I think with the Brownie / Pie discussion this graphic would have been more appropriate.
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On a side note I would like to take the time to thank the NSA. At least we have one governmant agency that actually listens. :mrgreen:
Pie for the nobel.
Brownie for the lowly.
Thank you for making my case.
Cake is what people who can’t bake pies make once they realize the embarrassment brought by making brownies.
Best Answer EVER!
Thank you. I ascribe all my talents to my frequent consumption of pie.
My background is into computer programming. As such, I was taught to be able to program “Hello, world!” on any language that would eventually came into the market. At first I thought this was a waste of time, but then I learned the most valuable lesson: if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem will look like a nail.
Now I make a living out of that lesson.
At the end, I guess you stick to the tools you feel more comfortable with for a particular job. A boss of mine used to say “I really don’t care which outfit you wear while doing the job I need you to do, as long as the deliverable turns out to be suitable for the intended purpose, and in due time”.
A wise guy he was.
When I discovered Scrivener, the first thing I did after completing the excellent tutorial was to write “Hello, world!”. It was a breeze, and I was delighted. 8)
But what is your stance on the great Brownies vs pie debate of 2013?! You’re either for brownies, or against common decency and human rights.
Brownies are far superior to either pie or cake! There, I said it.
Pie is structurally unsound.
–Apple, cherry, cream.
Pie is incomplete.
–Pumpkin pie requires whipped cream to be edible.
Pie is not portable.
–Put a slice in your pocket. I dare you.
Brownies can be used to support a flimsy pan instead of the other way 'round.
–Structurally sound!
Brownies need no condiments
–Complete!
Brownies can travel in your pocket, in your bag, in your shoes!
–Portable!
I’M CARRYING BROWNIES IN EVERY POCKET, AND MY WALLET TOO! AND I’M GOING TO EAT ONE NOW! Is that lint? EXTRA FIBER! BROWNIES ARE THE HEALTHY ALTERNATIVE!
OMG, I completely forgot to make my real point! 
On the culinary realm I’m definitely an agnostic. In other words: I cherish the moment, be it a brownie or a pie, or better yet, a delicious peanut-butter toast or a bunch of scrambled eggs & bacon. You name it.
My wife has been asking me for years to grant her -and only her- super user access to the fridge, but so far I’ve managed to refuse. Over my dead body I’ll surrender my eating fetishes. :mrgreen:
And please don’t give me the human rights speech! Physiological needs are the pillar of the Maslow pyramid. 
Mr Brownie pocketer,
You are comparing “fine art” to “functional product”. A pie is appreciated because of its delicacy, its sophistication, its fragility. You would not take a Picasso and hang it on the exterior of your house, Take the canvas off the frame, or wad it up and put it in your pocket. Why would you treat pie any differently?
I’m glad to see you acknowledge that you believe that one could be better than the other and that you are simply waiting for conclusive evidence. I can respect that.
I’m not sure where this abomination originated, and I probably don’t want to know, but someone make it.
I used to be a pie man. When I first lived in the USA, many many moons ago, I was homesick for the experience of a true-blue Aussie meat pie. So I bought an American pot-pie. 
It was, to my memory, the first “food” (I use the word advisedly) that I spat out and refused to eat. Pies never recovered their magic and I became agnostic.
Until…
…Madame Nom and I recently discovered a little cafe near her optometrist that makes excellent coffee. As a coffee snob, that is important and it got us in the door. We then discovered they make brownies. These brownies are something I would never hang on the exterior of my house, nor would I carry them in my pocket. Such sacrilege is an abomination to contemplate. No, these masterpieces of culinary delight are to be savoured in tiny bites to make them last longer. Such delicate sophistication and care in a brownie is unusual, in a cafe brownie is unheard of. They are, in all senses of the word, remarkable.
I used to be pie man, but I have seen the light and the light is brown.
[size=150]Here y’are, this’ll restore y’r equilibrium[/size] 
[size=150]Janet Street Porter’s Desperate Dan Cow Pie[/size]
Caught this young colt on the Moor this evening. Can’t beat’em fresh…
That’s all very good, Mr Pigeon. By the by, my grandpa WAS a hyena. Or was it hernia? Can’t recall…
Bodmin,
Received wisdom has it that the BofB-M is actually feline, and not one of yours mate.
Fluff
Oh, there you are. Here Pusspuss, come on, come to Papa…
Back on topic: I have Word for Mac. I tolerate it, but prefer to use Nisus Writer Pro, or even Bean. Just a matter of taste when all’s said and done.
Incompetent may be a strong word, but I find it interesting that someone with this amount of experience hates (what I perceive to be) a very complete and very usable Office suite this much. I like Scrivener much better for writing, but I have no trouble doing it in Word if I have to.
I merely matched the tone-of-voice; it was an angry response to an angry article I happened to disagree with. I’ll be honest to say that I haven’t used Word for as long as you did. I’ve been in since Office '97, which I’d say is still a decent while, and like I said, Office 2007 and 2010 were the two main tools I happily used throughout college. They helped me and never got in my way.
That said, maybe it’s different for the Mac version, I can only speak for the Windows version of MS Office.
Autocorrect and autoformat are fantastic when you set them up to your preferences. I use those functions in a way they help me become more productive.
And I think here lies the difference in our basic approach: I don’t want things to be as simple as possible. I don’t want computers to be easy, accessible and unintimidating and I like that most people are clumsy with them and I am not. That’s why I also really don’t like Apple products and their software. They simplified things to the point of me feeling completely trapped.
If I’m working with a piece of software that can do a lot of stuff, I’m willing to put the time in to learn it. It did take me quite a while to get the hang of some of the more obscure/hidden features of Word, and I’m still learning. It’s a very powerful piece of software (for the right purposes) once you figured out how to use it right.
The same goes for Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign and Lightroom. It took years before I really got fast and handy in those suites and my bookcase is filled with training workbooks for them. Scrivener is kinda the same in that regard. Without going through the tutorial, you won’t get very far. I go back to it every now and then to see if I happened to miss something and I don’t see why that should be different for MS Office. It’s a very extensive piece of software and it only makes sense to me that it would take a while to figure it out. The fact that most people don’t is their own mistake, not MS Office’s.
Office 2007 was a radical first step in a new direction. Not everything worked out right away, but they improved a lot over the last couple of versions. You can completely customize the ribbon in Office 2010 and onward. If it takes up too much space, press CTRL+F1 and it completely collapses, taking in even less space than the bar that was around in Office 97 (this has been in there since Office 2007).
If you have trouble with things being hard-coded, there’s always open source software.
What do you do? Just curious.
If I may be allowed a moment of interjection, young MasterBluesman. r6d2, is a sewer rat, I think. He lives closer than most to the Earth’s core… or so he claims. Unless he’s referring to his sweetheart’s heart. 
Must confess, I’ve never considered it in that light before… hmm… back to the drawing board.
C’est la vie…eh?
Fluff