Poll: What’s Your Favorite Mac Word Processor?

Writing is the secondary activity on your Mac. Reading is first, of course. To read, someone first must write. A word processor is usually used, to, well, process (write) words.

We tend not to change word processors too often. What’s your favorite word processor?

Is it Microsoft Word? It could be. Besides Apple’s venerable AppleWorks, MS Word is the Mac program users love to hate-- but they keep buying in record numbers.

And for good reason. MS Word has more features than its Windows counterpart and is, in typical Mac fashion, easier to use.

AppleWorks has been around since forever. First as ClarisWorks, an all-in-one application that combines word processing, spreadsheet, database, graphics, and more into well, frankly a very powerful, easy-to-use Mac application of the highest order (despite the fact that it’s relatively unchanged for years.

Why mess with something that works?

There are other word processors that proponents will tell you are all you need. Nisus Write and MarinerWrite come to mind. Both are fast, simple, have a number of very useful features, and won’t cost an arm and a leg.

There are also specialty word processors such as Final Draft and Final Draft AV. They’re word processors for the creative community; playwrites, screenwriters, etc.

There’s also open source (nearly free) such as the ThinkFree Office project. Like AppleWorks and MS Office, ThinkFree is a tank of a program, not for the faint of heart or those with a low learning curve threshhold.

So, what’s your favorite word processor of all time on the Mac? Word? Write? AppleWorks?

Could it be WordPerfect? If so, you’re still stuck in Mac OS Classicland. There’s a Windows version but nothing that’ll do you good in Mac OS X.

How about AbiWord? MarinerWriter? Mellel (still looking for time to try this one; many love it).

To vote for your favorite Mac word processor of all time, all you have to do is Click Here.

To see the results on how the voting is going, just Click Here.

Check out the daily list of our 9 Word mini-Reviews at NoodleMac, and Kate's daily in-depth Mac software reviews at PixoBebo.

Off Topic #23 & #18 - Want to speed up your Mac? Try Kate MacKenzie’s approach to the $7.99 speed increase. Do you have a back up system for your Mac? Kate’s PixoBebo shows you how to use Time Machine with SuperDuper! for the ultimate Mac back up. And she doesn’t even charge Mac360 readers to visit her site.

Off Topic #58 - Do politicians use personal computers? Of course. We’ve heard Barack Obama prefers a Mac, while Hillary Clinton uses a Dell, though, apparently neither of the candidates can bowl. Does Obama’s potential vice president use a Mac? Even Clinton acknowledges Apple’s brand power but says she can’t afford a Mac. Maybe she’d win if she used a Mac.