Mac users have expressed their thoughts on Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit to columnist Charles Haddad, which he shares in his latest Byte of the Apple column at BusinessWeek Online . To sum it up, Mac users feel Office for the Mac is too expensive, but necessary.
Many of those who e-mailed Haddad felt that Office’s price (over US$400) was “an attempt to gouge a captive market.” Others love the program’s feature set, but not its “bugs and cumbersome design.”
Despite this, most Mac users feel that that they’re stuck with Microsoft, Haddad writes. No other third party company is believed to be as important to Apple’s mainstreasm acceptance. And, explains Haddad, most Mac users seem to “love the fact that a Word or Excel document created on a Mac now works without a hitch on PCs.”
Haddad began discussing the Microsoft-Apple relationship after Kevin Browne, general manager of the MacBU, said last month that Apple wasn’t doing enough to promote Mac OS X and that sales of Office for the new operating system were disappointing. However, in April Browne reaffirmed the company’s commitment to develop products for the Mac, specifically for Mac OS X.