Office 2013

Our parish recently updated our copies of Microsoft Office to the new 2013 version. In the new version of Word, I could not at first so much as cut-and-paste into our church bulletin, and ran aground on this fact as I was trying to fix something for the secretary, with five minutes before I had to run to catch the transit bus. Even opening a document was counter-intuitive.

I was not happy.

I have ill will toward Microsoft, for I remember Netscape, which was illegally destroyed by Microsoft and their Internet Explorer, with a slap-on-the-wrist legal settlement all that Microsoft had to pay for their misdeeds. I remember also the Lotus SmartSuite office package, at one time second in market share to Microsoft Office, and ruthlessly crushed sometime around 2000 or 2001 – until then, the spreadsheet part of SmartSuite, Lotus 1-2-3, had been the industry standard,and the rest of the suite was superior to the Microsoft equivalents. For my personal work, I continue to use Lotus Word Pro, Approach, and Organizer by preference to any newer alternatives. In both cases (Netscape and Lotus), Microsoft won in spite of inferior software. It was all marketing and legal shenanigans. This has been their standard operating procedure from the outset, and it has made Bill Gates a billionaire.

But I have to use Microsoft Word in the church office to be compatible with the others, especially on the church bulletin, where my work is a significant factor.

This afternoon's work on the bulletins, just completed, was a breakthrough. Finally, I was able to do it efficiently, in about an hour's time as opposed to the half-day or more that it had taken me the first couple of weeks. And I must grudgingly admit that it is Good Software.

M.W., on whom all of us in the office rely as our Resident Computer Geek (and I mean that as a compliment), commented the other day that Office 2013 is “like Apple.” That fills me with warmth and cheer; it is not that Microsoft finally had a good idea; instead, they realize that Apple is better and are shamelessly copying them.

I believe that Microsoft is on the decline. They missed on tablet computing, where the dominant operating system is Android; they missed on cell phones. All they have left is their stranglehold on the office workplace, and they have powerful competition there from OpenOffice, which is free and open-source. If the office computer does not have to run Microsoft Office, there is no reason for it to run a Microsoft operating system and to pay the “Windows tax” on every computer. And if Microsoft loses the office market, they are dead.

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A Netscape footnote: My first internet web browser was Netscape Navigator, and I loved it. They had an outstanding e-mail interface, which I also loved. Both are gone. But Netscape was instrumental in the founding of Mozilla, and Firefox is still very much on the scene, s their influence has not disappeared.