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MS Office for OSX? Why not for Unix as Well?
technode asks: "Apple
has released OSX, which appears to be an amalgam of NetBSD, and
NexTStep, and other stuff. There is, or will be, undoubtedly, a
'native mode' office suite for OSX. If there is an Office suite for
OSX, then why not for other Unixes? To do it once requires solving
the basic problem of mapping Office onto the Unix/X-windows API. Once
you have that piece, it seems like the only thing preventing a Linux
MS Office Suite is MS desire to preserve their OS market share. Technically,
this begins to seem a little bit like using one's market share in the
applications business to protect one's market share in the OS
business, which would, on the face of it, seem to be an anti-trust
no-no. What gives?" Most people don't seem to understand that
"native-mode" OSX isn't necessarily Unix compatible. Macs have had their own GUI toolbox for a long time, and I would assume that if
Office does show for OSX, that it would be an easy port to
other Unicies. This doesn't even go into the horrendous track record
with regards to security that Microsoft has garnered, especially
over the past few years. Does Unix really need Office at this
point? Update: 12/29 1pm EDT by C :The wording above is incorrect. To clarify: an OS X
version of Office would not be an easy port to Unix. Sorry for the miswording, there.
- Bloat. MS Office defies the basic principles of UNIX. It will
probably need to run as root and make our systems unstable. Do we need
this?
- No freedom. This is a step in the wrong direction for those of us who
prefer to use 'cvs update' instead of service packs to update our systems.
- Monopoly leveraging. Microsoft will undoubtedly engineer their
.Net
"features" into new versions of Office. Don't be surprised if you, as a
UNIX user, will need a Passport account just to run Word.
- Monopoly extension. Why would anyone work on improving Koffice,
StarOffice, or LaTeX if MS Office exists on the UNIX platform? The
competitors would start out at a huge disadvantage and know there's no
place in the market for them.
Now, on the plus side:- User friendliness. MS Office provides a seamless transition for
lusers who have grown up with Windows and don't know anything else.
- World domination. Anything that helps us replace inferior desktop OSs is a good thing,
evolution-wise and principle-wise.
- Hackability. UNIX is a far superior platform for hackers because of
the wide array of debugging tools available, so it will make reverse
engineers' jobs easier.
It is obvious that the cons outweigh the pros here by sheer numbers. But given the recent strides made by the Koffice team, it will only be a matter of time before their product is superior to MS Office in every respect.-Uncle
One of OS X's gifts to the world, however, is the end of the reign X Window on UNIX. The GUI environment under OS X is Aqua. Anyone writing for the Mac writes their GUI as an Aqua GUI (Java apps are Aqua). You cannot easily port an Aqua app to the X Window System.
It's plum ironic that you read all about Linux, BSD, Solaris, hacking, personal freedoms, and all other sorts of stuff on Slashdot, and yet no one ever seems to be able to get it right, or care to try very hard, when it comes to the Mac OS or Mac OS X. Even the initial post didn't seem to me to have looked very hard to see if there IS a Mac OS X version of Office.
I wrote the MacNN article which sparked this thread last year, and saw a complete and total lack of understanding in most of the following posts. The tone of the followups expressed a lack of understanding on Apple's part for using BSD and not Linux - that Apple is not savvy enough to be in business, etc. This thread has reinforced that most dotters don't really understand what Mac OS X IS.
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Mac OS X is NOT Unix. Mac OS X is NOT *NIX, or Linux. The architecture of Mac OS X is focused on leveraging the Mach kernel to provide services, do VM, handle threads, and more. Then, the tools on top of that are crafted to the Mach kernel, such as all applications being a Mach thread, and networking through BSD sockets. There is no compatibility layer which speaks Mach, there is only Mach.
Perhaps the work to change this would not revolutionize the field of Computer Science, but there is no true reason for Apple to switch, and having application *NIX personalities is a feature almost no "Mac" user would ever care about.
Quartz is not X11. X11 is a protocol, Quartz is an API. The better analogy would be Quartz and KDE - both of which feed a display engine, and provide widgets and graphical tools. Without getting into a side by side comparison, which you choose is going to be a matter of choice as to which you like better.
But, Microsoft worked hard to leverage the Quartz API for many of the features in Office - graph generation being the primary target, so a good amount of work would have to be done to reengineer major parts of the display engine just to get around these sections.
Consider further, if you will, how hard it has proven to be for most programming firms to take a Win32 application to the Mac using the Mac Toolbox (aka Classic) or even Carbon, much less fine-tuning it's graphics for the platform. The more impressive quick translation applications for Mac OS X have been written in Cocoa, the framework that has evolved from the NextSTEP/OPENSTEP frameworks/APIs, and Cocoa isn't even close to being link Carbon.
With the Mac Office codebase written in Carbon/Classic, it would take quite a while for any porting to take place, and in such time, I am confidant a newer version of Office would have already been released...
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I'm not saying Slashdot should become, overnight, more Mac OS X conscious, but really...no one would spare the whip on someone who said Linux and Windows were the same since they are both operating systems...