what is the best word processor for mac?

A mature staple in the academic world, Mellel, a superbly versatile program that is also multi-language capable (including Arabic, Greek, and Hebrew). It’s academic orientation gives it features like bibliographic links to the staples Bookends or Sente, and superb footnote and endnote management, but it is also a fine general-purpose wordprocessor, equally capable in the home office or small business setting. I have used it for academic papers, and several academic and nonacademic book length projects.

Other features include palette or keyboard based styles controls addressing character, paragraph, list, section, page and table management. While it is possible to simply start a new blank document and begin typing or dictating (I routinely use it with Dragon or OSX's built in speech-to-text, a slightly watered down version of Dragon), Mellel comes with more than 35 document templates, ranging from envelopes to scripts, including a variety of journal article formats. Users can also create their own templates with as little or as much detail as desired. In typical Mac style, Mellel’s toolbar can be user configured, allowing a variety of commonly used tools to always be in quick mousing range. The program also allows multiuser editing with change tracking and annotations.

Mellel includes iCloud support and a very competent iOS/iPad version is available, so documents can be edited anywhere. Output formats include plaintext, RTF, Word, OPML, PDF and of course, printing.

Mellel is reasonably priced and is available from www.mellel.com or Apple’s app stores. Academic pricing is available from the company website store. A fully featured 30 day trial download is available. The trial version unfortunately watermarks output. As an authorised developer, no tricks are required to open the Mellel installer.

I have used Mellel since 2004, and remain a very happy customer. The company behind the program, Redlex has produced regular and well conceived updates since its introduction in 2002. I have never experienced an update to repair a previous update, a problem that seems to haunt smaller companies, nor have I ever been unable to use the program because of OS updates. Redlex charges only for major updates. My current version is 3.5.2b2, meaning I have been charged only twice for updates in more than 12 years of use.

No, I am not a paid endorser. I just really like the program.

Hi. What is Bean? I looked on the App Store expecting to find some sort of word processing app to use... but didn't. Maybe you meant to say Pages? Is Pages the app you go to for a one up level from TextEdit? Thx:)

Pages

It depends on what you want to do. I prefer Nisus Writer Pro; if you are interested in complex text handling but not so much in images Mellel is very powerful. My page here examines options for people considering abandoning Pages:

http://rfwilmut.net/notes/iwork/page2.html

"Best" is incredibly subjective. There are a host of options. Some free, some not free. You need to weigh your needs agains the options and see which one is appropriate for you.

My preference is for scrivener (for it's a ability with nested text) but my narrow focus does not make it the best (what a vague term) Pages is the best all rounder (I believe) with Word looming large in the background.

I moved from AppleWorks to Pages 4 and this worked quite well for me, but when Apple crippled the program with v5 (though of course v4 still works) I decided to bale out and finished up with Nisus Writer Pro. I'm happy with this (and the text at least can always be retrieved as it saves in .rtf, though images won't come over to for example Textedit) despite a few minor hiccups - the most annoying of which is an inability to lock images or object to avoid moving them accidentally.

Word of course is favourite if you need to exchange with other people a lot, but its a cluttered mess and very expensive.

I totally agree re Word, so many features, they get in the way of actually doing anything. I used to write a lot of stage directions, Scrivener is unbeatable at that.

TextEdit works fine for my purposes. I have even made do with Stickies on occasion. Your mileage may vary. Since you don't tell us much about what you want to do, it's hard to give a really definitive answer to your question.

I do most basic writing in TextEdit. After than I use Bean. Unless you're doing what almost approaches desktop publishing most of the high end packages are not necessary. RTF file formats available even in TextEdit permit a surprising amount of formatting which will cover 99.5% of most people's needs.

I'll second Pages AND Bean!

Really like Bean. It's easy to navigate and has a good feature set for a word processor that is better than something bare bones like OS X built-in Text Edit.

Thumbs up for Bean!

Personally, I use Word with an Office 365 Home subscription.

I require full compatibility in a corporate environment that has standardized on Word, and my wife is taking post-grad classes and the university requires papers and documents to be submitted in word format. We've found that alternative applications that are 'compatible' with the .doc and .docx format create unacceptably formatted documents for submission.

Why are you posting here over a year later?

Somewhat late.

The OP probably already found something that has worked for them.

Well it's well over a year later and I'm here reading all of these replies and finding them super helpful... thx :)

Bean- Word Processor for Mac OS.

http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html