David Pogue: “Office for Mac Isn’t an Improvement”

The new Office suite has gotten rave reviews from my counterparts at other publications. Clearly, something must be wrong with me; I think that, in day-to-day usability, Office 2011 is a big step backward.

The Mac suite now includes the Ribbon, a horizontal toolbar that’s built into Office for Windows. What I don’t get is this: Last time I checked, computer screens were all wider than they are tall. The last thing you’d want to do is to eat up *vertical* screen space with interface clutter like the Ribbon. Don’t we really want those controls off to the side, like the Formatting Palette in the previous Mac Office?

Walt Mossberg loved the new Outlook. Pogues hates it.