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Panther's TextEdit to Open MS Word Files

Posted by pudge on from the now-ms-can-freely-dump-office dept.

2muchcoffeeman writes "Further signs that Jobs and Gates probably won't be vacationing together anytime soon: New Damage has what looks to be screenshot proof of Panther's TextEdit.app opening a Microsoft Word .DOC file. Panther beta users who have tried this report at MacSlash that it works, to a point. So what's next? Is Apple now going to bring back the late, great MacWrite Pro?"

4 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Apple is stepping up by chia_monkey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Apple has been getting bold. And I love it. I still wonder about it all though. Safari rocks. Of course MS gets scared and stops making IE for Mac. FinalCut Pro kicks ass. Now Adobe wants to stop making Premier for the Mac. Apple has Keynote to compete with PowerPoint. And PDF creation with OS X is damn simple.

    Apple is taking on all the big boys...something you just don't see these days. It's very exciting. And let's all be honest. Why do Mac users buy MS Office? Because it's good? Nope. So they can open up .doc files made on a PC. Go Apple!

    --

    "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
    1. Re:Apple is stepping up by dbrutus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Web services nightmare

      July 4, 2006

      Dear Mr. Bank CEO,

      Apple customers + Linux customers are about 7% of the desktop market. The xxx Bank web banking solution doesn't support anything but Internet Explorer which is not available on any platform but Windows. As a shareholder, I'm concerned that we're losing customers and money because of this. I intend to bring this up at the shareholder's meeting. You're in the business of making the bank's shareholders money, not shilling for Microsoft. There is *no* reason not to support everybody's computer platform. Their money spends just as well.

      Sincerely,

      Large shareholder mac user

  2. It works by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It works, but it's not perfect, in some of my documents there are some minor problems, mostly with escape characters. Though, more importantly the fonts are rendered beautifully, instead of the jagged fonts that one has to deal with when using Office v.X.

  3. Office Package Speculation by Johnny+Mozzarella · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have heard rumors of Apple working on an Office suite which includes a word processor called "Document" and a spreadsheet app cleverly called "Spreadsheet". It seems as though they are going to test and hopefully perfect the most important feature in TextEdit first, reading .doc files.

    Once they have the bugs worked out, they will release Document which will be able to open .doc files perfectly and resave them into Document's native XML format. Document will hopefully be available for Mac OS X and Windows.

    Microsoft's .doc format has a death grip on the business world. Unless there is an affordable alternative that can read .doc files it isn't going very far.

    The word processor is the only piece of the office package that most users need. Apple should make just Document for the PC and make it affordable. It will introduce many PC users to how software should be written. Like the iPod it will be a trojan horse that will hopefully cause them to consider a Mac for their next purchase.