And So Is A Lot Of Microsoft Software - Tumblr Posts
IIRC the Mac versions of Microsoft Office actually function better than the Windows ones. I suspect this is partially because Apple has its own proprietary version of the Office suite that you can download for free if you are running OSX, so Microsoft Office has to work really hard to be able to compete.
I say partially though because the performance of Microsoft Office software on Macs has always been better in my recollection, even before the iWork suite was a thing. Word 2004 on the old-timey rainbow iMacs and battered Macbooks at my elementary school ran smoother, with much quicker saving and less crashes, than Word 2003 on the XP I had at home. Word 2007 was even more laggy, and this was despite my parents buying a custom Vista to ensure that all the hardware was suitable for the then-new OS (bad communication at launch from Microsoft meant that a lot of retailers were selling computers with Vista installed that had no business running anything newer than XP. My parents made sure that our Vista did not have this problem.).
Vista was the last Microsoft computer my family invested in, but from my experiences at libraries and places like that, I've been disappointed in how little has changed. I mean, that's not to say that nothing has changed at all-- Word 2023 doesn't crash like Word 2007 (which makes it much less anxiety-provoking to use!), and Excel has made leaps and strides towards better functionality when it comes to complicated math and data analysis. But across the board, the performance of Microsoft Office is still noticeably worse on Windows than Mac.
I mean, lack of competition is one hell of a drug but the performance gap between Microsoft Office on Windows and on Mac has been around since before Apple started trying to compete with Microsoft Office. Microsoft Windows is consistently the worst OS to run Microsoft products on and it's just so... baffling. If you love Microsoft software (and have a pool full of gold coins to swim in), buy a Mac. The software will work better.
