Mac users in Israel, and probably in many other countries, have long experienced befuddlement and frustration to find that the Mac version of Microsoft’s market-dominating Office suite doesn’t support right-to-left languages like Hebrew, Arabic or Farsi. Now it’s clear that even the next version, Office for Mac 2011, won’t support right-to-left languages.
Over the years, many right-to-left compatible Mac alternatives to Office have been identified. Some, like OpenOffice and Google apps, are not at all Mac-specific and consequently don’t strive to deliver the Mac experience, but are intended to replace and even to supersede the attraction of Microsoft Office by offering 95% of the features for 0% of the cost, with the added feature of stability and opensourcity. Apple’s own iWork suite – which includes Pages, Numbers and Keynote for Word, Excel and PowerPoint – has pretty decent Hebrew support. iWork does cost money, but it has the benefit of being made by Apple and intended only for use on Apple computers by the same people who made those computers. Actually, even TextEdit, which is like Apple’s built-in version of Notepad, can handle Hebrew pretty well. I used it for almost all my writing until recently, when I switched to Notational Velocity – which also does Hebrew and which has the awesome added benefit of storing all my notes in a database and syncing like a champ with an iPhone app called Simplenote. For Mac users in Israel who need serious word processing, another popular choice is Mellel (it means something like phrasing in Hebrew) is a full-featured Mac word processor that’s built with right-to-left languages in mind.
My point is that there are really not that many reasons for a Mac user to need Microsoft Word specifically. I understand the game changes when it comes to Excel, but I’m not a spreadsheets monster so I’ll just point out that Numbers is not as easy to use as Excel but it’s still pretty good. There are only a few reasons that people cling fanatically to Microsoft Word: habit, Word’s market dominance and demand for Word’s advanced features.
Reliance on Microsoft Word for either of the previous two reasons – out of habit or deference to the large Word-using community – are problematic for me. I don’t have Office installed on my computers. When someone sends me a .doc format file, I can open it in any of a half dozen applications, but most of the time, I ask the person to send it again either as .txt, .rtf or .pdf, depending on what he needs me to do with it. 99% of the time, I get no complaints. In the remaining 1% of the time I get an opportunity to educate someone who needs help.
In the rare event that someone needs something that involves a Word feature not available in other programs, I secretly do have Office, but please don’t tell anyone.
{ 6 comments }
B”H
I have Open Office, and suits my writing needs which are pretty basic.
The Hebrew works fine for me, but if you happen to know of a key command (like Windows Alt+Shift) which switches languages, please let me know.
It’s a pain when writing, using both languages and having to pause to engage the mouse all the time.
There’s a system-wide keyboard shortcut to change your input language. To set it, in System Preferences click on the Language & Text pane, then choose the Input Sources tab. Make sure Hebrew is selected in the left menu (as well as any other languages in which you want to type). In the Input Source Shortcuts area on the right, you can click on the Keyboard Shortcuts button to choose whatever you want. I believe the default is cmd-space, but I’ve had it as opt-shift before to correspond with alt-shift in Windows. These instructions are for Snow Leopard but I think it’s pretty similar at least back to Tiger.
For text I use Bean. A freeware that uses the same core editing as OSX’s Textedit.
It works perfectly with Hebrew and it’s fast.
But I’m still stuck on Excel/Powerpoint. My opinion is that NeoOffice is slow and takes a while to open files.
I use Pages in hebrew with no problem, the fact that you can’t see the curser is confusing in the first 5 minutes . once you convince yourself – “there is no spoon” , It’s great , much more intuitive then office and even the hebrew works better then office.
Only thing there is not bulliting since it sends it to the left.
I can help anyone who need help using it in hebrew – but once you do it my way it’s Great!
Too bad I don’t have too many fonts.
(I use Pages and numbers for my Lab report (university).)
I am very annoyed with my mac, and have already contemplated installing windows 7 on as dual boot.
I really hate to obstruct my work flow each time, to surf the web and find hebrew hacks to write something that under windows I would =’ve already completed.
MS powerpoint does not support hebrew at all, and Keynote does hal a job fucking the bullets all the time.
I will try pen office presentation thing, but I do feel that for hebrew users apple is simply shitting on the users.
it’s almost 2011 and not only does the OSx finder is total crap, and has not been updated for about a decade now, all of these issues are moving me away from apple’s closed and narcisitic biosphere and into more productive enviorments.
I mean, what’s the point really… if each time I want to do something I fiind my self wasting an hour trying to hack it into existence, usually not finding ANY solution, and in the end not even starting my aactual work.
very disappointed with apple.
Even syncing my iphone wirelessly thorugh blue-tooth, is apparently too difficult for apple.
Itay, I can’t defend Apple’s sometimes shoddy implementation of Hebrew in its productivity suite, which itself is not really meant to compete with Microsoft’s so much as to make people feel comfortable switching to Mac that there will be some office software that can basically do 95% of all the things that Microsoft’s can do. And, you know, to commoditize the complement.
Actually, the fact that neither Microsoft nor Apple has adequately addressed the very small desire for Hebrew on Mac reflects nothing but the business reality that the desire for Hebrew on Mac is very small; if more people demanded it today, they’d address it tomorrow and have a good solution by next week. I suggest you get in touch with the Israel Mac-users YahooGroup and see what some of those people’s solutions or workarounds are.
By the way, this issue is not isolated to Apple and Microsoft or to productivity suites. I had a ridiculously difficult time trying to make a mixed Hebrew/English site in WordPress earlier this year. It’s no problem to do it entirely in Hebrew or entirely in English, but combining them just does not work.
What do you dislike about the Finder? I’m still fuming that they changed cmd-n from “create a new folder” to “open a new window,” but I’m just old school like that. There’s a whole slew of Finder enhancements (eg, Hyperdock) and even replacements (eg, Quicksilver) that can really transform the Finder experience.
Also, there is no technical barrier to syncing your iPhone with your Mac via Bluetooth: I used to sync my Sony Ericsson T630 with my PowerBook by Bluetooth almost six years ago. I know that there is at least one way to sync your iPhone via wifi; there are probably other ways. You just have to be willing to jailbreak.
What has actually stopped you from dual booting Windows and OS X? I haven’t used Windows 7, but I keep hearing from people I trust that it’s the best version of Windows ever. If you like some things in Windows and other things in OS X, use them both.
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