One of the bigger announcements of this year's uncharacteristically tepid MacWorld Expo is the long awaited upgrade of Microsoft Office 98 for the Mac. Touted as a return to the fold of the Mac, Microsoft details two major advances for this package other than feature parity with the 32-bit Windows version of the product: more "Mac"-like in interface, and self-repairing applications. I won't comment on the former - but the latter disturbs me.

What does self repairing applications mean? Well, installation of MS Office 98 involves dragging a folder containing the three core Office apps to your hard drive. That's it. When any application is launched, they automatically install the usual Microsoft mess of files in the System folder (and from what I hear, there will be at least 12 in one location alone, let alone a few more in other places). In older versions, if any one of these "auxillary" files, some with cryptic names like ole.dll, are deleted or moved, the microsoft apps stop working. In the new version, the improvement is that the application automatically reinstalls these files when they are moved, so that the application stays happy.

This is NOT an improvement.

Let me explain something about the workings of the Mac. One of the most elegant things about that OS is that its applications tend to be well contained. For example, if I take a cross platform app like Macromedia FreeHand, install the Mac version on a removable media drive like a Zip drive, take it to a different Mac, I can start up and use the program with minimal loss of functionality (so I can't export GIFs - big deal). Take the Windows version of the same application, treat it the same way, and disaster strikes. Bottom line is, a well designed application on a Macintosh doesn't need to install *anything* in any one location. What Microsoft introduced with Office 4.3 applications is a legacy from Windows: an inherent fragility to the system. Most Windows users are afraid to touch anything in their computers lest programs stop working. Simply moving a file or renaming a single line in an ASCII file can result in total breakdown; there are no indications, and isolating the cause (specially on a shared computer) can be daunting, given the complexity of the system, and all the things that can easily go wrong that it is usually easier to completely reinstall the system.

The MacOS tends to be significantly more robust. Each application usually writes a simple preference file in the system, that's it. It doesn't modify a "Registry", no such entity exists, and therefore, no such thing to corrupt. If one should delete the preference file, it usually resets the behavior of the application in question, forgetting custom settings - but it doesn't stop it from working. Macs also don't lose where files are kept as easily. Take the sophisticated piece of engineering called VirtualPC. It comes in two pieces: the emulator proper, and the virtual PC drive partition (which, incidentally, is just a file, but can be easily mounted as if it were a new hard drive). You can have more than one virtual drive partition, choosing to boot with any with a simple preferences setting. After you have launched your virtual PC once, and configured it to your liking, the two pieces don't have to stay in the same folder. That's right, you can move the emulator anywhere else in the hard drive, and it will locate the correct emulated drive partition every time. It doesn't force you to create a new drive partition, or refuse to run because you moved the emulator file. Like much of the MacOS experience, it just works.

You see, there is absolutely NO NEED for self-repairing applications if the programs were designed correctly from the beginning!

MacOS users enjoy a luxury of well crafted applications. It is easy to set up even the free version of Eudora to download e-mail from two different POP mail servers; the same feat is difficut to accomplish, if at all, on the Windows version. The very large number of applications on the Mac can run directly off a CDROM or removable media drive without ever needing anything installed in the booting system; instead of taking advantage of this capability, Microsoft is spreading the word that such custom system modifications that the MS Office type programs install are a necessary evil. Instead of actually delivering applications that work, MS creates the problems, and sells us on the antidote.

The sad thing is, most people will gladly take the poison, suffer a little, and pay for the antidote.