
Office for Mac Icons get Tangled - aaronbrethorst
http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/office_for_mac_icons_get_tangled.php
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kylec

        ...the 75 percent of Mac owners that use the product
    

This is the most surprising part of the article for me - that 75% of Mac users
use MS Office. I actually find this pretty hard to believe, since none of the
Mac users I know use it - they end up using a combination of OpenOffice,
iWork, and Google Docs.

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ComputerGuru
That's the problem with anecdotal evidence. For example, I personally don't
know any Mac users that use OpenOffice or Google Docs... and all the ones I
know use MS Word.

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jseliger
Ditto. My family does grant writing for nonprofit and public agencies (see
<http://blog.seliger.com> if you're curious), and the only file type we can
safely exchange with clients is .doc. It's also one of two file types funders
build their systems around. As a consequence, I'm running Office for OS X and
always have; my experience with the latest has, so far, been mostly positive,
with a few niggling details: [http://jseliger.com/2010/10/31/thoughts-on-the-
new-version-o...](http://jseliger.com/2010/10/31/thoughts-on-the-new-version-
of-word-for-os-x-2011) .

If I could, I'd probably use iWork or Mellel or something similar full-time,
but Metcalfe's law is too strong in what I do for me to resist effectively.

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tptacek
I agree, the new 'X' is clunky. Anyone have any idea how to make the metaphor
work without introducing a second ribbon?

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Zev
It would still introduce a second ribbon, but, if you have the two ribbons do
a twist in the middle, I think it would work better.

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rayboyd
A twist and a finance application. I bet some designer or brand guy just got
the shivers at the mention of this and the connotations it suggests.

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Zev
Its already twisting! I'm just suggesting to do so in a different way.

And it took me a bit to connect Excel to finance. I've personally never used
it to track money.

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klochner
Four end-points means two ribbons.

They could have knotted it in the center though . . .

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pornel
It's so obvious, that they probably tried it and simply decided that it
doesn't look good/clear/consistent enough.

