[Charlie Demerjian, writing for SemiAccurate, on the death spiral that he sees Microsoft in](http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/14/microsoft-has-failed/):

>The problem is that if you are locked in with a choice of 100% Microsoft or 0% Microsoft, once someone goes, it isn’t a baby step, they are gone.

The majority of the article I actually found uninteresting, but well written. The above quote though is a fascinating view point about how the Microsoft empire works.

Demerjian points out that once you leave one Microsoft product, you have no need for any *other* Microsoft product. So if you leave office, you can easily leave Windows, Windows Server, Exchange, etc. I had never thought about this, but it is a very interesting statement.

For the most part I’d agree with Demerjian, however I don’t think it is that easy to apply universally. If it is company policy, or a cost issue, then yes the statement holds.

But what about someone like, well, me?

I run my company. I make the purchase decisions. I am a dedicated Apple user. I just bought Office 2011 for Mac.

Why?

It’s true that 99% of the time I use Pages and Numbers. However Excel is the killer tool. There are simply things that I cannot easily accomplish in Google or Numbers without Excel. Furthermore, when negotiating contracts, it’s nice for everyone to be on the same software for consistent tracking of changes.

So my curiosity now is whether I am the edge case, or the status quo for business users on Macs. I am thinking I am in the latter group.