Post #2263299

2026-05-06 21:40 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@mjtsai/116494957672603967 Pretty wild to see Adobe entering the “Microsoft Word 6 for Mac” phase. In 1993, Microsoft had the genius idea to normalize the UI across Mac and Windows. Easier for their development! Harder on users! It was so bad (and slow!) that they actually went back and **re-released Word 5** while they fixed the worst of it.

Replies (5)

@jernej__s@infosec.exchange 2026-05-07 10:04

@benfry@information.garden Sounds like problems that plague many many modern UIs. All bling, no usability.

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@WellsiteGeo@masto.ai 2026-05-07 13:18

@benfry@information.garden That would have been something to see. Word ("for DOS", it went without saying) v.5 was a really capable non-WYSIWYG word processor that MS didn't match on Windows until about 2000. I almost dread to think what Word for DOS 5 was like on a Mac. Could Macs do DOS emulation then? (Shrug. My new employer used Manuscript mostly. Which was an education, indeed.)

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@oheso@ieji.de 2026-05-07 19:54

@benfry@information.garden I remember that pig. The whole computer would come to a screeching halt when launching Word as it loaded essentially an entirely separate operating system to run in.

Open ##2686112
@guinnessduck@mstdn.social 2026-05-07 21:48

@benfry@information.garden I used Word 5.1a on the Mac for ages, long past its end of life. Still probably the best word processor of the gui era.

Open ##2686113
@joXn@wandering.shop 2026-05-08 14:37

@benfry@information.garden @cstross@wandering.shop @mjtsai@mastodon.social Unironically, word processing kind of peaked at Microsoft Word for Mac 5.

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