Poll: What’s Your Favorite Mac Word Processor?

Tuesday, June 3, 2008 | Polls & Surveys | Read or Post a Comment

Type 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.... (excerpted).

9 Reader Comments

Steven Trudell said:

This is to Angel and Dennis. First Angel…if you can’t grab a copy, I’ll send you one. AppleWorks 6 is still the lightest, fully functional, and easiest to use word processor ever. With a database, spreadsheet, draw, and paint program integrated right in the WP, it cannot be beat. And to Dennis, I have an Intel machine that I use AppleWorks with EVERYDAY! Did you try to load it with an old install disk? Just take the program off another computer with a flash drive and drag it into your hard drive. It’s only about 100MB. If you don’t still have it, I’ll send you a copy.

Angel said:

Currently I use a PC with WordPerfect. I’m considering a Mac. Which word processor compares with WP? I have been able to do almost anything with WP. If I switch to a Mac, I would like a similar software. Thanks for ideas.
Angel

Dennis said:

Appleworks! Apple just replaced my IMac G-5 (last of Motorola chip ones) with the new Intel G-5, as they could not get the logic board for my old Imac quickly, being repaired under AppleCare. I had to call the Apple store when my beloved Appleworks did not transfer to the new Intel G-5 - seems I have to upgrade to iwork. Pity, I never even used all the functionality of AppleWorks.

EITLtd said:

I have used almost all the ones on your list, plus a few others you didn’t mention. Remember WordPerfect Works aka BeagleWorks? However, I always came back to the easiest to use Mac word processor ever…AppleWorks. I am proud to say that while I have used 4 different versions of Word, I have not sent a dime to Microshit. Even when I made up Word, Excel, and PowerPoint lessons for the computer classes I teach, I used AppleWorks to put them together. Doing the same lessons in Word took more keystrokes and more time, especially when dealing with graphics. It is bloatware at its finest. I find it unbelievable that 20% of Mac people still use this pathetic piece of crap. I used to keep it on my computer, so I could send Word files to my PC friends, but two things changed that. Many of my PC friends are now using Macs, and since the new Word is not backward compatible, I sent the “unenlightened” a pdf file.

Froggy said:

I used to use Word all the time. Then one day I switched to Pages. I like it. Works fine, lasts a long time.

DavidinSaskatoon said:

How about Bean—simple, fast, effective and free!

Bonobo said:

Different strokes…for different jobs.

MSWord becomes necessary for seamless work with people who use it…so so.

Pages offers “cleanliness” as I like to refer to it, & iWork is inexpensive @ $80 and you get Keynote & Numbers for free.

BBEdit is simply invaluable with GREP for doing cleanup on text copied from web pages or other documents. I have used BBEdit to clean up 120 megs of text files from a corrupted AOL email database file to recover valuable information, by first opening the corrupted files into CanOpener. BBEdit can do a GREP search & replace on multimegabyte text files and change a million items in a few seconds. By hand that would take months.

JP said:

You need a spot for WriteNow ! Otherwise Appleworks is it.

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