Microsoft Office for Mac and the larger interoperability divide between proprietary a

I was reading the latest issue of Mac|Life tonight [i liked it better as Mac Addict, btw], and it struck me how dependent Apple is on Microsoft. For all the cool things that come with Mac hardware and OS X, a large swath of the Mac user population would be crippled or wiped out if Microsoft decided to stop supporting Office for Mac.

The Mac faithful (of which I am part) won't like to hear this, but it's true. OpenOffice is an excellent program (It actually is now - three years ago it was rubbish), but many of us simply couldn't use it "in production." Sure, I could run Office for Windows in Parallels' coherence mode (and almost certainly would), but that's an unnecessarily roundabout way of solving something best done directly.

This is a relatively small problem for Mac users, right? I suppose so. The same thing, however, is true in the enterprise. Many prefer to run Linux for an increasing array of server-based applications. But they don't want to be stranded, just as I would be on my Mac without Office. Net net: interoperability is a Very Good Thing. It's good for open source, but it's also good for Microsoft (and everyone else, because no one has a complete lock on any particular area of enterprise software).

All of which makes me wish we could, as an industry, talk about interoperability with more candor. More honesty. This isn't a dig at Microsoft, though it has been guilty of conflating patents (a desire to get paid) with interoperability (a desire to get along). The two don't necessarily go together.

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