That Microsoft should have the monopoly on deciding what software is safe and what is not?

[gloosx]

Windows historically allowed a dire situation with security, so no-one really freaking knows what software is safe and what not. Even monopoly they have on deciding what software is safe and what is not (extended validation certification procedure) is not helping anyone, because anyone can circumvent it with photoshop and 10$

Are you saying Microsoft shouldn't care about making a secure system and they can just outsource the subject to a third company which will upload .exe to their server and tell user to wait few hours before it can be launched?

[smelendez]

I use Pages as my default word processor. It doesn’t have all of Word’s features but I seldom need them, and it’s much faster than Word. I highly recommend it.

[kstrauser]

Same. I use Word only to edit Word files that I have to send back to someone outside my company. That's not often for me. Pages is vastly better for every other use case I have.

[tbirdny]

Numbers used to be painfully slow. It was just maybe 3 years ago or so it improved a lot. It was practically unusable for large spreadsheets. I swear spreadsheets from 20 years earlier performed better on much slower hardware. If you haven't used Numbers for a few years, maybe give it another try.

[bbatha]

Also shout out to Keynote which is the best presentation software. PowerPoint is so clunky in comparison. Nice features like making image backgrounds transparent are huge wins.

Pages is also pretty nice. Its definitely enough for home usage, and if my colleagues could read the pages files natively I would find it completely sufficient for professional use. I find it does layout much better than MS Office. Which honestly is a much bigger concern for home users: professional users will just switch to professional layout tools when they need it, but Sam doesn't need that cost/complexity for some bake sale fliers.

Numbers can also be nicer for home use cases, but is a bit weird if you're used to excel. And unlike pages or keynote quickly hits upper limits on complexity. I would never use numbers in a professional setting.

[gtk40]

Meanwhile Microsoft removed WordPad in the latest version of Windows 11. It was a great simple word processor and text editor. It even supported docx and odt files.

[jasonephraim]

Numbers has it's issues as well. I have to open .csv files dozens if not hundreds of times a day - always the same format. Numbers will not allow me to default to freezing the first/header column or _not_ show the formatting sidebar on open. I have to set the freeze header option and close the sidebar every time.

At this point, I've started using IDE extensions when I just need to view/filter

[dagmx]

If you’re doing it often enough, you might benefit from using AppleScript to automate opening it in an app and changing setting . Not ideal, but it’ll make it a lot less annoying.

[jeroenhd]

Microsoft's free web app office suite is a slimmed down, quick version of Office that does most of the stuff most users want most of the time, for the cases where Pages or Google Docs would also suffice.

The alternative to the full office suite with decades of backwards compatibility and hundreds of features, is the quick, free version Microsoft made to fight off Google Docs.

[bitwize]

We've reached peak bloat when the version of an app that lives in a fucking browser is "slimmed down" and "fast" compared to the real app.

[stevage]

> A recently discovered that Apple has something called "Pages" and "Numbers" - simple apps that serve as alternatives to Word and Excel. They're so straightforward and intuitive that they require no learning curve. They just work.

And yet, weirdly, macOS comes up with absolutely no image editor of any kind. There's no equivalent of MS Paint. It's infuriating.

[carlosjobim]

They just purchased Pixelmator ;)

[SSLy]

I assume we should wait and see whether they'll roll up their software into next macOS right?

[varunneal]

hey there's preview

[naikrovek]

yeah preview can do more than it appears it can do.

quicktime pro was like that. it was insanely powerful and things were all hidden behind just a few menu items and a few little added UI elements here and there. quicktime pro was amazing and I miss it a bit.

[daedrdev]

yeah I was surprised to find myself donwloading gimp for image editing. However, Microsofts modern paint (paint3d? I dont remember what they call it) is atrocious imo so I can't really fault apple.

[nkotov]

I use Numbers daily for simple local spreadsheet math / tables. It works for what I need and I'm glad every new Mac comes with it.