You can still buy Office in a single user version. Much of their focus has been to make Office a subscription-based service rather than a monolithic software suite that gets updated once every few years. Like most alternative productivity suites, iWork apps try to be good corporate citizens, offering Office file compatibility for import and export, but there's a difference between file compatibility and native file support, and many users of iWork apps and other tools have run into issues with documents just not looking right when they're translated into Office formats.Īs I said at the outset, Apple has changed, but so has Microsoft. Many businesses and institutions continue to rely on Office as their standard. Despite the advances that Apple has made, Microsoft Office still reigns supreme in corporate environments and elsewhere. As I said back in February, 'Almost' isn't good enough. Free software alternatives to Office like LibreOffice may still raise eyebrows, but Google has normalized many people to using Google Docs for their productivity software and collaboration needs, for example. VPN Deals: Lifetime license for $16, monthly plans at $1 & more