Two years ago to the day was my last official day working for Microsoft. This is a bit of a complicated statement unto itself. As that day was about 2 months after I was officially laid off. At least laid off in the Microsoft manner.

I haven’t commented much on the entire Mac-Guy at Microsoft experiences. I especially haven’t commented about the layoff. For today not only marks the 2 yr anniversery of my officialy termination. But it also marks the end of the 2 yr terms in the serverance package.

This was an amazing severence package. Sadly, however, it forbade me to comment about the company, speak in any way against the company, or paint it in a bad light. Further, it prevented me from working with or talking in any professional quantity with anyone or any software that might be in competition with any of the core products I was or could be working on.

This included but was not limited to: iWork (Keynote, Pages, Numbers), Open Office, Mail.app, iChat, Adium, iCal, BeeJive, trn. This of course included the team members or divisions working on them.

It is a vaguely liberating feeling. While I’m not going to directly address these issues or topics in this post. (This is more a meta post while) I am still very busy on my current project for my current company (both of which I absolutely adore); I would like to add two comments about Microsoft Office vs. iWork which I will elabourate on in the future:

Excel vs. Numbers: There is no competition. Excel wins. If you’re using a program for a spreadsheet; you’re already up a level from the basic consumer. Excel has more power, extensibility, and surprising features than anything else. I will admit; I have had my hands inside Excel. The code is SCARY. I truly appreciate the term “Ghost in the Machine” after seeing how Excel is… “pieced” together.

Power Point vs. Keynote: I am 100% sold on Keynote. Keynote’s organization and OS integration makes putting together complex and compelling presentations far easier than Power Point. Perhaps my lack of continual ‘Power User’ status for presentation making is what keeps me more in the Keynote camp but I’ve yet to really find compelling features of PPT over Keynote that give me a reason not to select Keynote’s smoother interface.

That’s all for now. (Tip of the iceberg)

More after I get my current project out of dev and into beta.

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