As I've said here before, I'm a great admirer of Word 2010 on Windows. Word 2011 for the Mac is a stinker. As is the new Mac Outlook which manages to replace something (Entourage) that actually did more than the new product that's taken its place.

Today Microsoft have <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=ef1e612f-d8e3-4628-9fe4-ad136f0debd3" target="_blank">released their first patch for Mac Office 2011</a> -- a whopping 250 MB if you please. The quiet nudge and wink after everyone realised what a stinker the original release was went something along the lines of, 'Well, we know, but we had to get something out so we'll fix the holes somewhere along the way.'

They haven't, of course. There's the <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2525412" target="_blank">usual bunch of security and bug fixes</a>. Outlook g<a href="http://blog.officeformac.com/coming-soon-office-for-mac-2011-sp1/" target="_blank">ets a little better at syncing a few things</a>, but not Google and not MobileMe after May 5th. Word feels marginally less sluggish than it did before but it's still not a patch on the Windows version.

The Mac really is crying out for a decent, modern word processor capable of handling and navigating manuscript. Looks like the last hope now is the next release of Apple Pages. Which is, by the way, long, long overdue.