Another thing to look at is libreoffice (openoffice) does everything Microsoft Office does, even writes/reads compatible files, runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, Ubuntu you name it.
OK, I appreciate a lot of the good information here, but I think we are going a little overboard, now, as supported by hard empirical data and real world experience.
The Mac may indeed be a terrific choice for many home users; perhaps most home users. But the statement that an Apple or its ilk, or especially "Libre Office," can do literally anything that a Windows platform can do, and equally as well, is just not correct. We are now misleading the readers.
For several years, I have tried to find a database application (for home and small office use) as powerful and intuitive as MS Access. I landed on Oracle and similar products as the only choice available, and not one of the Apple applications would fill the bill. I worked on trying to learn and master Oracle. Forget it - that is for somebody who makes a living full time doing just that - coding Oracle. It is extremely deep, obfuscated, complicated, and yes, powerful. It is traditionally supported by a TEAM of full-time professional programmers to keep it running, updated, and operational. I have worked with these folks in the past, and believe me the home user does not want to mess with that headache for, say, tracking relatives, garage storage, or (in my case) keeping track of handloads.
It would be like launching an interplanetary space ship to travel to the next town.
Can anybody use an Apple-compatible database to provide computed data for a screen like this?? Note that as you enter things from dropdown source tables and a small amount of data, computations are created by the database on the fly…
(There is more; view was truncated)
So let's look at some Mac databases offered (that do more than just hold data like a glorified spreadsheet):
File Maker Pro, “probably the best known database application for the Mac” per several sources, has some nice features but it doesn’t code, run, collaborate or export anywhere near as well as Access when one starts creating serious, decision making databases. The “form” takes precedence over coding. I know; I have worked with this program, tried to port it to Access, and have created databases with it. It's data entry screens can be made to look real purty, though.
A similar database,
Bento, is a simpler type employed by "entry level" users and is no longer sold, since 2013.
Open Office / Libre Office is a valiant attempt. I have experimented with these utilities, and especially the database. They are pretty cute, but come on - they do not stand up to the power, or versatility of Access, Excel, or Word.
For instance, the database logic must be coded in a much more difficult language than Access Basic. Access Basic runs for a graphical user interface and gives you drop-down choices, hints, help files.
For database decision making where one data entry affects other data in a record, the Open Office db's full-blown coding can only be done by a full-time coder or hardcore programmer type of person using a separate language like like C, possibly HTML (not sure of this with certain choice options), Perl, or other arcane avenues of data manipulation. And you cannot export data between the database, word processor, and spreadsheet to create something as simple as a Christmas card list with a few choices (e.g. family selection, Zip Code selection, other choices).
SQLite can be employed, but coding gets hairy for all but programming devotees. There is a GUI interface available – “Base” – but now we have another application to learn and deal with. I have not tried this. By the way, SQLite is still more difficult than MS-Access for similar results.
As for the
parallel type software purported to work on Mac that runs MS Access, you are back to using Microsoft products(!). In another life when I was working for a living, we had an avid Mac worshipper in our shop (it seems like any Mac user is almost religiously devoted). She repeatedly tried to convince me, and thus my whole agency, to switch over to Macs. She was a brilliant programmer herself. But more than once, after showing us something like 4D as a database demo that ran on her Mac and while running a large projection screen demo, she would try to show us how Mac runs Microsoft. More than once, with supervisors and a Deputy Commissioner looking on, her machine crashed and the demo was over as the higher level folks filtered out to take care of more pressing business. Eventually, her work was respected, but nobody would put up with listening to her impassioned attempt to "bring us into the light," so to speak, with Macs.
And I keep reading that this scenario has not changed. Devotees keep insisting that the world is out of step with them. But at least for those who expect a little more from their computers than just opening e-mails and writing non-integrated documents, Macs should run Mac stuff. PC boxes are made to run Micro$oft products, as annoying and flawed as they are.
I hate all the updates and problems that plague Microsoft. But, as one can see by checking any statistics of national or worldwide use of computers in the typical office, there is a reason why Microsoft still dwarfs the footprint of the Apple family.
Apple cleverly saturated universities and schools with cheap or free Macs to gain the loyalty and familiarity of the academic crowd. That, and not the brilliance of the virus-free Mac, is why so many students use them. By the way, Mac viruses have been successful; its O/S is just not attacked as much largely because the payoff is higher with the business oriented PC world.
Admittedly, Mac and family's hardware is great for certain artistic and musical applications, including many serious medical applications. Maybe even their ridiculously expensive iPads are better than my cheap, perfectly satisfactory Android LG tablet.
But this mantra that Apples will rule the world, soon, and that its software does everything that Win boxes do – something that has been uttered at least as far back as 1998 – is apparently a fervent but unrealized dream of Mr. Job’s disciples. In the final analysis, it is just not true. And no, Open Office does not equal MS Office.