Editorial Comment: Microsoft Office 98 for the Macintosh, so?

In Monday's Business section of the Washington Post, William Casey wrote a good column on the upcoming release of Microsoft Office 98 for the Macintosh. It is worth reading especially to recount the salient points of the Apple Macintosh/Microsoft relationship over the years. Microsoft may have captured the operating system flag via the PC but its winning basic applications (Word, Multiplan/Excel and PowerPoint [I believe]) were launched on the Mac. The brilliant step Microsoft took to capture the basic office productivity flag was to bundle them as an office suite.

Unfortunately, the Mac versions in Microsoft Office languished since mid-1994. Word 6.01 for the Mac has been so disliked and buggy that many still use version 5.1. Office 98 promises to fix things and to put the Mac versions on a par with the Windows versions. It may for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. However, there is a serious deficiency and a serious question is raised. The deficiency is the lack of a Mac version of Microsoft Access and the question is why use the new MS Office 98 anyway.

Microsoft Access is a spiffy database front end (client or end-user) for Wintels that is used by many organizations separately or as a part of their office suite standard. The lack of Access for the Mac, an insidious "Grim MacReaper," can and has been used to force Mac users to Wintels. Apple should ensure that a Mac version is developed as soon as possible.

What's the big deal? If we are survivors in the enterprise world, we've managed to get along without an update to MS Office for nearly four years. Isn't Word 6.01 is the real sluggard of MS Office 4.2.1? ClarisWorks 5.0 is an excellent but under appreciated office suite that is compatible with corresponding Microsoft and Lotus products for a fraction of their cost. Likewise, WordPerfect v3.5.4 can easily handle Word files but not the reverse.

I'd trade the whole MS Office 98 for the Mac shootin' match for a good Mac version of Access in a heartbeat.

Criticisms and comments are encouraged.