The Worst (Mac) Word Ever

Mac Word 6.0 was big, slow and not very “Mac-like”. Worse yet, its interface was arbitrarily different from its predecessor, Mac Word 5.0. All in all, a bad experience for users. Rick Schaut has worked for Microsoft for fourteen years starting out on Word 5.0 for the Macintosh. In this article Rick recalls the key decisions made during the development of Mac Word 6.0 and the technical problems they caused. It’s rare to see this sort of candor (“Mac Word 6.0 was a crappy product”) from someone in the trenches, especially when they’re still employed by the company that produced the product. An excellent read.