What are the major differences in the 2 products (mac vs windows for excel)? Is it possible to run regression on mac? I want to use it for financial modeling, running regression, finding correlations and other finance/trading related business. Suggestions and thoughts? Would like to hear from someone with experience with both.
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You clearly haven't searched, since I feel like I've answered this question 100 times.
There is absolutely no comparison - you cannot use Mac Excel for any serious financial analysis. All the keyboard shortcuts are either different or non-existent, there is no VBA support, no support for most plugins (TTS macros, FactSet, etc), and the menus are terribly inefficient.
I love my Mac (typing on it right now) and use it for everything else. But when it comes to real work (Excel and PPT), it's gotta be PC, no debate.
Unfortunately, CaptK is right. No comparison. I actually bought a ThinkPad yesterday for when I'm out of the office over Christmas and they call me for some modeling.
The workaround is to install Parallels on your Mac and run Windows in a virtual machine with actual MS Excel on it.
You're gonna want a pretty high specced mac for it though.
It runs fine for me at the moment (15" MBP i7 2.2Ghz, 8gb ram, 240gb SSD.. you get the jist..).
However, on my older 13" Macbook (Core2duo) it couldn't run very smoothly without lagging.
Its also a more expensive alternative though - compared to purchasing a windows laptop just to run MS Office.
The only thing I'm missing is page up/page down keys. Apart from that, all keyboard shortcuts and addins work fine.
But coming back to the issue of Mac office vs Windows office - Mac office, unfortunately has nothing on Windows.
Excel for Mac seems really unusable, from my experience. At least from the perspective of someone familiar with Excel on windows, but also I think there are shortcuts and stuff that are missing. For anything serious and finance-related, I think you just need to bite the bullet and get a PC (I also prefer Macs for personal use though)
Think about it.. It wouldn't make any commercial sense for MS to develop a version of excel for mac that is anywhere even close to the windows counterpart. Despite a product line numbering in the thousands, over a third of MS's revenue still comes directly from office, and you can bet a whole lot more comes indirectly from the fact there is no other alternative that natively runs MS office for windows. you think 90% of businesses use windows because it's a fantastic product? My employer still runs XP, a system which is over 10 years old and has been superseded TWICE. MS's only real competitive advantage is office, and in particular excel. they would be completely crazy to piss that away by giving mac users even a whiff of an alternative.
What everyone else has said is true. My personal recommendation however would be to get a Mac and then install Boot Camp, best of both worlds. Dont bother with Parallels or other VM software, it's inefficient and some of the shortcut keys still wont work properly.
As others have said, no possible way to use Mac Excel properly for any kind of financial analysis. I can't even make it through my finance classes at school with Mac Excel. It was a struggle towards the end of the semester, my MBP is getting old (three years now) and is too slow for any VMWare or Parallels.
Getting a MacBook Air for Christmas, throwing Windows 7 and Office on there so I don't have to spend my life in the lab at school when I have to do Excel.
I don't have any problems with Mac Word, don't use Mac Outlook, but Windows Excel and PPT shit on the Mac versions.
Does learning Excel for Mac/PC matter? (Originally Posted: 06/17/2015)
I'm starting the financial modeling package and was wondering if it would make a difference. I use a Mac, would it be worth developing the "muscle memory" for Mac if PCs are prevalent in industry?
Any Excel for Mac users out there?
Excel for mac can be done, however it is not the same as pc. It sucks.
yeah, I would recommend working on excel on a PC if your eventual goal is to get in the industry.. if you do not/cannot buy a windows computer right now but have a mac consider getting vmware fusion which basically lets your run a virtual windows machine as an application on your mac.. it's pretty neat.
macbook is good but if I were in the market today I would go for a surface.
Excel for PC is way easier to use and faster in my opinion.
Excel for mac is just not the same. Have a mac and used "numbers" and the Microsoft "Excel" but you are faster with a Windows computer. In the industry, you need to know how to use excel on a windows computer. It would be a waste of time to get used to the different shortcuts and the unpractical handling.
If you HAVE to run Excel on a Mac, run Windows Excel through bootcamp or something, not Mac Excel.
I'm a mac user and fan but you should learn excel on a PC. Just get something that allows you to run a virtual PC like Parallels.
absolutely agree that excel on mac is not the same, but starting with Office 2016 (to be released sometimes this year), the mac and pc version will be exactly the same so going forward, I think you'll see a lot more people using mac
nice......
The only thing that would not be different (I believe) is if you are learning Visual Basic for Applications. The coding language should still be the same, but I agree with other users for everything else.
Absolutely, 100%, no questions asked use a PC. I am an avid Apple and Mac user in my personal life, but it is almost impossible to use excel on a Mac compared to a PC. They are surprisingly different.
Mac Excel is just incomparable to the real thing. Mastering Excel on a PC is a great investment to smoothly transition into many finance fields.
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