The Mac is not lacking in word processing apps, and many aim to serve a specific niche. Nonetheless, Write 2 handles most everything you'd need out of a word processor with simplicity and ease without any of the bloat. Note: If we were including web apps, Google Docs would likely be the winner.

I'm typing this overview in an application that should be immediately familiar but is instead curiously and frustratingly unfamiliar. I'm speaking of course about Word 2008 for the Mac, part of Office 2008 for the Mac, the latest version of Microsoft's office productivity suite for that other OS platform you may have heard of. I've used several versions of Mac Office over the years, and while some others have incorrectly called this suite the best version of Office on any platform, I've always found it to be a bizarre and nonstandard set of applications, one that manages to be as decidedly un-Mac-like as it is un-Windows-like. But Mac Office is also one of those very necessary products, something that virtually all Mac users need.

The question, of course, is what the newest version, Office 2008, brings to the party. The answer, sadly, is not much. As Apple CEO Steve Jobs not-so-subtly noted during his recent MacWorld 2008 keynote address, Mac Office is literally the last major Macintosh application that's been released in the so-called Universal format.

That is, Office 2008 is the first version of Mac Office that runs natively on Intel-based Macs. Previous versions, including Office 2004, ran natively only on older PowerPC-based Macs, and had to utilize Apple's Rosetta emulation technology to run (a bit more slowly) on Intel Macs. Microsoft should be given some credit for moving its massive and monolithic suite to the Universal format, yes, but it also took a long time and was clearly the main effort behind Office 2008. (In this way, Office 2008 parallels Office 95 for Windows, the first Windows version of Office to target 32-bit versions of Windows.) One might expect Office 2008 to run faster on Intel hardware than Office 2004, but I don't notice much of a difference on my MacBook. A bigger issue is that the core Office UI hasn't changed much at all since the last version. Put simply, Office 2008 doesn't do anything to take advantage of the Mac's unique UI features.

Indeed, it offers odd throwback UI pieces that date back to?Classic? Versions of Mac OS, like Mac OS 9.x. This is especially true of Entourage, Microsoft's consumer-oriented email and personal information management application. But it's not just that. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all utilize terrible floating palettes, mini-windows with collapsible sections that contain such things as formatting tools and other miscellanea that would be more easily accessible via standard toolbars. (And, optionally, they can be.) The problem with Mac Office, from a UI standpoint, is that it just doesn't make sense.

You get used to it, I guess, but it's unclear why some tools are in toolbars, while others are in floating palettes. And if you're used to Windows versions of Office, good luck. Office for mac detach ribbon. Some tools aren't available at all--like the wonderful Ribbon user interface from Office 2007--while others are hidden under menus, like an application from the early 1990s. There's even a whole new UI convention--the Gallery?that's been tacked on for good measure, giving you yet another place to look. The whole thing is a mess. Installation While previous versions of Mac Office offered a standard installer as well as a more typical Mac-like drag and drop installer, Office 2008 only offers the standard executable installer. If you don't want the full install, you'll need to be careful because the option for a custom install is particularly subtle and easy to miss.

Office 2008 will uninstall any previous version of Mac Office, as you cannot run two versions side-by-side. Office 2008 will, of course, migrate any settings you may have forward to the new version.

Word 2008 Word is virtually the only part of Mac Office I use regularly: I'm a writer, after all, and the Mac isn't my primary computing platform. (And anyone who tells you that Apple's Pages application is somehow an adequate replacement for Word needs therapy.) The big improvement in Word 2008 is about exciting as Office 2008's transition to the Universal format: It now supports the Open XML document format that Microsoft first provided in Office 2007 on Windows. (Likewise, Word 2008 mimics the new default styles and fonts that appeared in Office 2007 as well.) Word 2008 retains the awful Formatting Palette from Word 2004, but introduces new galleries--Document Elements, Quick Tables, Charts, SmartArt Graphics, and Word Art--which are available via expandable buttons, like tabs, below the standard toolbar. (As with the Office 2007 Ribbon, you can however hide the overly large Word 2008 toolbar via the gel-like button in the top right of the Word application window. However, that's an OS X feature, not an Office feature.) As for the galleries, I'm not quite sure why they're given such prominence in the UI. What the heck are 'document elements'?