Q:

I have been warned on the Web that Microsoft Office won’t work on Apple’s new Mac operating system, Lion. Is this true?

A:

In my tests, and also according to Microsoft, Office for the Mac does work in Lion, though some relatively minor features won’t work right. Also, you must be using one of the two latest versions of Office.

In my tests, using the current version, Office 2011, all features I tested worked fine, though of course I wasn’t able to test every one of the thousands of features. I even wrote my entire Lion review in Word 2011 on a Lion-equipped Mac. According to Microsoft, the 2008 version also works, though the 2004 version doesn’t.

However, Microsoft hasn’t updated Office for Mac to take advantage of Lion’s new features. More information on Mac Office compatibility with Lion is here and here.

Q:

Can you point me in the right direction for a purchase of a tablet? I am a home inspector and presently use a Toshiba Satellite laptop with a special Windows software program for my job. I need a tablet with a screen size of 12 inches or more. USB ports would be essential.

With its iPhones and iPads, Apple has led people toward a new way of operating digital devices that relies on direct manipulation of items with finger gestures, not a mouse and scroll bars. App icons are arrayed front and center, not buried deep in a file system or limited to a strip at the bottom of the screen.

In my coverage of the OS X Lion preview Wednesday, I wondered how the app resume feature would work. I noticed that in the preview, the activity indicators in the Dock (those white dots) were all gone. Poof. I squinted at the image below until I was certain that my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Then I realized: You never see activity indicators in iOS.

See, no glowing white things!

If Apple’s goal is to bring the good from iOS into OS X, then this move makes sense. iOS’s multitasking behavior would allow you to open applications like normal until you run out of RAM, then the app resume model kicks in and applications will start suspending themselves in memory, available quickly if you need them, making activity indicators redundant.