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Sun and Apple Team Up for StarOffice for Mac OS X
An anonymous reader writes, "CNET writes about Sun and Apple getting together to create StarOffice for the Mac OS X." Apparently, the Java-based OpenOffice app will be released before year's end (a developer release went out on Thursday), with a commercial StarOffice release sometime next year.
Corel already tried and we all saw the result: slow and dismissed by the market.
Even though JVMs improved a lot in the meantime, there's no way a JVM is going to make an app such as OpenOffice as smooth to use as a native version.
They'd better work on a native version, instead of working on something which has not a single chance of attracting users.
CNet may be partially right... the article talks about Apple engineers having access to StarOffice source and working on moving the UI to Quartz... maybe just the UI work will be done in Java (which has the Quartz UI on MacOS X) with the core functionality being in C/C++ as per the other Star/Open Office platforms. Using JNI this would certainly be possible... as for performance, well, we'll have to wait and see.
I cannot imagine Java being of much use for StarOffice on OSX, given that the visual side of Java, AWT and Swing are very slow under OSX compared to Linux and XP.
I think this is either a mistake or else they'll be using Java for some system glue or something I imagine.
The main points of the article are:
1) The relationship between Apple and Microsoft has been strained by the lackluster sales of Office v.X. Apple supports the porting of StarOffice because it doesn't want MacOS X to be cutoff from the ability to interact with the ever-important Microsoft dominated office file formats should Microsoft decide to abandon the platform.
2) Development hurdles that Sun must overcome are removing and redesigning X11 protocol specific code to work with Quartz 2D -- Apple's windowing API -- and redesigning the user interface such that it conforms to the Apple Aqua guidlines. (That's a tall order, especially considering that much of the Aqua guidlines are incomplete and still being formed.) Currently, StarOffice uses its own interface toolkit, built from the ground up.
3) The ever-pressing issue of how to make money by selling an essentially open-source product. Sun plans to do this not by merely offering support, but also adding special enticements to a commercial distribution that wouldn't be available in an open-source distribution. (An example is the bundling of commercial quality fonts with the software).
to me, that sounds like apple is preparing for a time when MS decides -- for valid reasons, of course -- to discontinue their office product line for the mac.
btw, any new rumors about OS X for x86 out there?
--
making up good sigs is a hard thing to do.
I'd take it the other way... after all the themes over the years that try to ripoff OSX, not a one has got close. The proportions are wrong. The font-rendering is screwy. The software, well... black and white minstrels.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
First I'd like to say that I like Java very much, but I think that this must be a mistake. Let's see. OS X is unix-based, and does support X11. StarOffice (and OpenOffice) runs just fine on X11. Basically their problem is to port the GUI from X11 to Quartz
Porting StarOffice (once the biggest open source project) to Java would be an absolutly huge task. This rules out a full port. It leaves the option of using Java as the GUI. World+dog (including me) agree that Java's GUI is so-so, even if it is better on OS X than anywhere else. Anyway, what would be the point of using Java to interface between C/C++/Objective-C apps? None.
CNET just got it wrong one more time.
Nobox: Only simple products.
On my Linux installation, there are several jars in /usr/local/OpenOffice.org1.0/classes. Enabling Java to interoperate with the Universal Network Object (UNO) model that sits at the core of OpenOffice was always a key part of their architecture.
So, the use of Java isn't really news, and any messaging around Java should just be seen as Marketing exploiting the fact that yes, indeed, parts are written in Java.
I could easily see Apple maintaining AppleWorks while simultaneously contributing to (or publishing under its own brand?) a Mac version of StarOffice/OpenOffice. Perhaps Apple could continue to bundle AppleWorks on its consumer systems while bundling StarOffice on its pro systems. Or perhaps it could license StarOffice from Sun and work with them to create its own, highly Mac-ified version and offer it as a higher-end alternative to the more consumer-oriented AppleWorks. Either of these could happen in much the same way they position iMovie and iDVD versus Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro for consumers and professionals, respectively.
Sure there is. Java is quite fast these days and it has gotten a lot more stable and robust. OpenOffice could actually become smaller and simpler if it is written in Java because much of the big and complex stuff in OpenOffice is already taken care of by the Java runtime.
Also, Sun finally needs to put the resources behind Java for client/desktop apps--that means developing large and complex client/desktop apps and fixing whatever problems remain in Java and the Java runtime.
Corel already tried and we all saw the result: slow and dismissed by the market.
Corel didn't know what they were doing and they didn't have the option of hacking the Java runtime much. Besides, there are an awful lot of bad or failed C and C++ applications--should we stop using C and C++ because of that as well?
They seem to build a native C++ interface for the windowing system of OSX.
CNET probably confused this with the Java of OpenOffice support.
It's very unlikely that someone tries to build a GUI via Java. People are not that stupid.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
I mean no disrespect to the OpenOffice people but that build is not a 1.0 release.
Hasn't anyone here actually played with project builder? Apple lets people develop in project builder in either ObjC, *OR* Java. I'll bet this is what they're doing. There's probably nothing happening with Swing or any of the Java UI crap. What they're probably doing is writing the underlying code in java and allowing it to compile with either the new apple front end, or swing on other platforms. This sounds much more like a Sun strategy since they're so hip on Java in the first place, and cross platform apps secondly.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
Sun has been looking for hardware allies in its long-running quest to popularize StarOffice, which competes against Microsoft Office. To date, no major PC makers have pledged to heavily promote StarOffice.
To me, it's incredible that no hardware vendor such as IBM or HP is offering StarOffice or OpenOffice preinstalled on personal computers. I see no reason for them to not install it.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
I think you are confusing AppleWorks and MS Office v.X. AppleWorks is made by Apple, and is a consumer-level productivity suite that competes (somewhat) with Office.
I think the idea that Apple might drop AppleWorks and try to replace it with the more robust StarOffice is definitely not without merit. Given the fact that StarOffice and OpenOffice share a common file format, and those suites together create a compatible document format across Solaris, Windows, and Linux (both x86 and PPC), Apple might be wise to join that group. If Apple and Sun create StarOffice for MacOS X, and Microsoft does pull the plug on Office for Mac, it will be Star/OpenOffice on five platforms versus MS Office on one. Star/OpenOffice would become the de facto choice for anyone not running Windows (or not wanting to spend $500 USD on a productivity suite).
If Apple decides to jump on the StarOffice bandwagon, I don't see them continuing to support AppleWorks. Everything I've seen about this indicates that StarOffice for MacOS X would be bundled for free with pro-level Macs (and most likely available for free or very little money for the consumer-level Macs). I don't see why anyone would choose AppleWorks if they could get StarOffice for less than AppleWorks or for free?
Errr... No.
OpenOffice includes support for Java but it is most certainly _not_ Java based.
Anyone who has not used OpenOffice really should take a look. IMHO is is a viable replacement to Microsoft Office at home while Star Office (based on OpenOffice) is a viable replacement for Microsoft Office at work.
Wish good luck to the OpenOffice guys and take a bit of time to wish Sun good luck with Star Office too.
Thanks.
Cheers.
yes, Apple/Claris make the home user version of office. over the years it was called either ClarisWorks or AppleWorks (Claris/Apple is the same thing). i'm sure somebody else knows better, but the Mac SE my sister got in 1988 came with Claris Write, Claris Draw etc back before it was really packed together. they have been working on that for years. i think the current Appleworks for OS X is just a carbonized version of the most recent Appleworks. i would think they will keep bundling Appleworks (unless they rename it someday) and sell somehting to the Pro users. in the past (and today even) pro users had to buy Appleworks. it's kind of strange, but Apple decided somewhere that Pro users were going to want M$ Office anyway. maybe it was part of the deal with Microsoft. if pro users had a free app, then they were less likely to buy one. if they bought one they were more likely to buy the high end app? i dunno. there were a lot of strange concessions in that deal. i'm glad it's over.
there have been rumors of some sort of "pro" Appleworks for a while now.... Appleworks itself, if you have never ised it, couls be thought of as iOffice or something. it's bundled with the iBook, iMac (new and old) and the eMac. i don't remember if they started bundling it with the pro models (there was talk of it). it's good enough for home users, but i guess not quite up to corporate use. the recent versions have good translation from and into M$ Office formats, so in some situations when you need to translate documents you will be fine. if you were at work and constantly exchanging documents though you might still want M$ Office itself.
- In my tests staroffice was much slower than office. Unless launch time is under 200 ms (human reaction time), users will select the faster product, all other things being equal.
- Users in an office environment will need full compatibility with office (for document sharing). How can that be accomplished, when Microsoft can change file formats at a whim, knowing that users will update like lemmings to get the new "features" provide along with the thwarting format changes?
- Folks won't choose because of cost because cost is not a big issue. In an office environment, it makes sense to pay a day's salary (on tools), to save 10 days of work. In a home environment, people use (cheap) bundled Microsoft products or they steal them.
PS: all of the above applied to Corel, too.iMac, iBook and eMac have always come with Appleworks and i think it would be a mistake to end that. the buyers of those machines really dig bundled software. that was why Apple always made pro users buy Appleworks or M$ Office or whatever theyw anted. the whole beauty of the iMac is that it comes with enough software to keep you going for quite a while. Appleworks, all the iApps and the internet software is most all people need for a while.
if anything i see this teaming up for the recently rumored "pro version" of Appleworks. i don't know if they will bundle it with the Pro machines or just sell it, or pack it with all machines. time and the economy will tell on that one. you figure Appleworks is good for home users and school kids. no reason to make then use the Pro software, and no reason to make the Pro software simple enough for a 1st grader to use. also if someone is in a dedicated M$ enviroment, then they will probably still use M$ Office (at least while one still exists).
We all know of the "spat," as Steve Jobs called it, with the sales of Office X for Mac OS X, and the Mac Business Unit's comment alluding to "reevaluating" the future development.
I don't feel that Microsoft would drop Office for Mac OS X because antitrust red flags (and lawsuits) would be dropping into the Federal courts, placing MS in another legal pickle.
Apple's public support of StarOffice is actually another bow to the power of open source software (of which OpenOffice is, I know, but not StarOffice--uh..kinda?). The problem that Apple might see is that the "radical" OSS community that shuns ALL things MS would not buy or cannot afford Office X. So, for these users (as part of an incentive to pull them to OS X from other *nixes), StarOffice would be available and in a condition that works natively and well in OS X. (I'm not trying to avoid discussing AppleWorks, but it is not as robust as either Office or StarOffice.)
And, should MS discontinue development of Office, Apple also has a strong backup productivity suite that may be less expensive.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
There's no money in it on either side.
For M$, too low ROI. Two orders of magniture to low. First order is sheer sales market. There's one tenths as many machines. Second order is market resistance. Apple owners have a deep and abiding hatred for M$ that makes Linux people look tame. And they vote with their wallets. Look for universal acceptance of StarOffice as fast as Sun & Apple can ship the CD-ROMs.
For Apple, they make hardware, they use Aqua to sell it. Giving away the crown jewels would be slitting their hardware revenue throats while M$ could drop-kick their OS sales revenues just like they did to NetScape (And fuck the DOJ.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Apple has had two achilles heels in the past. Number 1: Dependence upon Microsoft Office If Jobs is throwing some of the same programming talent that went into OS X onto Star Office, the result should be sensational. Apple surely has learned that it must lower it's dependency upon a Bill Gates controlled project. I'm sure they have been working on Star Office for some time.
Number 2: Dependence upon Motorola. Any company risks their entire future when they have a single point of failure and for Apple, that is Motorola. They have been limited by Motorola's ability to produce faster chips and enough of them in the past. They also lose mindshare with the "megahertz myth". I'm sure Apple by now has realized that most people don't give a damn about processor internals and pipelines. It is just going to be harder for Apple (in the mindshare department) once Intel is shipping 2 GHz processors in quantity, while Apple is just cracking 1 GHz.
Everyone knows that Darwin runs on Intel. What you don't see is how much more advanced development is going on at Apple to bring the full look and power to the Intel/AMD platform. In a Yahoo financial interview recently, Jobs played coy with the question but did not deny it.
This doesn't mean that Apple is turning it's back on the hardware business. Apple could easily make sure that it's OS X innovations became available first on it's own hardware. But an operating system that competes on traditional Windows platforms that includes great apps like iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, iTunes, and Broadcaster (plus the new ones like iCal and iSync) for a prospective $129 must have the Microsoft honchos tossing in their sleep. Making the iPod available for Windows, is just another indication that Apple is opening up to a whole new market.
No, Windows isn't going away but now it must fight a strong competitor on two fronts: IBM/Linux and Apple/OS X. Linux shipping on Walmart computers for the average user may be a pipe dream, but do you think Walmart wouldn't love shipping Wintel platforms with OS X and saving the Windows OS fee?
I love Linux, but I encourage Linux programmers to take a good hard look at OS X (if you haven't already). Your product could run on both platforms with very little extra work. I have seen the future, and it is OS X.
Curious George
***General Consultant to the Human Race*** My opinions are free. You get what you pay for.
Spoken like a true guy-who's-never-read-the-Aqua-guidelines.
In order to be in line with the Aqua UI guidelines, you have to implement them all, completely. You can't just get kinda-sort close, throw a pinstripe background behind your toolbar and some gummy window decorations, and call it a day.
You should read the Aqua HI guidelines sometime. (Also available in PDF. They just might open your eyes.
That was the accusation but what the actual trial transcript showed was that IBM didn't get an early license to OEM Windows 95 because an audit of their sales showed several million dollars worth of Windows licenses that they hadn't paid for or reported to Microsoft. MS insisted that IBM put a better tracking system in place so that a similar "mistake" wouldn't happen again with the Windows 95 sales.
In the case of Sun's current HotSpot JVMs (1.3, 1.3.1, 1.4, 1.4.1beta), however, the basic execution is bytecode interpretation. Only when the HotSpot profiler determines that a piece of code would benefit from optimization does is (possibly) get compiled into native code. Many other optimizations are also possible, of course. This is part of why there is still hope for Java on the client and why Java on the server actually works quite well. For long running processes, the HotSpot optimizer can (more accurately 'could') do a bang-up job optimizing the code.
As for your statement that there are optimizations that a Java compiler can do that a C++ compiler cannot, that is true. Of course the reverse is also true; the Java bytecode compiler cannot do as much type checking as a C++ compiler can, and it cannot do some of the optimizations that C++ can because until runtime it cannot know if they will be usefull or not. Java's compilation environment is, in some ways, more complex than C++'s, even though C++ is a much more complex language. Java has two compilers: one source to bytecode compiler run at "compile time", and one bytecode to native compiler than [may] run at runtime.
This is mostly offtopic and mostly pedantic, but, as a developer who uses several languages, I hate to see silly comments by language biggots go unchallanged. Always remember: All languages suck; some just suck less in a given situation than the others do.
> Probably all it would take would be a new
> "theme" for the Toolkit OOo uses.
I don't think they'll be able to introduce an Apple-endorsed OpenOffice without direct calls to the Quartz APIs. A "theme" won't cut it. Think about what happened with the first version of Netscape 6.0; it didn't support Aqua, but there was a theme to make it look like Aqua. Apple immediately told the developer to quit developing the theme, although they did encourage them to use Quartz and Aqua.
As a Mac OS X user, I think that's the right move. Apple needs to make developers use Quartz and the real Aqua because the Aqua-look-alikes never look the same as a real app. If a developer isn't willing to spend the time to implement Quartz, then they're not likely to spend the time making their hacked version of Aqua look indistinguishable from the real thing.
However, the fact that Apple's working with Sun is a great sign. We may have a competitor to Microsoft Office yet.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
I use my home x86 boxen for web development (php, mysql), with KDE/Qt for C++ development (and some Java).
Mac OS X out of the box includes extensive support for the Java platform.
If you want to write KDE apps on the Mac, you're in luck: Fink, the most comprehensive distribution of free software for the Darwin operating system, now includes KDE. Fink also includes PHP, Ruby, Python, MySQL, and PostgreSQL.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Can someone explain this to me? It seems that M$ /must/ make Mac software of some sort, or did the following become invalid with time?
October 24th, 1985: John Sculley signs the worst contract Apple ever has made. He agrees that Microsoft may use some Mac GUI (Graphical User Interface) technologies if it continues producing software for the Mac (Word, Excel). If Sculley wouldn't have signed this deal Windows would have never been introduced since the similarities to the MacOS were so obvious that Apple would have easily won any lawsuits against Microsoft!
January 1988: Microsoft releases Windows 2.0.3
March 17th, 1988: Apple sues Microsoft and Hewlett Packard accusing them of violating copyrights of Apple on the MacOS. Windows 2.0.3 features Mac-like icons.
(http://www.theapplemuseum.com)
What people seem to be forgeting is that there was, and to a point, is, a version of OSX on x86. Its called OpenStep and NextStep. Most of the cool stuff in OSX is there. When it was released for X86 in the early 90's it developed a niche following, but not more that that.
Most people I know would be delighted to chuck MS Office, even though it is cheap (by academic pricing). It is slow, buggy, and awkward. We can always hold onto our old copies of MS Office for the occasional document that doesn't translate right.
I recall the allegations I described being reported in the papers well before they made it into Jackson's FoF, and to the best of my knowledge, Microsoft has yet to challenge any of the Findings of Fact. Their line, well after the FoF was issued, was that they agreed with Jackson's facts but not of his conclusions.
If it's true that IBM simply failed an audit, why hasn't Microsoft challenged this critical document in the trial? And why, then, did IBM drop the practice of bundling Lotus and OS/2 at the exact time Win95 came out? One might be able to claim that OS/2 wasn't selling as well as hoped, but Lotus? What aspect of Windows 95 made Lotus's office suite unsellable and unbundle-able?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
but do you think Walmart wouldn't love shipping Wintel platforms with OS X and saving the Windows OS fee?
In exchange for the Mac OS X fee? Why?
Dude, quit hogging the Kool-Aid.
I develop 4 open source PHP/MySQL utilities, and have moved development of all of them over to OS X. Project Builder is pretty good, or if you use Vim or Emacs you can install X11 (I did). KDE is now in Fink, and Trolltech has also release an OS X native version of Qt.
One recommendation: put in a lot of RAM. When I first got the iBook (700MHz) I though it was kind of slow, but now that I maxed out the RAM (640MB), it's very nice. Also, my wife has one of the 800MHz 15" iMacs, and it's really nice as well.
.technomancer
When I went to WWDC this year for the first time ever, I went as a Java programmer interesting in learning how to program OS X (and Quartz GUI stuff) in Java. I was told by the "java evangelist" in no uncertain terms that I was "not Apple's target market". Java was its own platform, not to be crossplatformed to OS X and Quartz.
WWDC did not have a single session on programming Quartz in Java. In the only mildly interesting session on Java, it was like pulling teeth to get concrete information out of the presenters in Q&A, and yet the presenters (Apple JVM guys) were incredibly arrogant about their work and how advanced it was (which in some ways it is) and how even Sun was considering incorporating their JVM innovations.
What was boggling was Apple's Java guys didn't _get_ that they should want Java to become a first class citizen on OS X (rather than a poor stepchild to OS X's (and NeXTstep's vaunted in their eyes) objective-c. Sure, I could see the obj-c guys being protective of their baby (even though it's basically stillborn by the time its reached OS X), but why would the Java guys be so lousy sharing information on Cocoa (OS X) programming in Java.
On the side, I got contradictory information about how to program in Cocoa using two different bridges across obj-c and java. In sum, neither really works so Apple doesn't support either really. (In particular, obj-c's reference counting doesn't mix well with Java's garbage collection.) Unfortunately, despite Apple's migration of WebObjects to Java (from obj-c), The rest of OS X and Cocoa (GUI) stayed in obj-c. Doh.
I even spoke with their then new head of software tools and engineering. As a smalltalk guy (skeptical of java and obj-c), he claimed that obj-c won him over. No love for Java there. Just more "not Apple's target market". It's hard to swallow paying thousands to go to a developer conference and have some pinheaded honcho tell you that despite Apple's "best platform for Java" campaign, that Java programmers are not allowed to program in Cocoa (OS X native) since Java Cocoa is not Apple's target market. What arrogance!
Unfortunately, one of Apple's catchy banners did not mean what I wanted it to mean: "Come for the Java, Stay for the Cocoa". Instead of providing the means to program Cocoa in Java, the banner really means come to learn about Java on OS X (and be profoundly disappointed), and we'll (try to) lure you to objective-c every step, session, and discussion along the way.
Cough-cough.
Unfortunately (or fortunately), I'm an ex NeXT enthusiast, so I've already tasted obj-c (not to my liking), reasonably informed about its strengths and weaknesses, and happy with Java.
-=-
So, why is Apple, its head of engineering so obstinate. I assume it's because he's in love with smalltalk and obj-c caters (a la obj-c tenuous lease on life) to smalltalk, his desired language. Fair enough (but too bad for Apple and its Java shortcomings).
But why oh why would lowly Apple Java grunts be so against first-class java support on OS X for Cocoa? That really confused the heck out of me, until I discovered that the very arrogant presenter(s) of JVM breakthroughs (yada yada yada about Apple innovations) was really the obj-c kernel team doing side work on the JVM. Doh!
Java not obj-c. Obj-c >> Java. You know?
There are not Java evangelists at Apple. The keepers of the Java VM are obj-c hacks. Their baby (albeit on life support) is obj-c. OUCH.
When I figured that out, beat around the bush at the top to discover the smalltalk allegiance, and just generally got stonewalled by too many (certainly not all) of the small team of java(obj-c) insiders, I just gave up.
Besides, the Quartz Extreme team had awesome presentations, was extremely humble despite their awesome GUI architectural innovations, and was just generally the real mccoy from an engineering point of view. My WWDC became a GUI tour rather than a deep tour of Java (as intended and paid for, as far as I was concerned).
One final note: my impression is that Java on OS X is good --- but only for Java only apps (i.e., use Swing, not Apple's Cocoa). Their target market (as I gathered anyway) is pure Java (as opposed to Java Cocoa apps). So, if you want to port and run pure Java on OS X, they (should) love you. FYI.
-=-
So, it's amusing and ironic to see Apple spending any resources on Java for Cocoa now as I assume (fingers crossed) they'll do for OpenOffice after telling me that's not their target market!
What happened to all the arrogance? Disdain? Curt political marketroid answers to basic engineering questions? Yada yada yada.
Too painfully amusing and ironic.
So I guess I am crossing my fingers that Apple separates the JVM team from their obj-c team, fires (or at least reassigns to obj-c only) their so-called "java evangelist", and gives java its own first-class political and technical citizenship at Apple.
Maybe next year's WWDC can have a banner which says (and means) "Come for the Java, and Stay for the Mocha". That would be a dream worth having.
= Joe =
There's no way a JVM is going to make an app such as OpenOffice as smooth to use as a native version.... They'd better work on a native version
But I'm betting it WILL be a native version. It will be a Cocoa app, just using Java as the programming language rather than Objective C. All the windowing, and UI widgets etc. will be Cocoa/Quartz/Aqua being invoked by a few lines of Java.
But why use Java instead of Objective C? It may just be Sun wanting to "eat their own dog food" or simply having more programmers familiar with Java than with Objective C.
But perhaps there is a more intriguing possiblity. Cocoa is just the upgraded OpenStep which could run as a layer on top of windows, and Solaris. It was a cross platform solution that handled all the platform specific UI (as well as a bunch of other stuff) so a simple recompile was all that was needed to get your app running on windows, NeXT, and Solaris (& maybe others?). Apple was originally going to keep things that way and add support for Java so you could build (semi)native windows/mac/solaris apps using Java & Cocoa without even a recompile. Only the Java bit is running under the JVM, the UI & all the other Cocoa stuff is native.
This plan was 'steved' when Steve Jobs took over. That was probably the smart thing to do, they needed to focus on getting their own house in order first. But now they have everything basically ship shape on the Mac side, maybe they are revisiting the idea of Cocoa as a cross platform API. Apple and Sun working together on StarOffice seems like a perfect oppurtunity to revive the old OpenStep on windows & Solaris. Maybe I'm just being clueless, after all Sun has their own approach for Java's cross platform UI. But it doesn't seem to be that great and isn't very popular. Maybe they are considering OpenStep/Cocoa as a better solution to getting Java used on the desktop, especially if Apple has already done (almost) all the work to develop it.
There's a lot of confusion about the history of AppleWorks/ClarisWorks.
You just referenced three different programs, each with entirely different codebases.
The first AppleWorks was text-based, in the days of the IIe. I associate the name Rupert Lissner with early versions of this; Beagle Bros. was involved in later versions, I think. I think there's also some connection to the early MSWorks team.
AppleWorks GS was an independent project, written by StyleWare, and originally to be called GSWorks. Claris bought StyleWare, and it became AppleWorks GS. This was a fairly typical module-based integrated app (i.e. mostly separate programs with a wrapper around them), but you would not believe the challenge of doing something like this with a color GUI on a 2.8 MHz machine. (One unusual feature was an integrated paint/draw environment: objects retained their integrity, but you could e.g. lasso or erase parts of them.)
Two of us from StyleWare (myself and Scott Holdaway) later left Claris, wrote what was to become ClarisWorks, and sold it to Claris. Comepletely independent codebase from AppleWorks GS, and a completely different design, much more integrated. (That's right, Claris was there long before ClarisWorks, although people sometimes say "Claris" when they mean "ClarisWorks" - always confuses me.)
Some subsets of the two of us and the other early CW developers worked on ClarisWorks through version 5. Most of this group was later at Gobe, writing Gobe Productive (originally for BeOS, now for Windows as well).
Eventually Apple dismantled Claris. What was left became FileMaker Inc.; ClarisWorks transitioned to Apple, renamed (confusingly) AppleWorks. None of the original ClarisWorks developers are involved with AppleWorks at this point.
Although I'm somewhat depressed at what's become of ClarisWorks, I'm hopeful that StarOffice will be good for the Mac. (Either that, or I'll have to go write another integrated app - I won't use MS software.)
Bob Hearn
Welcome to Bill Gates Nightmare..
How exactly is this? Apple and Sun are going to compete with Microsoft with an inferior product (c'mon, even OSS zealots recognize this) on a platform that enjoys around a five percent market share. I seriously doubt that Bill is trembling over this.
Apparently Steve Jobs feels that Apple has nursed its wounds from six years ago, and no longer needs Microsoft to stay alive. He is wrong. Pretty much the worst thing that Microsoft could do to apple would be to cut them loose.
One of the beauties of the Mac OS is that there's a unform, consistant, and universal interface and scratchpad model. IBM pioneered the idea of a standard interface and Apple brought it to the GUI and applications with a vengance.
Not only do the MacOS and applications follow the same behaviors they also allow universal cut-and-paste. Anything you see that's editable on a Mac can be cut-and-pasted anywhere else that is editable and supports the medium (eg no sound-for-text.) Styled text, QuickTime multimedia, everything. This is more thoroughly plumbed then on Windows and certainly more extensive then on X and traditionial Unix applications.
It has always frustrated me when someone puts together a Theme and presents it as being the same as another OS. No. There's more to an interface then window-dressing. Another misbegotten kinda-sorta-looks-like-Aqua (but doesn't use the System Services or Quartz engine etc.) is exactly the sort of half-assed implementation Apple is selling the alternative to. Without a doubt if Apple ships an Apple/Open Office it'll be as high-gloss and thoroughly native as any of the iApps. That they've chosen Java as the platform to work from rather then Cocoa is a "Good Thing" for everyone else.
Yes Java is a completely peer layer in MacOS but it is portable and so anything Apple & Sun produce is instantly applicable to all of the other Open Office platforms (if not as nicely as the Apple implementation - think of this as payback for Apple having really committed to making Java a native portion of their OS.) This will also allow all of those other wonderful Java libraries to be leveraged in a consistant manner and become directly usable by Open Office.
Is this worthwhile for Apple? Yes. They get the only robust MS Office alternative to run suh-weet on their OS, now the best-selling Unix out there. Sun gets a partner in melding Open Office and Java, pusing their jewels out into the marketplace. The Users gets a better GUI on Open Office, one that can build on lots of other work rather then being another home-grown roll-your-own deal. They also get an infusion of all of those new MacOS X (Unix) desktops all using and supporting and developing further Open Office.
Win-Win-Win.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Yes, you've alreadys heard the arguements that Java is bad and C++ is good. That's not what I'm concerned with.
What I ABHOR, is dependence on external libs. Just think of the Unix world... More and more I see apps depending on external libs. That's why KDE and GNOME users are so bent on destroying the other. If I was to use all the (console) apps out there, without choosing lesser implimentations due to dependencies, I'd have perl, python, ruby, lua, netpipes and any of dozens of other interperaters, all running at once. Since I'm a little more stubborn on the subject, I'm using a computer that is several years old, and still only utilizing a tiny fraction of it's resources. But resources are secondary as well.
Even C and C++ programs are increasingly being designed with increasing dependencies. The problem is, if any one of those libraries has even a minor change made, the program won't compile. Then, you need to find the older libary, and attempt to introduce it, without destroying all the programs compiled with the old lib.
Just look at OpenOffice.org itself. You've got to download several large libs (which really aren't used for any other program) and compile those, as well as already having several libs, which may or may not be installed due to other programs.
Well, I'll stop myself before this gets too long.
Increasing dependance on external libs (such as Java) wastes memory (you're usually using a handful of fuctions of a huge lib), increase complexity, increases problems (the new version of Java was installed by another program, now StarOffice doesn't work), and is just plain and simple bad practice, and bad coding.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I got an iBook because I thought the hardware was sexy. I tought about installing Yellow Dog and a two button mouse. Guess what happened?
I ditched Linux for MacOS X but kept using my old apps, like mutt and so on. I kept writing C code with vi, et all
After 3 months, I found myself using the Mail app that comes with MacOS X, Project Builder, and Objective C.
Cocoa is wonderfull -- get the Hillegrass book, it's good beginning stuff.
I never intended to make the switch. It was the hardware that got me. Then, slowly I got hooked. I highly recommend the platform. I would never ever use a mac before MacOS X, but now I think of it as the NeXT box that I never got.
Sometimes I think of the non-free nature of the whole thing, but the fact that Darwin, gcc, and a lot of other stuff is Open Source/Free, it makes me feel a little better. Besides you can run Darwin, X and GNUStep.
-- askien
Well, you know one thing. Microsoft can't dare say that it's not fair for Apple to bundle software.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
There are interpreters for C and C++ as well. Does that make C and C++ "interpreted languages"? The fact is that there are excellent native code compilers for Java, both JIT and batch. Java is as much a compiled language as C++.
however, the basic execution is bytecode interpretation.
For some uninteresting definition of "basic" that may be true. In real life, however, with a good JIT, all compute-intensive Java code is compiled into native code. Java byte code that is executed rarely may be interpreted, but that doesn't matter for performance, exactly because it's rare (in fact, it saves memory).
Of course the reverse is also true; the Java bytecode compiler cannot do as much type checking as a C++ compiler can, and it cannot do some of the optimizations that C++ can because until runtime it cannot know if they will be usefull or not.
That is utter nonsense. A JIT has much more type information and much more statistical information available to it than any C++ compiler. Furthermore, the Java language spec prohibits aliasing in many cases in which C++ does not, giving Java compilers a lot more opportunity for optimization where a C++ compiler can't do anything. So, even a batch compiler for Java has a lot more opportunities for optimization than a batch compiler for C++.
This is mostly offtopic and mostly pedantic, but, as a developer who uses several languages, I hate to see silly comments by language biggots go unchallanged. Always remember: All languages suck; some just suck less in a given situation than the others do.
When arguments fail you, you resort to insults? All I said was that Java is natively compiled (i.e., that there are native compilers for it) and that it offers more opportunities for optimization, two statements that I completely stand by.
No. You'd don't need Java to run. It's only used for the integrated browser and the Java API to access OpenOffice stuff. Last time I installed it was optional on both Linux and Windows.
Then your beliefs are wrong. If you wish to check things out you can go and get the source. Java is not used for the suite (and was not for StarOffice either), but instead is merely hooked up in case you want to show Java applets in the browser, or to have an API so that you can write Java programs that interface with OpenOffice.
It was also easy for the **typical** end user to use **thousands** of MacOS Classic, Carbon, Cocoa, and Java apps. X11 has a very un-mac-like interface - or rather, it has a very crappy interface, wheras Aqua was designed to be as much like the MacOS as possible. Why trash what ain't broke for a clearly less desirable system?
OTOH, I think this article is more evidence that apple has learned their lesson. Macs used to rely on proprietary hardware, inflating prices, but no more. On the old MacOS they suffered for lack of software. By embracing a unix core, they've gained a huge base of pre-existing software, and added incentive for Windows developers to port to Mac/Unix. If they could find a way to incorporate X-windows (especially GTK) apps (and make command-line apps and functionality easily accessible from the Aqua gui - sort of a gui super terminal, kinda like shellshell) that would be perfect.
Apple did not and should not have designed the Aqua interface around the X windows style. On the contrary - they should make an open source Aqua-style gui for Unix to replace X windows, and make it that much easier to port/run Unix Apps on OS X!
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Try http://games.yahoo.com/ and http://www.smartmoney.com/marketmap/ There are also plenty of very useful Java applets being used for education and scientific results. And there are many tiny Java applets for menus, buttons, and counters that you probably don't even notice.
I wholeheartedly agree about Outlook. Microsoft has only themselves to blame for Office X's slow adoption rate. They priced it in the frickin' stratosphere for non-academic purchasers, and Outlook, arguably the most important app under the Office umbrella for corporate purchasers who can easily afford Microsoft's extortionate pricing, has not even begun to be developed (AFAIK).
Though I do like Entourage a lot for my own personal mail and calendar at home, I was very impressed with the improvements to Apple's own Mail, and iCal, and iSync to keep all my devices that need that data up to date. I have not yet made the plunge to OS X as my primary OS at home, because I don't have a Mac truly capable of running it. That will change, as my six year-old Power Mac 7600 with the G3/400 upgrade moves to the server room and a shiny, new G4/G5 tower being introduced in a few weeks (with Jaguar preloaded) replaces it. When that day comes, I will take a long, hard look at how much I *really* need Microsoft Office.
One of Apple's Jaguar pages vaguely hints at Exchange compatibility, but does not go into specifics. This worries me, because I'm hoping they don't just mean, "it's compatible with the POP/SMTP functionality of your company's Exchange server." Also, isn't Outlook/Exchange a proprietary enough system that Microsoft could raise a stink over Apple developing their own Outlook client, or even take measures (legal or technical) to stop/prevent it?
Oh, and don't get me started on those Quark assholes. They are just begging Adobe, "Please, please, keep polishing your X-native InDesign! Take our marketshare! Put us out of business!"
~Philly
If they use the JAVA-Cocoa bridge, Apple can speed things up by adding functionality to Cocoa. Apple already has the basic functionality of a word processor built into the application kit (multiple fonts, spell checking, WYSYWIG printing).
I wouldn't be suprised if OS 10.3 has a few new cocoa classes like NSWordProcessorView, NSSpreadSheetView, NSRelationalDatabase. These would be subclasses of existing Cocoa classes like NSTextView, NSTableView, and NSData.
I think this fits Apples strategy of making development for the Mac quick and easy. This benefits them in several ways: 1) They attract more badly needed developers to their platform 2) They can churn out iApps much more quickly than M$ 4) Once developers have tasted Cocoa, they don't want to go back 5) With so much work done in the Cocoa frameworks, Apple can make the frameworks run faster and make all the apps on a system runs faster. 6) If apple changes processors, they can make it real easy to port cocoa apps to the new architecture since all of the machine dependent stuff is done in their APIs.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
They have Qt for OS X, but I think you have to pay for it... and there is XDarwin to run X11 apps.. you should be able to get what you've written for Linux to run on OS X without much work...
Of course, the real joy of mac is learning cocoa... it's yummy.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Apple just purchased Claris & renamed ClarisWorks (avaliable for Win & Mac, if you purchased it you got both ports on the same CD, pity MS doesn't do that) AppleWorks
The team that was behind ClarisWorks then created Gobe Productive for BeOS, & just recently Windows & Linux too.
I wonder how similar Gobe Productive for Windows is to the current version of AppleWorks for Windows?
funny
hmm... history teaches you shouldn't write app on Java 1.0.
Thats about all the Corel story teaches us.
After all, 640 megabytes should be enough for everyone... oh, wait... :-)
It seems like what would make sense from Apple's perspective would be to write AppleWorks import modules for StarOffice, and bundle StarOffice with OS X under the name "AppleWorks X"
I cannot imagine Java being of much use for StarOffice on OSX, given that the visual side of Java, AWT and Swing are very slow under OSX compared to Linux and XP.
Actually, MacOS X is probably the best platform for Java development and use. MacOS X has great, fast java support. I use jEdit as my main gui text editor on my Mac.
In any case, I think the article got it wrong. I doubt that the StarOffice gui would be done in Java.
t'nera semordnilap
Claris was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Apple spun off in 1987.
In 1998 Apple restructed Claris as FileMaker, Inc. to focus on its most profitable product, FileMaker. Apple killed the other Claris-branded software (Emailer and Home Page being the most notable) and returned the office suite known as ClarisWorks to its pre-1987 name: AppleWorks.
now that I maxed out the RAM (640MB), it's very nice
640MB is enough for anybody. :)
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"cp", "ls" and "pico" all run on Mac OS X, without any extra software. They are native. I wasn't suggesting that only quartz apps are native.
By your logic, Windows apps are native to Mac OS X because you can get a software package (Virtual PC, bochs, etc) that allows them to run.
The problem with browser based apps is the 'jack of all trades' paradigm. Add to that the inherent creation of security nightmares.
All apps WILL on the other hand eventually take advantage of OS level internet 'services' via SOAP/XML/RPC type of protocols. Browsers aren't really all that cool anyways. I would much prefer an app using connectivity to the network in a focused and specifically useful manner, rather than an open ended 'it can do anything' manner.
That is where Microsoft got in to trouble with viruses. Every app they made was suddenly exposed to all security holes and viruses/worms had access to all the capabilities in the system and because it was embedded functionality they had and are still having a devil of a time cleaning it all up.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
You can edit PDFs as long as they aren't password protected, where you don't know the password.
You can use Acrobat, which was designed specifically for this... or use Illustrator which often mangles the text flow... or use several other apps which do a less than hoped for job but for small edits are just fine.
PDF isn't competely a binary format. It includes plain text and embedded images and lots of available formatting options which can be read and interpretted for tools to manipulate.
Acrobat is of course the best option as it and PDF are Adobe.
Maybe someone will take it upon themselves to reverse engineer PDF OpenPDF or some such and implement it so it converts to SVG or another open standard.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
" Win-Win-Win. "
That should be "Mac-Sun-Mac"
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I've done my homework. I use Java apps all the time. Their Quartz isn't the same as the rest of Mac OS X.
Also, we're talking about X, not Java. When one say Apple should implement X, that has nothing to do with Java, it's about Athena and QT and GTK and all of those other ghastly things.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
The source being the actual transcripts available on either the DOJ site or Microsoft's legal site. As for your question of why Microsoft didn't raise this in court. It did.
Again, read the source documents not just the press releases.
I would suggest, without those URLs, that I think you're making it up. Microsoft hasn't challenged the Findings of Fact, perhaps you should volunteer to be on their legal team...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Correct. I've used Java apps. I have no need to write Java Cocoa apps, as I like ObjC. I may have used Java Cocoa apps written by others, but I don't know if I have or not.
Is the Sun implementation going to be Java Cocoa or honest-to-god Java?
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Microsoft challenged almost every finding of fact and that was one basis for their appeal. Perhaps you should read the real documents rather than relying on what Jackson said since he slept through most afternoon sessions.
I'll happily quote URLs (just go to the DOJ's antitrust division site or Microsoft's legal press site) but you'd still have to actually read the transcripts rather than look for one sentence soundbites.