Slashdot Mirror
Native KOffice for Mac OS X
bsharitt writes "A preliminary version of KOffice has been built natively on Mac OS X. It looks like a lot of the hard part is over, and now a lot of cleaning up and bug fixes stand between Mac OS X and a free full featured office suite." There's also a story on the dot.
There already is free full-featured office suite that runs on Mac OS X. Openoffice.org has run on Mac for a couple releases now. Having used both open office and Koffice(koffice on Linux, openoffice on Linux and Windows), I find openoffice to be more versatile. It is all a matter of opinion though
Isn't there a build of OpenOffice.org for osX? Wouldn't that be considered a "free, full-featured office suite"?
But no, a version that requires you to load an X server doesn't count.
Congratulations to everyone who's worked on this.
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
Why shouldn't Mac users be able to get free software? Or is this some bullshit class warfare?
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
it looks nice but why would they use kde toolbar icons if they're porting it to OSX?
> "I allege that SCO is full of it" -Linus
So, will Microsoft continue to snub the Mac or is will Redmond try to counter this move? Free software on Linux is one thing, spreading to other platforms is another. We could hope they will take the opportunity to improve their products and approach, but I'm rather cynical these days, I expect dirty tricks -- maybe they'll invest in some company hanging on by a thread who claims some intellectual property made it's way into KDE/KOffice and start suing.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So even thought some of the other screenshots are in the ugly Motif theme they will soon be all re-taken using the OSX theme.
Also notice how in the Dock the KDE applications icons show up (and scale wonderfully!). We have a script that generates OS X .app directories of the KDE applications and also generates those directories with the proper icons. You can see some of them in the background of the screenshot in Finder.
-Benjamin Meyer
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
"...hard part is over, and now a lot of cleaning up and bug fixes..."
Does only me finds this funny? NOW the hard BORING part starts...
Perfect opportunity for Apple to do what they did with Safari and Darwin. Extend it, make it better, include it as an Apple branded product, and give the changes back to the community.
I wonder how long it will be before Appleworks is nixed in favor of a kOffice - based product. Microsoft Office for the Mac is actually a really good product, and Appleworks doesn't touch it. Get to work Apple!
This is going to potentially have more impact on the popularity of Open Source software than anything to date. Office X on OS X has some really annoying "features" like the finking on it's self through a LAN. If this is solid and "Mac-like" it could prove to be a very popular alternative for Mac users who want to be free of Redmond.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
This feels like an early christmas present to me.
(And I'm not even Orthodoc)
You're using the wrong definition of free.
As a Mac user I like it that these apps don't require X-windows and that they already look quite a bit like native OSX applications.
really, excellent work.
A friend of mine has Openoffice running on his powerbook, indeed it "works" but since it doesn't look as slick as the native OSX apps, I am not that eager to try it.
I hope that now a lot of other K-software will be ported!
best regards, Tom
Unfortunately, in almost all Open Source projects the 'hard' and 'easy' parts are reversed...
The challenge and glory is done, now all that's left is methodical, monotonous bug chasing. Who's up?
Wah!
Ok, you do have a point there. Most people who buy a Mac could afford MS Office. But here's my question, do you want to use MS Office? And this is my point. I us a Mac (I'm on my 12" PB right now) because I DO NOT want anything from Microsoft! I personally intend to give what I can (I'm poor after all) to help support the KOffice team. I really appreciate the hard work they guys and gals have done to make this happen. In the Mac world a native non MS full featured office suite is huge.
An eMac costs 899 . Office:Mac costs 509 . So, yes.
Well, the reasons for porting KOffice to Mac OS X natively and the reasons why someone would want to use Konqueror on OS X may be different.
.war files (I do not know if this is an exclusive Konqueror feature or not, and I don't care - it is extremely useful).
Konqueror is not just a browser. It is also a file manager (kind of like Windows Explorer on SuperMan steroids). It suppors io-slaves, which gives Konqueror network transparency that I do not think is paralleled by any other file browser right now. Also, some people dislike the OS X Finder and would prefer to use Konqueror instead.
Konqueror is pretty cool - it has all the latest features such as tabbed browsing, but it also allows to split any view into two (and then again) - you can make it look like Norton Commander if you like.
Konqueror also supports archiving web pages as
So, there are many reasons someone would want to use Konqueror, and not just on OS X or Linux.
The reason to port to OS X could be so that KOffice were less dependent on X11 hacks and used Qt API more thoroughly, I don't know. The thing is - the more portable the code is, the fewer bugs there are (unless of course they start #ifdef-ing everywhere, then it just turns into a mess of duplicated non-portable code).
Paul.
Yet another troll.
Even a 3-year old reposting from a October 2000 review of Koffice in KDE 2. A for style, F for brains.
I think I need a new sig here.
KOffice comprises the customary litany of applications...
This posting is plagarism of the worst sort. Cut and paste in its entirety from: LinuxPlanet. Taking someone else's work and presenting it as your own without attribution is simply dishonest. It is not informative or insightful.
Sailing over the event horizon
"now all that's left is methodical, monotonous bug chasing. Who's up?"
Apple? Like they did with khtml.
Given the price of a Mac, is *free* that big of a deal? Open source I understand, but it doesn't seem that anyone who can afford a Mac can't afford an office suite.
Consider the example of lack of Hebrew support in Microsoft Office for Mac. There is no technical reason for it; the Unicode-based MacOS X is ready to support Hebrew out-of-the-box. It's just a political decision of the vendor of this particular office suite trying to force Israeli Mac users to abandon their platform of choice. I think this example is enough for you to understand why *free* (as in speech) office suite is a big deal indeed, after all.
except that Openoffice on mac requires an X server...
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
I was working with a self-publishing physics professor over the summer who used Macs exclusively and used Adobe software. While not exactly the same, it worked similarly. I'm saying that having more choice or a free option is a bad thing, just perhaps not an important thing.
Man, is that ever an uniformed post. How does being able to afford a Mac equate to being able to afford Microsoft Office too? After paying $2600 for a Powerbook, the last thing I need is to pay another $400 for software I rarely use. Just to make it perfectly clear to you, the idea of people who buy Macs being rich is a STEREOTYPE. I'm not rich, but I did get a Mac, because it is a very worthwhile expense. Every aspect of it is well designed, from the hardware to the software. Based on what I've heard from people using sub-500 MHz Macs, and from what I've seen with Panther, I fully expect this system to only improve over time. I bought a Mac because I want a high quality computer, not because I had pocket change to burn.
I expect I'll use a word processor on my personal system four or five times a year. Therefore, spending $230 on Word would be a complete waste. I welcome a free word processor.
Errr... that should say "not saying"
what a great marraige... finnally the world renouned ease of use and power of KDE Office gets the wide distribution it deserves on the market dominating OS X platform.... oh wait...
You're ignorant. Macs are NOT more expensive than peecees, get that misconception out of your head. Go to the Applestore and configure a nice PB. The configure a comparable Dell and see who's more expensive. Second: why should OSX (= a BSD UNIX lest you forget) users not want to participate in Open Source? I know I want to.
And by the way - I can afford a Mac but I refuse to buy Office to go with it - it would raise the price of my current mac by as much as 30-40 percent! I do not want to pay such an insane amount of money for a piece of crap. I guess many more mac users think that way.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
This is a great milestone but...
Trolltech needs desperately to update the OSX port of QT. The widget have a cumbersome appearance and need to be updated to Panther style. Text alignment is in need of some fixing up. This isn't a complaint... the OSX version is still in its infancy and I'm sure time will allow a more integrated look... I'm just anxious.. because QT really is a great toolkit / API.
Good Job!
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
(I'd bet money that more companies use databases than make charts and presentations or, for that matter, draw pictures)
I'd take that bet.
There are plenty of executives and managers that could go without the need of a database, but do without their Powerpoint presentations and charts? Never! That would be like suggesting that they do without pointlessly long meetings which everybody is required to attend even if they aren't allowed to contribute..
Hasn't Openoffice been released for mac os x? Doesn't that count as a open office suite or am I missing something?
My UID is prime is yours?
Even more important than the look is the feel though, and one example of something that needs to be fixed is the position of the OK and Cancel buttons in dialogs.
I know it's Gnome that uses the Mac style and KDE uses the Windows style, and that's fine on Linux when working with other apps in the same DE, but that won't fly in a native Mac app.
I'll bet these guys already have there inboxes filled with mail from Mac users about this.
An unreleased partial hack port doesn't count. what counts is a fully funcitonal version, tested and available to the general public. ie, its OO.o who was first. a few quotes: "Bits of KOffice work now!" *bits* ... ie: not the whole thing.
"For those of you wondering how to get it, there's no binaries yet, probably won't be for a bit until things get cleaned up more."
sorry... who was first??
KOffice will be using the same file format as OO, in the near future.
If a first you don't succeed, your a programmer...
Yeah, and look how it 'devastated' the Mac community. :)
I'd say MS needs Apple more than the other way around - I've heard the Mac business unit at MS is among the most profitable, compared to how much they spend on development. Probably a lot less piracy going on in Mac-land.
Maybe it's just me, but I sincerely and truly hate it when Mac users call PCs "peecees". And I'm a 100% Mac user myself. But about your comments on the pricing, I agree. The only market in where Apple cannot currently compete with PCs pricewise is the
Odd that /. should sit on it like this..
Michael wrote: There's also a story on the dot.
:-)
He really should have linked to the story on dot.kde.org
"The dot" is "news for KDE-freaks - stuff that matters" so to speak. Hop on over, it's a nice place
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Lets be nice and send fresh underwear to all the product executives at MS. They need it after this news.
Another ignorant Mac Users strikes again. Macs are more expensive to comparably fast PC's. Of course you can buy a PC at any price range you want. You really think Apple can get away with the margin that Dell can? They *MUST* sell at a higher price. If you think they are worth the extra cost, good for you, but to say they are the same price is absurd. Now go back to hugging your lime green 'puter and let the adults talk about computers. The origional parent post was correct in the general sense, if you are going to spend extra money for the 'features' of a Mac, you might
also go ahead and spend extra money for the 'features' of MS Office.
If the Mac platform loses MS Office, they lose any chance of selling systems where reliable interoperability is an issue. By which I mean, where people need to be able open and edit Office files natively, without getting the formatting all munged up by import/export filters. This means no more workplace Macs (except maybe the art department) and no Macs purchased by people who need to take their work home. The pundits says this would probably mean the end of the Mac, and I don't see any flaw in their logic.
And yeah, you'll have reliable interoperability when all those PCs get Windows and Office overwritten by Linux, KDE, and KOffice. Which would be a nice change but one I'm not holding my breath for.
Of course there isn't a technical reason, it's a COST reason. Office for Mac sold very poorly, let alone relatively little used versions in languages like Hebrew. It would cost them more in development to add it than the sales justify, so why bother? M$ (note the oh-so-clever dollar sign Linux and Apple trolls like to use) is a CORPORATION, not a charity, despite all the good work that Bill Gates does with his personal fortune.
I've used KOffice, and Open Office and the Full Featured Free Office Suite that was installed the first time you turned your MAC on! Oh yeah and Apple Works runs natively. On OS9 too!
It's great to port *nix apps to OS X. It is. It's great for many reasons, one being to make *nix heads more comfortable on a mac. Really though, is Apple Works that bad? I think it's far superior to MS Office for mac.
Yes they are.
Please stop trying to equate laptops and desktops. Even if we do use laptops:
Dell Inspiron 5100: $1,860 (15" LCD/2.66GHz P4/512MB/DVD-CD-RW)
Apple PowerBook: $2,198.00 (15" LCD/1GHz G4/512MB/DVD-CD-RW)
I'll even allow that the G4 may be more powrful than the P4, but not 2.66 times as powerful, so the PC wins power and price (though arguably loses in both cool-factor and the ethereal 'usability').
Build me a very powerful desktop Mac for less than $1000, inculding a 19" CRT. I did this 2 months ago. PCs are cheaper b/c there is more than 1 vendor - and isn't that why everyone hates MS? They only have one monolith to bitch at? As usual w/the Apple crowd, there's a double standard.
-bZj
PS: I hate MS just as much as anyone who uses computers for hours a day, but facts are facts.
.sig
I'm glad that Ben and Ben (and if you're in the Fink project, Ben and Ben and Ben and Ben) have finally succeeded with their port. Good job Bens!
Yeah, but does your Dell have:
A built-in dual head video card?
Built-in firewire 400 AND 800?
Built-in USB 2.0?
An internal antenna for a wireless card and a dedicated slot for it so you don't have to use up a PC Card slot?
A back-lit keboard?
4 hours of battery life?
No, the Dell (with the exception of the USB 2.0 and Firewire 400, POSSIBLY) doesn't have those. Let's make sure our systems match in comparison.
I just bought a new Powerbook G4 after comparing systems from PC vendors, and since the Apple delievered on all those (It's replacing a dual-head system and I have a wireless set up at home) PLUS came with the best Unix desktop I've ever used in my life, the Mac won hands down. And yes, I'm a linux and *bsd user as well, but let's face, the Mac seriously, JUST WORKS.
Valid point, and there are other issues too, even, if you're no entirely anti-MS. For example, if you'd be willing to write right-to left languages like Hebrew or Arabic, you'd be completely out of luck.
I have a bit similar issue, as it is currently impossible to get any native word processor for OS X with Finnish language tools (there are classic and X11 alternatives) - MS has them for Windows, but not for Mac. This make me unwilling to buy Office X, even though I like Excel, because I don't want to pay for word processor without support for my native language, and the sole Excel without other office programs would be more expensive for me than the whole suite, as there are no academic editions of the separate programs.
Currently I'm running OOo 1.0.3 on top of X11, but now I'm looking forward for KOffice to replace it soon.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
Well, from the Dell website: "Weight: From 3.3 kg", Apple: 2.5 kg (sorry, I don't understand non-metric measurements).
Battery life: Dell: "Approximate operating time: Up to 1.5-3 hours per battery (depends on usage)", Apple: "46-watt-hour lithium-ion battery (with integrated charge indicator LEDs) providing up to 4.5 hours of battery life (15-inch models".
A year ago I made the mistake of thinking that an "inexpensive" PC laptop with a shitload of MHz would be a good choice. 11 months later, my back still aching and driven insane by the practically nonexistant driver support for their lowspec hardware (let alone support for alternative OSes), I admitted my mistake and made the best decision in my life: I went and bought a Powerbook. At least for me, it's not all about speed/buck.
Macs are NOT more expensive than peecees, get that misconception out of your head.
They're not? Please point me to where I can buy a $200 mac running OS X at a good speed.
Don't you mean sh_t for brains?
I intend to give this suite a try regardless, but just curious: is there an automated system a la Mozilla to provide bug info back to the development team when an application crashes? I'd like to help further this development along, but this is about the extent of what I could provide right now.
sig != null
What I love about MAC is that it does come with just about all the software anyone needs, Oh and for FREE. Such as AppleWorks, the FREE Full Featured Office Suite. Wonder if they can port that to run on Linux,.
Objectively, price is a factor too -- in which case MS Office loses every time.
. . . the hard part is over . . .
Not by a long shot. It's hard to say this without sounding like a troll, but what most open source developers just don't get is that the hard part isn't the coding, but putting on the polish so that the app is useful to someone else. Looking at the screenshot, I can pretty much tell you that no Mac user is going to be comfortable using what clearly is not a well-designed Mac app. The fake widgets are out of place. The nested tab views (or two rows of tabs, depending on how you see it) is a terrible interface error straight out of Windows. I imagine trying to use this thing would show it to be even more clunky than the X11 version, where a user would more understand what they're getting into.
Apple gave a very public lesson on the proper way to port OSS when they did Safari. This port clearly took nothing from that lesson. I don't really want to come down on the developers who got it working, because I know the kinds of efforts involved, but I have to say that if anyone thinks this will be of real help to the average Mac user, they are very much mistaken.
Because they're more interesting. They've had a hell of a year.
Besides, Microsoft has been sitting on their laurels. Groklaw has an interesting bit where PJ notes that Investor's Business Daily made up their "Top Ten Tech Stories of the Year" list without mentioning Microsoft a single time in any context. This isn't because the "regular" PC world is losing relevance, but more just that there isn't much going on in the "regular" PC world.
But... that's what happens when one company is in charge of most of what people do: Nothing. Why should they do anything? They've got 80% of the world using their stuff.
Appleworks isn't free, merely bundled with many Macs. It wasn't bundled with mine (a dual 867 last year) and I made the mistake of purchasing it. While not bad for casual users, the interface is a poor Carbon port. Still better than OpenOffice on the Mac, but not as good as MS Office. Apple supposedly has a new version coming out soon. Some have it being released this month. We'll see how it looks and works along with the cost...
yes
That is what is holding it up.
photosMy Photostream
I was, in fact, trying to keep this as similar as possible. Included on the Dell:
"IEEE 1394 integrated port;
2-USB 2.0 (Universal Serial Bus);
Video: 15-pin monitor connector;
S-Video: 7-pin mini-DIN connector;
Internal TrueMobile 1400 Dual Band Mini-PCI card".
Can't find an estimate time for the Dell battery. The PowerBook didn't have the backlit keyboard option. So, all you got was FireWire800 for your extra $342 (as far as hardware goes).
Again, nothing against the Mac, but facts are facts. Macs cost more. (And I'll even ignore the software availability issue.)
And you're still ignoring the desktop issue, which is not insignificant, since most personal computers are desktops (though that too is changing).
-bZj
.sig
Since partially completed ports apparently count, I recommend checking out the developer Aqua release of OpenOffice.org, Neoffice. Downloads of a test binary have been here for awhile.
Moreover, just yesterday, lead developer Dan Williams posted this state-of-the-port message on what still needs to be done to have a complete port of OO.o in Aqua:
All in all, these aren't problems that require all that much technical expertise, just a lot of trial and error, and a bunch of debugging. A lot of the issues that we have had for a long time, like the widgets and menus and the event loop, are actually solved; we simply need to convert our old hacks over to the new frameworks or clean up the code as it is. We can of course do this, but as always it requires more manpower.
So? Volunteers?
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
That wasn't trolling; that was flaming.
Sidenote: how does the PowerBook hardware stand up to that 'alternative OS' test? Are there working drivers for the Mac hardware for those alternative OSes, or have you tried?
-bZj
.sig
Bad: "embracing" an existing standard, extending it incompatibly behind closed doors, flooding the marketplace with incompatible software and claiming it supports the standard.
Appropriating existing application software (not exactly standard in the same was as, say, TCP/IP), developing it thoroughly, and contributing the useful changes back to the original development teams is a bit different. It could be done badly, yes, but Apple doesn't seem to have a poor track record lately in this respect.
When I judge a post based on proper spelling and punctuation vs. the message you are trying to get across, your post loses every time. When I see a post citicising another for spelling (and incorrectly for grammar) then I see they have little contribution other than to bait the parent. Certainly nothing valuable, on topic or intelligent.
When I see a post piggy-backing on another one by copying the format and changing around certain words and I see they have fucked up trying to close the italics tag, umm, fuck you :D?
Apart from Airport Extreme (currently a common problem with about any
Of course this is simply because those targetting Apple laptops have exactly two product lines to support (as opposed to the n+1 manufacturers with n+2 models).
But now that I have a decent, vendor-supported *nix, I don't really care all that much about alt. support anymore. On the PC side, they were simply a must, because Windows actually made some of my work (most notably unix software development on the go) practically impossible.
Hey Steve,
Micheal Dell is laughing in your fscking face right now...
As the other reply noticed this is a copy from the last article on Konqueror for OS X.
I'm not holding my breath.
You might not need to. See The State of the Aqua Port 2004 message from developer Dan Williams.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I'm sure that Apple's percentage of users is going to go down, once everyone realizes that Apple dosen't not give a flying flip about their customers...
Where can I donate specifically to the team of programmers working to bring KOffice up to finished, final release quality on OS X?
I would gladly pay to encourage their efforts.
They should work hard to get the remaining 20%.
How long until MS starts suing for using "Office"???
Can't we find better names for projects that won't get sued?????
Again, you're lame.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
MS office is a carbon port too moron.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
You can easily see how they build the gui. Ctrl-click on Safari->Show Package Contents->Contents->Resouces and double click on any .nib file you see..look its part of the gui..the toolkit that they use is closed but other than that it is pretty damn open. There is nothing stopping you from modifing the gui to suite your tastes either..distributing it however might pose to be a problem.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
the problem i have with office is simply the closed file formats. i couldn't care less if the program is closed source. i use keynote everyday in my class. it is an awesome program. however, it uses an xml-based file format. and other programs can generate xml files, and can extract the data. in fact, apple publishes the specs. yet keynote is closed. word's format is designed to make you use word. and they change it to make you upgrade. that i have a problem with. free is a pipe dream. sure, it'd be nice, but open is the key.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Thanks for the info.
-bZj
.sig
OK, I've done GUI's and am usually totally anal about compliance, but here I have to agree with the post: the hard part is over.
You have here a free and native alternative for Office.
No money. People will use it if it is reliable. Because it's free. That's great!
Maybe, if the programmers want to have more people use it and everybody to stop bitching, yes, it would be a good - no, a great idea to make it more Mac-compliant, but they don't have to, really. They've already made it FREE.
People will be plenty happy already when the bugs and kinks are worked out.
So congratulations!
BTW, now please give us a free and easy (meaning no coding) database program and we're in HEAVEN!
xxx
I think, therefore I am...I think.
This thing called copyright sure is a pain though.
I'm a student. Apple offers something that a lot of PC vendors haven't heard of, it's called a student discount, you know, where you give students a bit of a break on the price in order to build customer loyalty. Dell's idea of a student discount (in partnership with my university) is "offer them cheaper shit".
In this respect, your "anyone who can afford a Mac" argument is null. It turns out that a G4 iBook is more affordable to me than a Celeron notebook.
When life gives you lemons, you CLONE those lemons, and make SUPER-LEMONS. -- Dr. Cinnamon Scudworth, Ph.D
Well, no, he isn't. KOffice is free as in beer (just download it) and free as in speech. Though he is wrong, I'll give you that, for many many reasons.
When life gives you lemons, you CLONE those lemons, and make SUPER-LEMONS. -- Dr. Cinnamon Scudworth, Ph.D
a) There are quality of workmanship issues, especially in the laptop department
b) You're a troll of the worst kind to be throwing about insults about "ignorant Mac user" and "lime green 'puter". Who says 'puter anyway? Did you just watch Hackers or something?
I guess there really is something to the title assigned you. Anonymous Coward.
When life gives you lemons, you CLONE those lemons, and make SUPER-LEMONS. -- Dr. Cinnamon Scudworth, Ph.D
Um, I bought my li'l brother a $699 2.4 GHz Celeron laptop with DVD/CDRW and 10/100 network, modem, and wireless, 40GB hdd, and got an extra 256MB from newegg for $43 for xmas. I'm sure I'll do that again in 4 years as he heads off to college. How is $2600 a good deal? Hell I still have $1850 left over.
That doesn't make it right to discriminate against part of their user base. And your post serves only to illustrate the advantages of free software - developers tend to cater to what people want/need rather than what is economical to include.
When life gives you lemons, you CLONE those lemons, and make SUPER-LEMONS. -- Dr. Cinnamon Scudworth, Ph.D
News-worthy event? It's a forum post, get over yourself. If you paid any attention to the parent thread it would be obvious that the software could've included it since Unicode is already in OSX, they just chose to ignore Hebrew.
While I tend to agree with your opinion of Israel (not because I'm anti-Semetic but because I'm pro-secularism and pro-human rights), Middle-East politics and Israeli history is non-sequitur in this topic, not to mention you're just begging to be called a racist or something silly like that. Whether or not you choose to acknowledge it, Hebrew is a widely spoken language , there's no reason that an office suite shouldn't include support for it.
When life gives you lemons, you CLONE those lemons, and make SUPER-LEMONS. -- Dr. Cinnamon Scudworth, Ph.D
Celeron - As in. Piece of garbage. Low-end-as-they-come.
G4 - high quality, RISC.
This has been covered elsewhere, but firewire, USB 2.0, a highly durable aluminum casing (you'll probably need to buy another one sooner than college if it gets any real on-the-road use), lightweight, long battery life (I'll bet you get maybe 2 hours max out of that celery laptop, probably more like 1.5 if using wireless) vs. 5 hours+ from the Powerbook.
Like you say, you'll probably grab another PC laptop in 4 years, The Powerbook will probably outlast that and keep doing it's job for a good while longer.
When life gives you lemons, you CLONE those lemons, and make SUPER-LEMONS. -- Dr. Cinnamon Scudworth, Ph.D
Actually, we'll know in a few days. Steve is scheduled to give the keynote at our bi-annual kool aid drinking fest this Tuesday. If there is an update to Appleworks, he'll announce it. For those attending the keynote, there might be a gift copy under the seat. Alas, I have an exhibits only pass.
As someone else pointed out, MS Office is also a carbon app, although clearly it is a lot more functional than Appleworks. For many, though, Appleworks is good enough.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Maybe Apple already plans to do just that. They have a project called 'Marklar' they've been supporting since OS X was first released.
a sp
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,496270,00.
I tried and it is AWFUL!
Working on my Master's coursework I wrote some documents using Apple Works. Saved them in MSWord format (only format the Univeristy officially accepts - although I later discovered my tutor is also a Mac-head and would accept PDF), anyway, saved it in MSWord format. Came back to edit it later. All the formatting has been lost !!! OK so put it all back, cross fingers, save in Word format again. Come back later to edit, this time AppleWorks crashes each and every time I try to load a file IT HAD WRITTEN! That was the last straw so I went and bought MSOffice- and discovered the Entourage is actually quite a good email client (although now Mail has folders I've switched back to that).
Edward
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
That sure didn't stop the folks over at KDevelop.
When life gives you lemons, you CLONE those lemons, and make SUPER-LEMONS. -- Dr. Cinnamon Scudworth, Ph.D
Or do without saying "didn't you get the memo?" once a day. Scandalous!
When life gives you lemons, you CLONE those lemons, and make SUPER-LEMONS. -- Dr. Cinnamon Scudworth, Ph.D
It'd be hard to port because there's really only one set of hardware that OSX currently has to support: Apple hardware. There are more cards that do the same fscking thing on the x86 than you can shake a stick at. Drivers, drivers, more drivers. Also, I can't see Apple pushing this too hard - they'd lose money on the hardware they're not selling.
When life gives you lemons, you CLONE those lemons, and make SUPER-LEMONS. -- Dr. Cinnamon Scudworth, Ph.D
I doubt this will happen. Mac OS, formerly System 7, goes back to the days of the Lisa... that is a lot of code that Apple has tried and invested in, why would they throw it out? I expect a major updating of the Mac OS, splitting it to 2(Client / Server) OSes that all use a similar GUI.
I just don't see Jobs throwing out Mac OS, and moving to NextStep (or BeOS, which is just as possible an alternative). It wouldn't make a lot of sense.
Of course there isn't a technical reason, it's a COST reason. Office for Mac sold very poorly, let alone relatively little used versions in languages like Hebrew. It would cost them more in development to add it than the sales justify, so why bother?
The whole cost in this case would be an option like "enable right to left writing". That's all - the rest is built-in into the MacOS X.
ugh.. I can't stand why the argument that a native language for a nation fabricated out of nowhere in the last century is some kind of news-worthy event. The same program probably doesn't support a zillion other native languages. Why continue to make noise over these few thousand users?
Some languages write from left to right. Some others write from right to left. Microsoft Office for Mac discriminates all the rtl languages.
If Apple charged the same price as Windows XP Professional (~$250+). I'm sure many people would be happy to choose the Apple OS over Microsoft and Apple would be making a pretty good margin.
It wouldn't. Befere 1997 Apple had authorized clones and the clonemakers paid flat rate of $50 for each Mac-compatible machine sold. It was a bad deal for Apple. It's always better to have a $500 margin selling a single PowerMac (and their margin on G5's is obviously much higher) rather than sell 5 copies of OEM MacOS for $50. They traded their market share (that plummeted) for profitability (that rocketed), but that's a wise choice - commericial companies go for profit, not for market share.
1. The AppleWorks is greatly out of data in many areas. Including good interface, features, and coding. I normally go to Text Edit to write any documents then AppleWorks because Text Edit has more features and is easier to use. AppleWorks is an Ugly program and Apple should be ashamed to have it with their logo attached to it. I think Apple is letting it die and replacing it with a new better one. Probably based off Koffice or some other type.
2. OpenOffice.org, has the features But it works and feels to Unix Like. Which is good on a unix system but OS X (although based off of a unix core) is not setup like a Unix system. OpenOffice.org need a complete new interface to it and many design changes to it so it works like a new program.
Koffice and KDE itself is more Mac Like then any other active project out there, so most of the code is better designed to be prorted to Mac.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This is a great thing for sure, but I have to question the Nativeness of Native here. For one thing I would have least expected it to use the native OSX widget set instead of a themed QT... and does it run without the need to have an X server running atop of aqua?
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Can't we find better names for projects that won't get sued?????
What, and miss out on all the free advertising?
I think, therefore I am...I think.
I think what finally convinced me to get an AlBook was `borrowing' my head of department's 500MHz G3 iBook and realising just how fast it felt (even running Jagwyre). Panther on a 1.25GHz G4 screams along, I fully expect it to continue to do so for several years to come. Oh, and 3.5 hours real-world battery while using a wireless network is nice as well.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
When I got my AlBook, they were also offering 10 months interest free credit to students (and other academic staff). This made it just that little bit easier to afford.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
PowerPC is a better instructionset then the ugly x86
hack, BUT the celeron in question is much faster then the G4. And x86 is only a problem for compilers and the few people who really like to write asm.
I bought an iBook for my wife's mom for christmas and it came with AppleWorks installed and ready to use. It also came woth the PowerBook my friend bought two months ago.
Look at it, it's basically Microsoft office in sheep's clothing.
I used OOo to write a few rather lenghty works and it's more or less the same approach. Ok, some stuff is moved around but I bet if you wanted to you could move them so they're in the exact same places as in Microsoft. It basically has all the same buttons and does all the same things. There's no difference in my book.
This is mainly why I deleted OOo and just installed that $5 copy of MS Office I get from the University. It's just as "functional," arguably more stable because of code maturity, and vastly faster on my low end machine. Plus it doesn't FUX up file formatting for when I want to take a copy to print in the computer lab. Sure, OOo makes super small files and can save to PDF which looks all professional. But those are more novelties than anything else.
I think OOo needs something like the Firebird project for us normal people. Take the engine and strip out the entire interface. Rewrite it in XUL and only include controls for the most basic functionality. Have Javascript plugins for extra functionality and add back features from the main project as you find out which ones you REALLY need. Simple, it really is like the metaphorical death and rebirth of the Phoenix.
You've also got to remember what did BeOS in. In the beginning they were a PowerPC shop and made their own hardware just like Apple. Then they got into some trouble with Apple so they ported BeOS to x86 (hey, I'd switch now!).
Sad truth is BeOS was a very, very small company and they could barely keep up to date on one hardware configuration. Now they had infinite configurations. They were buried in writing drivers so they fell behind in development. Not to mention lots of people got a sour introduction to BeOS when it wouldn't work with their machines.
No, unless Apple hires like 50 times more programmers they don't stand a chance bringing OS X to x86.
If all you want is basic Word compatibility, just use TextEdit. Reads and writes basic Word files quite well.
And, of course, not only free of cost, but actually included with Panther.
Sorry, unless your school is somehow special the student discount on apple hardware is laughable. Get $50 off from $2000. WOW!
Apple laptops are indeed "inexpensive" but they aren't as fantastic as evangelists would make them out to be either. You can get better from Wintel any day of the week in 50 times more varieties. Try getting an Apple laptop that weighs 2 pounds or one with a click-style keyboard.
Office is a carbon version. I see it more as a rewrite than a quick port. But clearly it could be better - but let's be fair. It was written for 10.1. It's problem is a lack of an update for quite some time. Appleworks on the other hand just sucks and has tons of Sys9 elements scattered throughout.
point well made.
More like free as in "Tibet." As in "a lot of people making a lot of noise about how things should be, but only a handful of people actually doing anything about it." (Note: this is not an invitation to the inevitable threadjacking that any mention of Tibet often seems to cause.)
Talk is cheap. Coding, and the time it takes away from the things that pay the bills, is not. What I've read here, with only a few notable exceptions, is mainly Monday morning quarterbacking.
Personally, I hope that a good OS X-native alternative to MF^hS Office makes it to the point of "grandma-accessible." I'd happily pay for it in some way. Cash, probably, as I don't have the time or (sadly) the know-how to make a significant technical contribution to such an endeavor.
Theory and practice are the same in theory, but different in practice.
Microsoft's sales figures for Mac Office are secret, but we can make some good guesses. Apple claims to sell 2.5 million Macs a year. Let's assume that Mac people who don't buy Office are evened out by Mac people who keep the software on their old Macs current. Which will probably give a figure that's way too high, but we have to start somewhere. Microsoft gets about $125 for each copy of Mac Office, so we're talking income of about $315 million per year.
That's a lot of money to you or me, but it's peanuts to Microsoft -- less than 1% of their income! Plus they have to work relatively hard for that money. They probably save a little money from overlapping code bases, but enough to account for a customer base that's 30 times smaller?
pretty please! This would be so great, a good visual DBase app with a serious backbone...
While Filemaker is great - OK, it isn't, really - there is a huuuuge lack of simple but still moderately powerful database apps for the simple stupid mac crowd.
In fact, as far as I can see (disclaimer, I'm not an expert, but I've been looking for quite some time now) there's nothing that comes even close to kexi on the mac.
There are some pricy alternatives, or one could follow courses in actual dbase encoding and programming, but let's not go there...
If you were to port kexi *and* make an easy "typical mac" installer (with the option to install and setup mysql!!!!!) you'd become famous and immortal, I'm pretty sure.
Seriously. Parades, naked people, beer, chanting of your names for hours on end, it could happen!
I think, therefore I am...I think.
More like $200 off $1500 (iBook G4, here in Canada).
That's the kind of student discount I'm talking about.
When life gives you lemons, you CLONE those lemons, and make SUPER-LEMONS. -- Dr. Cinnamon Scudworth, Ph.D