Macs

My standard writing tool is WriteRoom, which is a very simple app that saves .txt files.
Most full-blown writing apps will save as .doc should you want it. For instance: NeoOffice, a free writing tool, gives you that option. It largely depends on which application you want instance to use.

.txt is compatible with both mac and windows, so you don't have to worry about that either. Usually the only time a file extension won't be compatible with both is if you're saving with an extension that is specific to that application, or another mac-only app.

So yes, it really shouldn't be a problem at all.

Hope I've helped!

Microsoft Word, and all the Microsoft Office programs have been pretty much cross-platform compatible between Mac and Windows since 2000.

You save as .doc or .docx, depending on the version of MS Word and its file saving settings.

I routinely have been sent books to tech edit from Windows using publishers, in Microsoft Word, using the Track Changes, Comments, and custom toolbars since 2000.

I open and edit and comment using Mac OS X and Microsoft Word and Excel; there's no problem, at all.

You will still have to deal with users who are using older versions of MSWord, and thus will need to save as .doc, instead of .doc x, but that's true of Windows and Mac, and there's still no Mac vs Windows problem.

I would suggest that in the next year or so you buy a Mac OS X antivirus program.

I wouldn't do it yet--currently the Mac OS X antivirus programs all suck, and there's no real danger.

But 2010 may be very different wrt viruses.

I use an app on the Mac for writing called Bean
http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html

It has some very nice features and is free. It reads and writes .doc files but does not support all Word features.

I use Word when forced to but find its freaking humungous feature set gets in the way far too often.

Medievalist said:

But 2010 may be very different wrt viruses.

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Now why would you say that? Have some inside information or do you have some devious plans of your own...?

Drice said:

Now why would you say that? Have some inside information or do you have some devious plans of your own...?

Click to expand...

A number of reasons; there have been five Trojans in the wild in 2009, for Mac OS X.

None of them smart, or very successful, but that's five times more than in 2008.

There are a lot more, by 38%, Mac OS X users in the campus survey for 2009 than there were in 2010.

Various professional lists for OS X folk are describing acceleration in terms of scripting attempts.

There are increasingly savy numbers of Unix users outside of professional geeks.

Medievalist said:

A number of reasons; there have been five Trojans in the wild in 2009, for Mac OS X.

None of them smart, or very successful, but that's five times more than in 2008.

There are a lot more, by 38%, Mac OS X users in the campus survey for 2009 than there were in 2010. Huh?

Various professional lists for OS X folk are describing acceleration in terms of scripting attempts. Not that I've seen.

There are increasingly savy numbers of Unix users outside of professional geeks.This does not necessarily translate into more viruses.

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This is probably getting a tad off topic but Trojans are not Viruses. To date, there have been ZERO viruses for Mac OS X.

AFAIK the only possible use for antivirus software on a Mac is to remove Word.
Viruses inside Word/Excel docs that came originally from an infected PC.

Drice said:

This is probably getting a tad off topic but Trojans are not Viruses. To date, there have been ZERO viruses for Mac OS X.

AFAIK the only possible use for antivirus software on a Mac is to remove Word.
Viruses inside Word/Excel docs that came originally from an infected PC.

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Yeah, I know. But the fact that there's interest in the malware community--interest enough that they're doing test runs for Trojans.

You will have noted my original context, yes?

And there have been viruses for Mac OS X; just not in the wild. I saw two demonstrated at Defcon in 2007.

If you participate in the professional security development community or attended the WWDC briefings in June, or even in 2007, you'll have noticed that Apple has been explicitly working with developers to make it harder to write viruses, and, at the same time, explicitly endorsing security software development.

The times are changing. We're at the cusp of an enormous change in the number of raw users, as well as high-end server adoption.

Finally, there are a number of non-Microsoft macro viruses that Mac users, particularly those running dual or triple boot systems, can pass on; we are vectors. It behooves us to be responsible, and yes, that means being safe on all the OSs we run. There are a number of potential ways to exploit a dual boot system that won't affect the Mac, but will affect others, via shared ports, or data.

Cliff Face said:

Okay, so I'm researching Macs, and I haven't been able to answer the following question, which I was hoping a Mac user here could tell me about.

Now I know you can get Microsoft Office for the Mac, and that would undoubtedly have .doc files for the written Word goodness (or .docx). BUT if you use a word program that is Mac only, what does it save the file as? Is it still .doc or will it only be compatible with things on the Mac?

Thanks.

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Sounds like your MS Office question has been answered already.

About a Mac-only program, though--I use Pages.

Pages is part of iWork, Apple's own office package, which includes Pages (word processor), Keynote (presentations), and Numbers (spreadsheets). Last I checked, it's $79, which is a great deal compared to Office unless you're a student with the capability of buying Office cheaper from your school.

I prefer Pages to Word myself. It saves to .pages format, which is iWork-only, but I export to RTF, .doc, and PDF whenever I need to move my work to a Windows setting. I've never really had any problems.

I keep OpenOffice on my Mac for opening and editing the rare Office document that comes my way. (iWork applications can do this, but OpenOffice gets the formatting better.)


If you're looking for a Mac writing program, I hear good things about Scrivener, though I don't use it myself.