Slashdot Mirror
Apple's Rumored Office Suite
Several anonymous readers noted that the mac rumor mill is churning already with news for the upcoming MacWorld. The current rumor is a new office suite to replace the incredibly dated AppleWorks and incredibly bloated and slow MS Office.
Dated? Maybe! Useful for simple word processing? Absolutely.
I cann't fault it's ability to make a simple hand typed document without bloat, and for that I will continue to use it.
It's about time for a replacement, but I hope the changes made - if the rumor is indeed true - are solid, needed ones rather than an artsy, candied gloss over the previous offering.
A blog like any other.
Who wouldn't welcome a slick, well-integrated, back-to-basics, consumer-grade office suite to come out of Apple?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Isn't that the point of an office suite? To have everything you would need. If you don't want bloated go use vi,vim,joe,nano,pico,or abiword, or and mutt,pine,so forth.
The interesting thing is, they already have a simple Word replacement - TextEdit. It case read and write Word files. The only thing it's really missing is table support, which is supposed to be coming in Tiger. With that it can completely replace Word for me.
So I wonder if a full-blown word processor would be a souped-up TextEdit, or base off something else - just like they used KHTML instead of Mozilla as a base for Safari.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What? Is it chopped liver? There's a MacOS version.
It sucked from the get-go, or at least the Mac version did. The Apple ][ version was elite.
I hope Apple writes a winner, I'd love to avoid MS Office in the future.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
...to replaced the incredibly dated Apple Works and incredibly expensive,bloated and slow MS Office.
replaced or replace?
just my two cents.
I think the submitter has an axe to grind. I have been quite impressed with Word on OSX, and indeed the rest of the available Office suite. I would prefer to use OpenOffice, but I feel it has a little longer to mature on OSX.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
vi, vim, nedit, openoffice, emacs!!!! oh my!
This rumor comes up every year. Look at textEdit with its simple interface and MS Word compatibility. Apple could do it, yes, but would they want to?
I noticed a piece of Mac shareware just released a new version today. The reason? They are dropping their old "iWork" name for a new one. Veddy interestink.
(Note, the piece of shareware is now titled "iBiz".)
... a better port of OpenOffice? Last I checked (admittedly about a year) there was a working port, but it required installing X11 and a few other "non-Macish" actions before it would work. Could they be better off just "fixing" it ?
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
a perfectly good office suite (free) already exists? OpenOffice.org has an OSX version.
Oh no, here come the proles. The tasteless rabble. The masses who see nothing past the price tag. Of course you can't blame them if their trust funds aren't large enough to provide them with life's very finest--they wouldn't appreciate it anyways--but surely Apple should know better than to serve the poor peasants la crème de la vie on the discount rack at Sears.
There was a time, not long ago, when you could tell everything that mattered about a person by his or her choice of operating system. You would notice a man at the local bistro with his titanium PowerBook and a deep garnet Merlot, and you instinctively knew: here is a man with a certain flair, a je ne sais quoi that makes his company worth your while. You'd wonder if the dark-clad woman striding down the street was your type; then you'd notice tucked under her arm a Duo 2300c, so retro and so delicously delicate, and you'd be smitten, simply devastated. You'd go for coffee along Bedford and the two of you would talk about the next East Village gallery opening, or the latest collection from Philippe Starck, or how Frank Lloyd Wright had ruined American architecture.
And it wasn't just about being able to identify like-minded individuals. As a Mac user yourself, you belonged to an exclusive club of discriminating individuals and creative geniuses. Artists like Picasso. Activists like Teresa Heinz. Revolutionaries like Václav Havel. Writers like Dave Eggers. Actresses like Chloë Sevigny. I remember at a cocktail party in SoHo once--it must have been in the mid-'90s--Susan Sontag, Haruki Murakami and I spent hours debating the merits of Mac OS 8's new "Platinum" theme. Those were fine times, indeed.
But ever since the introduction of the mass-produced iMac and iBook, it's been getting harder to distinguish the aesthetically conscious literati from the unwashed masses. It started with the yuppies, and now it's moving on to state-school students and former Dell buyers. On Bedford Avenue, L Café is gone, replaced by a Baby Gap. Soon it will be smelly Linux enthusiasts (ugh!) popping their pimples over translucent keyboards and lickable widgets.
We Mac users were willing to forgive Apple the iPod's popularity, but this... if this rumor is true, then this is going too far. Mon Dieu! Apple, why do you want to sell to these poor peasants? These people don't appreciate beauty and elegance. They don't understand it. They probably even voted for Bush--all four times.
Mr. Jobs, please establish eligibility requirements for the purchase of a new Mac. A good start would be to disqualify anyone who listens to Ashanti or anything they play on K-Rock. You could also disqualify people who think digital watches are cool, as well as all objectivists. In America, don't even bother selling to the lower Midwest. Don't accept applications postmarked from trailer parks. Ban the entire Hilton family.
One way or another, something must be done to preserve the Macintosh community. Anguished but unified, we cry out with one voice. Dam the river, close the gates, pull up the portcullis, keep out the tasteless proles. Please, Mr. Jobs, don't wait until it's too late.
This rumor seems to make a lot of sense. If Apple were building a new office suite from the ground up it would take a while to do and would explain why AppleWorks say there and played dead for years. Most of the AppleWorks team has probably been working on writing the new office suite and a few people left working on AppleWorks updates and fixes. Also I can see this suite taking a while as Apple would want it to work very intuitively, something that Office frequently fails at and AppleWorks rarely shines at. There are so many formatting options and other tools that to build a really good word processor a complete re-think needs to be done on how the interface is organized. Right now its a nearly endless array of menus and sub-menus. Let's hope Apple does a good job of cleaning up the mess.
Please keep the snide political remarks to a minimum, especially when it is offbase and inaccurate. "Incredibly bloated and slow" may well apply to OpenOffice, but not at all to MS Office which starts and runs very fast on my mediocre hardware.
There are plenty of legitimate things to criticize Microsoft about, and you only diminish the argument when you assert unreasonable claims to an audience that knows better, even if its a willing one.
At http://www.redlers.com/ there is a pretty good word processor written in cocoa and is pretty quick. I am evaluating it now, and it looks good for school oriented stuff too. $29 on sale...
People need to realize that making a successful Office competitor doesn't equate to making it less "bloated and slow", or adding any sort of all-important feature set.
The only way any product in this space is going to go places is if it works just like Office, acts just like Office, feels just like Office, etc. Office is the standard, and for 99% of people that use it, it's flawless. Any deviation from this standard suite, even if it's an improvement, is nothing but a nuisance to the average user.
A common user seeing one single glitch (glitch defined as something different from how it works in Office) will run (not walk) to their standard MS Office icons.
How do I know this is true? Simple. There are tons of people who are actually into the OSS movement, love Slashdot, run Linux servers, run OS X, etc. that *still* run MS Office when they can run OpenOffice instead? Why is that? It's because even the most open-minded of us are creatures of habit. And if *these* people are resistant, imagine how the masses are.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
It's not a new office suite, it's an application called Pages that will be bundled in with Keynote to make a new suite of applications called iWork (to complement iLife). There's no word of a spreadsheet application for example.
If the rumour is true (and Think Secret have been very accurate over the past couple of years) then bundling all this software along with the $500 Mac is a great move for them. 1.25Ghz G4 might not sound like much, but it's faster than the last generation iMac I have, and it's already fast enough for the majority of computer users (those who surf, do email, write some letters and take pictures from their digital cameras). Combined with all the software these users are likely to need, it's a great price.
A bit off the cuff - I did mean Gecko (the rendering engine), just couldn't think of the term.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The rumors are abounding about new apple hardware and software with deep pricing discounts (offering Motion for so cheap) that it makes me believe that this could realistically be a $99 buy which would make it a steal.
If they price it at $199 (the next Apple-logic price point) and a newly rumored $499 PC i'd almost have to go with the PC just to get the software! I'll likely wait untill Tiger either way as there's also a possibility (in my mind) of a package deal with the whole ball of wax.
This rumor is a few days old, though still good. What I'm shocked about is that while /. reported this rumor (a good one), they didn't report the BETTER rumor.
t ml
Namely, the Sub-$500 Mac.
http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0412expo2.h
AppleInsider also reports on it, calling it sub-$600 (ThinkSecret has however a near-perfect track record), and saying it has USB 2.0, FireWire, DVI, VGA via a dongle, and TV out.
Looks sweet.
As for this new iWorks, something not mentioned is that its supposed to include Keynote 2. Keynote is amazing from what I've heard, and if this is true, that'd be awesome. Especially if its included with the cheap Mac.
...But Office v.X for the Mac is actually quite nice. I've yet to experience document incompatability problems with MS Office for Windows. For simple documents like research papers and personal writing it does the job reasonably well. Now I haven't written a large thesis with piles of footnotes, or a large book with a huge integrated outline... so it could blow for serious work and I wouldn't know. But the fact is that I need to submit my work in MS word format and it does the job.
Apple may come out with a quality office suite. But if MS Word/Windows users run into even minor incompatability problems with its output, it will fail. I assume the real reason Apple is doing this is because MS may stop supporting MS Office for the Mac. Which would be a real shame. I'm not saying the government should force them to continue supporting the product, but I strongly doubt it's an unprofitable product line. I would certainly buy the next release. Shouldn't shareholders have some say in this? --M
I sure hope their market share increases, so we can start suing them for monopolistic practices! :)
I just upgraded from Office 98 to Office 2004. What a complete waste of money. Aside from OS X code and antialiased fonts, the new version is less stable, slower, crankier, and festooned even more Microsoft User Interface Atrocities than ever. Six years and 3 versions later, Office has failed to fix most (any?) of the annoyances from the 1998 version. I guess near-100% market share means the company does not have to do anything to charge money for its double-speak "upgrades".
Sorry for the rant.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
As a pc and ibook owner I have office on both. Kinda hard to compare as system speeds are dramatically different, but I would not call office slow on my PC. Bloated? probably.
Personally I don't see much point in Apple putting a lot of effort in an office suite. MS Office is the defacto standard. My friends who do a lot of excel for work refuse to use open office as a) the slight differences in command formats and b) nagging compatability issues and fears. For the casual/home user with no need for the MS product, whats the point of making an ever more sophisticated alternative?
Better to put the resources into something new and imaginative than retreading the old wheel.
Because normal people don't run X11.
When/if they come out with an Aqua-ized version of OO.o, the reason will change to "because Apple believes they can do it better". And I'd give them every chance to try, too.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
If this iWorks isn't 100%--and I mean 100%--compatible with Office, forget it. And is Apple making the right strategic move, here? One of the reasons that folks even contemplate moving from Windows to OS X, instead of, say, Linux, is that you can buy Microsoft Office for OS X.
If MS feels threatened by iWorks, they'll just kill Office for OS X. And then Apple has lost one of their best marketing reasons to go Mac instead of Linux.
Not that Keynote really caused any problems--but iWord is a different story. Maybe this is just so Apple can have a "professional grade" office suite to put on the their pro line, and if you need Office compatibility (like 95% of the world) you buy Office for the Mac? But it would save that other 5% $500.
I guess I don't see the wisdom of this.
--
$tar -xvf
It's a big hangup for people coming from Windows, they need some sort of Office compatability to convince them to come over. Sure, Office is available for $400, but it's quite pricey. If new people considering Macs find out a similar suite comes with the system for free, that can handle most Office docs, this might just be the sugar coating they need. It's a good move, but I wouldn't expect them to actually go head to head with Office, just something to give people a "leg up" with.
This rumor circulates before every MacWorld. Think it can happen? Stebe had Microsoft people demo the new Microsoft Office at a very recent MacWorld, during the keynote. It seemed Apple was trying hard to keep Microsoft happy - Apple desperately needs continued Office development to declare themselves a viable alternative to Windows desktops. No Office compatability, no dice.
Apple's walking a tightrope with Microsoft.
Now if the interface is an absolute paradigm shift that is an order of magnitude more efficient than the mah jhong tiles that define the top of applications in GUI's today AND it runs on Linux?
Then watch out.
Otherwise, people will put up with Office because it is what their company buys, and they don't want to learn 2 word processors/spreadsheet/groupware applications. IE: They will not want to use one application for 99% of what they do every day, and the other one for the Holiday Christmas letter.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
Compati-what?
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
They reported that on Dec 29th.
Think Secret Predicts Sub-$500 Headless Mac
Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 29, @07:03AM
You mean this one?
"It just makes one queasy"
You're either lying or weird. No offense.
I've used some pretty crappy programs in my time (since 1979): (a) none of them left me feeling queasy (b) MS Office is a nice program. I just bought it for my new Mac, and I genuinely like the whole thing.
In fact Entourage is one of the best email programs out there for anything.
Ahem...
They mentioned the sub-$500 last week...
Given that they liked Khtml, I was wonderign about KWord - does it also read and write Word files? I guess they could use code from TextEdit for that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
According to this post from MS themselves, Office 2003 is actually quite cheap.
I would like to see what new features this includes when compared to MS Office or OpenOffice.
Hopefully this will create more competition between these office suites and bring about new features to Office market.
Hopefully Apple will try to use some open standards
The closest thing there is to OpenOffice on OS X is NeoOfficeJ - a Java front end for OpenOffice. While it works, it doesn't integrate with the rest of the system all that well.
That said even though I own a legit copy of Office X, I do still use NeoOfficeJ whenever possible.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is good stuff.
Even less bloat and unlike Appleworks and it comes with all copies of OS X.
I think it would be great to see, even if it was only a first go around. Look at what a great job Keynote does of being a simple, slick program for its intended purpose.
I'd love to see Office come from Apple, and I don't even have a Mac (at least not yet). They make good products and solid software, at least in the realm of OS X (can't speak for any other versions of the OS) and I say, why not? But I won't hold my breath over a rumor...
-Jay
Apple's new word processing software had been rumored to be called Document, but sources say it appears that name has been abandoned, possibly due to the confusion a user might encounter when being told "this document is a Document document."
:)
This brings to mind MS's annoying habit of calling things by generic names (Movie Maker, SQL Server, Word, Internet Explorer, Media Player, etc.). I wish they'd knock it off... it can really screw up a Google search, both for MS and non-MS products. They should stick with names like Excel and Powerpoint, and Apple should not pick up this habit. Call it iWriter or something. Hell, why not OOWriter
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Well, yeah, but I'm still shocked they didn't report it AGAIN.
What's a sig?
Microsoft might cancel or deempasize Office for Mac if the new product is too close to its turf. That was Ok for the browser, because IE is not known for quality. But MSWord is actually good if you need very precise control over a printed document or heavily use their templates for different tasks. I would even bundle Office with high-end desktops and add integration in iLife apps to encourage more development effort from MS. There are pleanty of other areas to compete.
Other replies to the parent identify the significant issues with OO on the Mac. Having tried for a year to rely on it for word processing, I finally gave up and switched to Mellel--a fine tool for a number of things, but not nearly as muscular as either OO or MS-O. The poor shell integration and reliance on X caused more frustration for me than using it was worth.
That said, OO is a fine product in it's Win and Lin incarnations, and I personally would prefer Apple to fully fund a team dedicated to properly porting the darn thing to Aqua, as opposed to rolling their own from scratch. There is a somewhat beleaguered dev trying to do the job, but they need lots of help. Some developers and cash would make their lives a lot easier.
A funded porting team would also benefit from being able to use the work of the OO core team in dealing with the always-vexing "catch up" issues such as managing the MS format changes, in turn letting the port team focus on making the OO updates play nice in Aqua. Less work for them, quicker updates for the user community.
(Not that Steve gives an expresso shot for what I think, but, hey, I can hope... )
All I know is that everyone that posts here could use a f**king [sic.] spell checker, or at least READ what he or she types before he or she hits "submit".
I don't know what you are talking about with that comment. My system, 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 with 3 GB RAM, runs MS Office just fine. I believe that is just above the current hardware requirements of MS Office.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
I'm lead to believe that writing a program with the full scope of Excel is absolutely not trivial, and matching it would not be as simple as deciding that you wish to compete. Could anyone shed any light on this?
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
Um- actually, real Mac fans welcome new Mac users -- that's why they talk up the Mac's advantages. The more Mac users, the better.
Charges of elitism mostly come from people who never liked the Mac to begin with.
Apple could do everyone (including Microsoft) a favor by concentrating their effort solely on components that read/write/render MS Office and Mac Works file formats in OpenOffice.org, and distributing OO.o with every Mac. Macs could become the preferred authoring platforms for every medium, extending their audio/video dominance into the office, for consumption by the vast masses downstream running Windows and Linux.
--
make install -not war
currently texteditor can handle doc files. keynot replaces power point. I guess a bit more refinement on texteditor and a new pread sheet app is all that the doctor asked for. NSTextview all the way baby!
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
I'm sure they're getting to it. Wait until Timothy gets back online.
"Susan Sontag, Haruki Murakami and I spent hours debating the merits of Mac OS 8's new "Platinum" theme. Those were fine times, indeed."
:)
brilliant, just fucking brilliant.
I'd be happy if they kept TextEdit, but created an app along these lines:
Simple Interface
Compatible file formats (Text Edit does to this)
A slightly more robust UI (default-on Fonts window, etc)
Support for tables and graphics.
I already use TextEdit for 50% or more of my writing (basically all but academic papers), and if they could keep the simplicity while making it a bit more similar to most people's experience with Word (keep the 20% of features that end up in 99% of the documents), I'd use it for 100% of my documents.
I've also tried the X11 OpenOffice, and a native port to OSX would be nice. that said, having the Windows-centric keystrokes blows.
C'mon, Apple, you can do it!
There are also rumors that Apple will drop their computer unit and focus on the music side of things. Going as far as being an outlet for the artists, almost like another label, but better.
There have been a continuing series of rumors that Apple is developing an Office suite with features on par with MS Office, and I think that is quite likely true.
However, I really don't see Apple releasing such a product at the current time, when they really need MS to continue development on OS X Office to attract potential switchers.
I think it is more likely being developed as a contingency plan in case anything happens with MS to cause them to terminate development of OS X Office or sour their relationship with Apple.
We saw this already with the browser situation. Apple promoted IE heavily over Netscape only while their agreement with MS required it. Then when development on OS X Explorer started to languish badly and it was clear that it was no longer a priority for MS, Apple released Safari. It is quite likely that development on it began long before then.
"The office suite is the lynchpin of practically every single consumer computer setup"
Perhaps the office suite is the "linchpin" for people who use a computer to do work for their job or school, but for the typical "computer consumer", the key apps are email, a browser, and some games, plus maybe something like Quicken. My wife uses the computer every day for email and simple games, and she hasn't used any office suite program in five years. The same is true for her parents and aunt and uncle. Heck, I rarely use office suite apps myself except when I am working on a chapter or some other writing assignment. I rarely do any work at home related to my job, but when I am trying to be "productive" from a learning/hobby perspective, I generally use text editors, gcc, and/or KDevelop.
I run MS Office 2004 on OS X (10.3.7) and it's 526MB installed (a complete installation with every single component, application, help files, sample documents and files, etc. including Windows Media Player, a bunch of document format converters and other tools). It both loads and runs very fast and is extremely responsive, stable and usable on my 1.33GHz G4 PowerBook with 512MB of RAM.
You may have some issues about the price, cause it's not very cheap at $399 for the standard version, but calling it bloated and slow is quite unfair and incorrect IMHO. I'm no Microsoft fan, as I'm sure not a lot of other Mac users are either, but nothing is gained from low blows like that that have no basis in reality.
While the MACs are a closed universe, the question still stands whether they will be compatible with the .doc format.
What if Apple has done for the office what it has done for the home user?
What if Apple has taken the best parts from OpenOffice and created a fully integrated enviorment in MacOS 10?
What if Apple is not going after the Enterprise user, but going after the small office user?
What effect will having iWork non MS compatible?
What if Apple is going after the lowend computer user?
I'm gainging an opinion that iWork will be a fully MacOS 10 integrated office system. With OO compatable XML files. And I don't think this will affect Microsoft Office users. It will be an option.
Apple is just offering a system for people who don't want to deal with MS Office.
Powerpoint compatibility is diabolical, because it's native tables and graphics are rubbish, so it constantly embeds foreign application documents on the Windows side that cannot be displayed on the Mac. In the other direction, God forbid you actually paste a screenshot in, because it will be a compressed TIFF, and when that gets back to Powerpoint for Windows it will not only fail to display it, but will actively hard-replace it with a graphic of a broken red X.
Office v.X on the Mac cannot do html round-tripping. So for anyone who prefers to store files as html like I do (for easier style sheet editing - die wysiwig die - and for post processing and export), you are screwed. The html format is not interoperable between the two either, information is lost here as well.
I'd never pay for Microsoft Office -- not just because it's expensive and bloated but because of Microsoft's business practices. Besides, I already have it at work. However, I'd buy an Apple office suite in a heartbeat.
Microsoft Office for Mac, is pretty damn good. It's full with useful things, for just about every occasion -- I don't like most Microsoft products, but then I again, I find some of them actually good... - I just can't understand why people hate something just because it has the label "Microsoft". I can sort of understand this attitude coming from Linux, BSD, GNU'ers, etc, for them it's a philosophy, but for Mac users? Holy fucking shit, stop acting stupid.
WARNING: DO NOT LET DR. MARIO TOUCH YOUR GENITALS. HE IS NOT A REAL DOCTOR!
I know this does not please a lot of the Open Office fans out there, and this is not an attempt at starting a flame war.
I use Microsoft Office at work on the PC, and I know that many others do as well. Having Microsoft Office available for the Mac was the single most important reason that I chose a Mac as a viable computer for home use.
If Apple puts Microsoft in a position where they are competing, Microsoft may well do what they did in the Safari situation and stop developing the product.
No matter how much better an Apple office suite may be, I would see that as being detrimental to the market growth that is inspired by having a document compatible office suite at home.
If Joe Six-pack uses Office at work, he will easily understand that having Office for the Mac as a compatible solution.
Any other solution at home would bring up compatibility questions by default.
I'm pretty sure Slashdot did report that sub-$500 Mac awhile ago. I already knew about it and I don't really keep up with MAc news, except for what makes the front page of Slashdot. It must have been here.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
Apple picked BSD as it's core because it simply doesn't crash! It's stable, secure and fast. Three things M$ cannot say about it's own operating system. OS 9 (and it's predecessors) while brilliant for it's time 15-20 years ago, simply wasn't good enough for the modern age. I've been using OS X for over four years now and have not looked back.
Until Apple releases a version of Final Cut Pro for Windows (which will NEVER happen), I can so no reason for me to ever purchase a Windows box.
OS X is not a marketing gimmick. It was something that the company simply HAD TO DO in order to create a modern operating system that allowed them to do what was necessary to meet the needs of it's customers. People don't buy Macs because they are antiM$ extremists. People buy Macs because they work well for what is needed of them and, to use their own marketing hype, They Simply Work. I've had my DP 1.8Ghz G5 for about 5 months now and it has never crashed, never received a virus and has basiaclly allowed me to get my work (editing video) done without ever having to worry about the computer itself. I'm enough of a geek to fix just about any problem that might come up, but luckily, I don't have to sweat it. My machine works, period.
Pooty tweet
At first I thought they had changed the name of the product to "Veddy interestink".
:-)
Happily, on a second reading I realized what you were actually saying.
I have to say that I think "Veddy Interstink" (note respelling) would be a good name for a band, or perhaps a fake evil company in a book.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Word for OS X isn't slow until you use it to open big complex documents (the ones that TextEdit won't open correctly because they have lots of tables, footnotes, images, a table of contents, etc.). Documents like that barely scroll on my ancient and revered dual 450 MHz G4.
And when they do scroll, they cause Word to crash, about once a day. Makes me feel like I'm running Windows 98 again, except I don't have to reboot afterwards.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I can't really understand why Apple would release Keynote 2 now instead of when Core Image / Video is out. Keynote is one of Job's favorite ways of showing off their new technologies -remember the cube effect?
My guess is that we might see a minor version upgrade of it, but nothing really big until Tiger is released. But, what do I know?
As an attorney-- we're all forced to used the dreadful "WORDPERFECT"-- and that's the only thing keep this entire office from updating to Apple and replace all these Win98 boxes. Until then.. I'll just continue pining away from Wordperfect under OS X (native..)
I think embracing and extending Open Office (or even open-sourcing their custom app) would be a better move for Apple. Right now, it is difficult for many businesses to replace PCs with Macs because of Office. The Office version for Mac is more limitted and has some performance and interoperability problems. The only way Apple could break that monoploly would be to release a competing office suite (preferably for free) that runs well on Windows, Linux, and Mac.
The real advantage to that would be to make a Mac the logical upgrade for businesses. They are not a software company, and software is a difficult place to build value right now. Keep the software open, and sell the hardware.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
I could live without other stuff you mentioned pretty easily for 99% of the editing I do. But I have to admit I could use page numbers for a number of the documents I work on.
However, the best thing about table support is it should mean that just about anything I get from anyone else is readable - currently not the case as using tables seems to be second nature with Word users, just like with HTML people use tables for all sorts of things they probably should not.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
[Let the religious down-moderation commence!]
Let's call a duck a duck. Keynote is slow. Really slow. It bogs down very quickly with slides of moderate complexity. As in not able to keep up with typing. Let's not get into how long Keynote takes to load files.
And Keynote is, shall we say, feature-poor. It has almost no drawing capability at all, a *crucial* necessity for most presentation software. Instead it lets you draw simple lines, bloated arrows and squares and circles. Fantabulous.
Keynote also doesn't handle inter-bullet newlines properly, doesn't change the size of the text to fit the slide (a *terrible* design flaw), has tables which stem from the stone age, has no hyperlink or action button capability... and best of all, none of its themes makes the font smaller when you intend the bullet by default.
Oh, and did I mention it was slow?
Awhile ago, Apple re-hired much of the team from Gobe, creators of the amazing app Productive for BeOS. Productive was the most tightly-integrated, easy to use, and fast office suite I've ever had the joy to use.
The team that created Productive was also the team behind the original ClarisWorks on the Mac, which too was an amazing feat of integration in a small footprint. Then a different coding team took over, it became AppleWorks, and began to suck royally.
If the team behind Productive is the team behind this rumored office suite, it is going to be one sweet Suite! HA HA HA HA. Seriously, though, they are masters of the art.
Except for tables, which it transforms to
tab lists, TextEdit.app reads simple Word documents flawlessly.
I have been trying out the beta version of NeoOffice/J, which is based on OpenOffice 1.1.3, and have found it to be much nicer than the X11 version of OpenOffice.
The main downside is that it is somewhat sluggish on my G4 Powerbook being written in Java (using the Carbon interface). But having access to all of my fonts, and better rendering make up for any speed issues I have noticed.
I use Open Office at work. Office 2000 on my computer. And my wife uses some version of WordPerfect, I'm guessing from the year 2000. Despite using three different office suites I'm able to work on my documents on all three computers.
I'm not saying there are never incompatibility problems, I'm just wondering whether there are enough incompatibility problems to avoid switching to a better or cheaper suite.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
You don't live in "The Village" do you?
And surely you mean le Corbusier, the Bahaus and Mies van der Rohe. (Well. Mies was okay but his followers were talentless hacks.)
Not to mention all the posers who wrote those ridiculous manifestoes. Might as well have been Tristan Tzara "demanding the right to piss in rainbows!"
Frank Lloyd Wright may have been a trifle excentric and a womanizer (shocking for his time,) but he was infinitely better suited to the American landscape than the "Princes" who descended on us, after being thrown out of Europe, and ruined the landscape for a couple of generations.
They were out to reform Europe. And thank fully they failed.
Have you ever SEEN a French "worker housing" apartment building? They're all terrible on virtually any scale you care to measure them by.
How about Brazilia? Le Corbusier's efforts at city planning were so successful that the nicest and costliest housing after its completion was the sheds and shacks used to house the workers who were bussed into the construction sites.
How about the massive construction projects that were planned in Nazi Germany? Pure excess without soul. Places where you weren't meant to live, just exist for the pleasure of the state.
Frank Lloyd Wright has "Howard Roarke" compared to the slew of "Francons" and "Keatings" of the day.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Office for OS X is profitable for MS, so killing it could only be seen as an obvious anti-competitive move by a convicted monopolist.
If they did that, the US Justice Department would be all over them in a heartbeat...
Oh, sorry. Never mind.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Good thing anyone who uses a Cocoa web browser (Safari, OmniWeb, etc) gets auto spellcheck FOR FREE thanks to Mac OS X's system-wide spellchecking services. :p
Windows 2000 crashed on occaison when I used faulty programs. Windows XP hasn't crashed since uhm, I dunno. Windows XP is pretty solid. As for viruses, security in numbers son. OSX is minute, a small player, teeny tiny. You don't see people trying to find and do something about exploits in Opera or Konqueror, because no one cares. And protecting your self from viruses on your PC is simple enough for a monkey to do. I've been using Outlook since v97. I got infected once by an email virus, because of my own stupidity.
My machine works, it works like a charm. I bet it works better than any mac of equal hardware strength.
And, well, Avid > FCP...
In accordance with the Apple philosophy that Mac hardware and software 'just works', Steve Jobs has announced that iWorks' equivalent of Clippy will actually be relevant, helpful and useful.
You must think in Russian.
If Apple also comes on board, this would help a lot in creating a true office standard-format (for the first time in computing history, until now we just have fluctuating quasi-standards set by whatever version of whatever office suite happens to be in the most widest use) benefit everybody except Microsoft.
I will be able to read OASIS-documents in 20 years, but I have my doubts about MSOffice documents...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've got the dual 2.5 and it's the best computer I've ever owned. OS X is the best OS I've ever used. I like being able to use a real shell when I want to or it amuses me. I like photoshop on this platform more than any other image manipulation program I ever used on any platform.
Yes I switched, but I switched from Linux. In the last year I've moved my whole family to G4 / G5 Macs and most of my Friends (it's amazing what happens when windows support dries up.
Oh and what it's worth I still use NetBSD on my Qube 2.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
As with all rumors, there's no need to believe it until Apple starts taking legal action against the rumor sites. Until then, you can assume that they probably missed the mark.
Trolling, trolling, trolling...Mac vs. PC trolling...trolling, trolling, trolling...Raw hide
It's at version 1.1.1. You've seen the strides that the iApps made when they jumped version numbers, expect the same thing when Keynote 2.0 appears.
doesn't change the size of the text to fit the slide (a *terrible* design flaw)
Um, if you're putting THAT much text on your slides, the flaw isn't with the presentation software, it's with you. If your audience has to read text-filled slides, they aren't hearing what you've got to say.
Although I think you're serious, I really thought your post was sarcastic at first. Access sucks, sucks, sucks. Its slow and doesn't play well with others.
PCs are in every way superior? Faster? Debateable, it seems the same chip that runs on my desktop is used to build one of the worlds more powerful clusters with one of the highest computing scores per processor. Stronger? When's the last time my OS X box was victim to a worm or virus? Oh, right, never. (If you're running Linux maybe you can say the same thing, but then I guess the machines are equally strong.) Cheaper? Some are, some aren't. Apple has a higher initial price point, but similarly configured PCs are pretty closely price to Macs.
As to the choice of UNIX, by your argument Apple could have picked any core. Picking an OS core isn't something you do for marketing reasons, you make Aqua pretty for marketing. The main reason UNIX was picked was for stability and extensibility. With a clean code base Apple has been able to rapidly pump out an array of applications because they've been able to build powerful frameworks that can be used over and over.
I guarantee that apple has been working on an office suite for some time now, in the event that MS cancels updates on mac versions of office. Exactly the same as IE for mac led to Safari. And probably how they keep an X86-compatible version of OS X on hold as well.
You drank my drink, you drunk!
I really doubt that iWork will be a Microsoft Office class of program(s) - it's unlikely it would have professional features such as change tracking, for example. If it were professional it would not have the "i" moniker. And that's super - I need a word processor, etc, to recommend to my Mom, and for myself for that matter. AppleWorks is an embarrassing recommendation, at best. iWork is desperately needed.
--- What?
Can't believe I missed that. Most sites reported it at the same time.
Expensive maybe, slow? I dont find Word or Excel
Expensive, maybe. Slow? I don't find Word or Excel
to be slow on my iBook (1.2ghz, 12" 512mb ram). I
to be slow on my iBook (1.2GHz, 12", 512Mb RAM). I
also dont find it to be slow on the B&W G3
also don't find it to be slow on the B&W G3
350mhz I bought off of ebay also with 512mb ram.
350Mhz I bought off eBay, also with 512Mb RAM.
Its certainly as quick as Appleworks. Bloated?
It's certainly as quick as AppleWorks. Bloated?
Maybe, but the bloat doesnt get in the way of the
Maybe, but the bloat doesn't get in the way of the
things I *do* use, so why complain about
Congratulations! This line had no errors!
something you dont use now, but you may use
something you don't use now, but you may use
lateron?
later on?
I CAN'T {expletive deleted] use it on my Mac. (I'm not a geek, just anti-monopoly. I am just appalled Microsoft & Gates lack of respect for other people's IP [who came up with windows FIRST?] :-)
.dmg installer and screw X11 and that crap. So now I just don't use my Mac for office tasks. And that's a shame since I use it for everything else.
OO for Mac doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I want a
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Might interest you to know that in July 2002 a Sun (vendors of StarOffice, which is an OOo derivative) VP announced that Apple were going to produce a native OpenOffice port to OSX - then was apparently forced to retract his statement.. refusing to comment further.
Cant find an exact link but this should help
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
As a network administrator for a school, I loved the idea of a light-weight office suite that ran on Mac and PC, and at educational pricing it was a STEAL.
After installing it on a few Macs without issue, I installed it on a bunch of PCs - my joy was shortlived.
Nothing worked reliably on the PC platform. Document corruption was common, database fields did not work correctly, application stability was poor. Three patches later, I was thankful to go back to MS office.
I don't blame Apple completely - after all, it was ClarisWorks before it became Appleworks.
Let's call a spade a spade - Appleworks, as a cross platform office suite stunk.
Keynote does give me hope. If iWork is similar in quality to Keynote, it could be a great office suite (assuming it runs on Mac and PC).
-ted
If you want to use a different browser oe email program, go for it. It is pretty easy to remove the ones you don't want.
One thing though, the default browser selection is in... Safari's preference!
What the hell is that all about?
You can't take the sky from me...
Yes, so many people think they 'must have' that ne fancy 500 dollar office suite, when all they do is simple things.
95% of what people need are covered by these 'mini-suites'..
To be honest, I'm surprised they still sell them.. More profit to be made with the 'big boxes'
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The oldskool mac crowd has already suffered the wave of OS X SUCKS ONE BUTTON MOUSE WHERE'S THE SLOPPY FOCUS AUGH freenix users who wanted Teh Prettay and the command line.
:P
After a couple of years of supposedly clueful users bitching, pissing and moaning about OS X, a whole throng of complete retards might be just the thing.
If anything, a huge surge in Mac ownership might increase the chances of getting some Big Name Games ported within the same year of the PC release.
Sun's announcement on CNET News.com
Follow-up on MacCentral
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
... nothing in the article about it, but I assume it'll be there to some extent.
Otherwise, it's worthless.
Spent an hour copying Office 98 from home to my work workstation through VPN because -hey! get this!- Office98 does proper html conversion (eg, inserst formatting tags, the end), whereas Office X and higher do this incredibly huge, bloated, fucked up and nasty inline CSS/XML THING.
Copy and paste versus hours and hours of stripping bullshit out of a document with find/replace.... and they call this shit progress! PROGRESS!
Bah.
Office 98 and Photoshop 5.5 - two apps I'm stuck with because newer versions break or drop the features I actually need/use.
WHEE.
Does anyone find this ironic? The original mac shipped with MacWrite and MacPaint, both of which were pretty good for their time... Now Apple once again is going to introduce an ofice suite...
Dear [powerful entity];
please let it be based on OpenOffice.
Your humble supplicant thanks you.
All generalizations are bad.
And much like OpenOffice, users have one hell of a hard time dealing with MY ASS and THE SYSTEM CLIPBOARD.
Running oo.o in X and calling it an OS X port is like calling a girl wearing a neon green strapon a hermaphrodite. The fake cock isn't even FLESHTONE.
There IS NO OS X VERSION OF OPEN OFFICE. Running in X11 does not count- unless you really feel like spending a few hours teaching your MOM all about how X11 works and interacts with OS X and how it's fundamentally fucktarded for anyone who thinks the apple key is the meta key, and who thinks apple-{c|x|v} is copy/cut/paste.
Which is every Mac user who didn't grow up on a freenix, and every Mac user who doesn't use or need freenix apps.
You think an X11 app is Good Enough? Mister, you are sorely mistaken.
Maybe in a few years, if they ever bother to get a cocoa version going, get it stripped free of the X toolkits it uses, get it sped up, get the interface de-shitted, etc, etc.
Frank Lloyd Wright has "Howard Roarke" compared to the slew of "Francons" and "Keatings" of the day.
Isn't that exactly the problem?
Keynote can make a dent in PowerPoint because presentation files are traded relatively rarely. For spreadsheets and (for want of a better term) Word documents, interchange is essential. Perception is reality, and if someone can't read a Word doc because you made it with something other than MS Word, it is your fault. If it's because of screwups between Office XP, 2004, 2001, 2000, or '97, both parties can safely blame MS. Otherwise, the 'nonconformist' takes the blame. Everyone here should know by now that no one wants to hear how they shouldn't be using Word documentns. Users want it simple and to just work. 100% Word compatibility is impossible--at best, you're spending all your resources chasing a moving target. At worst, you're doing a bad job and no one will use your product.
And remember kids, for every mom and dad you get to start using Open Office, there are a thousand companies with a thousand employees each who will continue to buy MS Office. Overthrowing the market leader is possible but it gets more and more difficult every year. There are orders of magnitude more Excel users today than there were Lotus 1-2-3 users.
Personally, I think Adobe really missed the boat. They should have made a word processor based on PDF. The full version of Acrobat can edit text, so they should have made something--even as simple as MS WordPad--where PDF was the native format. Since everyone and their brother can read PDFs (and they hold their formatting even better than Word docs) they could have distributed a $50-$100 PDF editor--nothing more than Acrobat Reader and Wordpad--that would have ate MS's lunch. Think about it--anyone with a free tool that they already have can read your documents on any platform, and anyone with an inexpensive editor can make and save changes in the native format. Could've been great.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Wouldn't it be cool if rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, Apple instead threw its GUI and user experience expertise into OpenOffice development and helped create a cross-platform open source office suite that was better than anything else out there, including MS Office? I'm tired of everyone aiming to create something "just as good as Office" when they should be trying to do something better. Any software MS creates shouldn't be used as a baseline by anybody!
And don't get me wrong, I like OpenOffice, but I think it and Apple could both benefit from some cooperational development.
The rumour is that Slashdot is looking for new editors to replaced the current ones
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Can any longtime followers tell us how accurate TS has been in the past (say, four years) with their predictions?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
MS Office IS actually good, I don't see any reason why some people dislike it just because "oh no, evil M$ made it so it should suck." We got MS Office Pro 2003 and it's perfect and has everything I need, and I like its UI. Of course the latter is a per-opinion basis...
I don't really care about a new Apple Office Suite though...
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
I use Office 2004 for Mac, and it's far from slow. As much as I dislike MS, Office 2004 really is a nice product. Office on the Mac works much better than it does under windows. Small things in the interface make it more usable, and it seems much more responsive. Entourage works awesome for talking to the corporate Exchange server also. All of my calendaring works great, and the integrated Project Center is a lifesaver.
What we are really missing is a way to view and edit Visio VSD files. OmniGraffle will do Visio VSX files, but since Visio saves in VSD by default, it makes it a pain for us network engineers with Macs to deal with Visio files created by others. And when you deal with a network that has 20,000 devices and hundreds of gigs of network diagrams, you absolutely must resort to Windows for dealing with them.
Replicating all of the functionality of Office 2004 for the Mac is going to be a daunting, if not impossible task. But, for most users, they don't need all of those features.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
EVERYTHING Apple does (and any other for-profit company, for that matter) is done to increase profit and market share. If that's not the goal, the company won't survive very long. So if the user benefits from something Apple does, hopefully their market share will increase. A great example is the iPod. Before the 4G iPod, I didn't like Apple's products. Now I own an iPod and some accessories. If they ever make the UI of OS X more user-friendly, I might even buy a computer from them, thus increasing their market share and profit. And if MS comes out with a better MP3 player, I'll buy theirs.
Doesn't matter what you think about a company's motivation. They're all in it to make as much money as possible. They do that by satisfying the customer. MS seems to have a pretty good handle on that, regardless of bugs/security problems. People want cheap and easy to use software and are willing to put up with some inconvenience to get that.
Q: What if Microsoft did the same thing that Apple is doing now?
A: The rules for a CONVICTED CRIMINAL MONOPOLIST should be -- and are -- stricter than those for a fairly competing business.
If Apple somehow conquers the office suite market, then yes, they should be condemned for closed integration. I have no doubt that monopolist Steve Jobs would be more evil than Gates & Ballmer put together, if he got the chance. That's a mighty big "if".
When Microsoft integrated IE in Windows they did not use a clever anf generic Framework to build the IE upon and made the framework part of the OS, but they tangled the IE with many parts of the system.
Ther is a pinciple in IT that says that components should be very cohesive but only loosely coupled with other components. Apple's Integration is closer to that standard. Exceptions are known though.
The integration between Apple applications and the system is simply amazing.
What specifically are you referring to? What kind of integration do you believe OSX provides that something like KDE doesn't?
show me a court ruling finding apple to be a monopolist.
Your "etc" omitted the OS X services I find most useful: Check Spelling, Summarize, and Start Speaking Text. Indeed, under-appreciated integrated advantages for any that Apple rarely boasts about.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
The level integration and interoperability of the Office suite is something that most other software vendors aspire to, but few (if any) have achieved.
Microsoft achieves its "integration" by shipping ever more bloated bundles of software. And, yes, other vendors are trying to emulate that, including Apple.
But that's the wrong way to go. Microsoft, Apple, and other vendors need to figure out how to create software platforms that allow good integration between applications that weren't developed by a single team. And none of them have managed that yet.
True integration requires open, flexible standards for content and inter-application communications. Nobody has really figured out how to do that yet, least of all Microsoft and Apple.
This isn't meant to diss Cocoa, which I like, but a clarification. The problem is not with Carbon, it is with Microsoft not updating their code to handle the newer OS X features. Remember, there is nothing Carbon can do that Cocoa can't do.
And I actually believe there are some side features that are released in Carbon before they are in Cocoa, but this may have been a memory implant.
Anyway, let's not forget that Mozilla Firefox and the Eclipse/SWT port were written in Carbon because the developers found troubles adapting their cross-platform toolkits to the "immersive" approach that Cocoa takes to controlling things like the message pump.
-Stu
Uh, why is this modded up? If you were talking four years ago, this would be a valid point, but let's talk about current software revisions please? Office 2004 for mac is a great piece of software.
I have been reading /. for years and this is my first post because enough is enough! When is Apple a monopoly? After reading this article I have to ask the question. I mean they:
-Make the OS
-Make the Hardware
-Make the browser
-Make most of the apps that ship with the Mac
Now they are going to make an Office suite? When will it end?
Items like this just continue to keep me away from Apple. Why? Well, I believe that I represent a good profile of users that Apple would like to draw in. I'm in my 30's, lots of disposable income, a good job, highly educated, married with four kids, use Windows but not a fan of Microsoft or Windows and would switch totally when another platform matures enough to warrant it. I have Linux installed but its just not there yet. I like the look and feel of OSX but Apple is always the stopper for two major reasons:
1. Apple makes everything. Talk about having all your eggs in one basket! What happens if they go under or become the dominant force in the computing industry? You think they are going to be better than MS? I don't think so. Owning the hardware, the OS, the apps, AND the Office suite, geez, what a nightmare!
2. How much incentive is there for 3rd party dev folks when Apple is doing it all? I would guess its close to nil.
I understand Apple has a sliver of the marketplace but I'm not sure making everything for your computer platform helps you in the long run.
I'm sorry folks, but if it looks like a rose, smells like a rose, has thorns like a rose, then it must be a rose. The same applies to monopolies.
Well, MS Office doesn't work as we 'have' to say. Then again, I don't work either I don't think I'm eligible.
What about all the slashdot posts from the Mac zealots? You know the ones ranting about clueless "PeeC luzers," going on about the "unwashed windows masses" getting infected by spyware/adware/viruses/etc and mentioning about how they don't have any anti-virus software or external firewalls, have to worry about security updates, and they click every excitable they come across.
Plus some of the things they argue and tell people to just to "convince" them that Macs are better can be absurd, they even argue why holding a command key is more convent then a two button mouse with a mouse wheel! I know you can buy one, but I find it stupid that the maker of the iPod still can't get with the times and as an option have an Apple branded two button or more mouse with scroll wheel. Another absurdity would be an Apple zealot taking a funny modification of the "17 mb file" troll seriously, and wrote a long winded essay on why Apple was the best thing ever! Or maybe they were trying to be humorous and just sucked at humor, so who knows.
Just like with Linux zealots, these people sure are not winning you guys any supporters, and do such a good job at turning people off. I did use to use a Mac, but after seeing all these snobbish posts(similar to the troll), some of the BS spread by Mac users(usually involving stuff that MS can't get away with, but it is ok for Apple), and using Linux, I see no reason to go back to or buy a Mac.
You might be more effective in winning people over you were reasonable and were willing to see both sides, don't pull any FUD or BS(i.e. candy coating Apple faults), instead of insulting people and writing ten page essays that sounds like they came out of a PR/Ad department.
In order to create a native OSX version that runs quickly and is easy to use, Apple would have to perform major changes to the program, to such an extent that it would defeat the purpose of starting with the OOo codebase in the first place.
Creating their own office suite would make more sense for Apple than attempting to repair OOo.
this makes it more evident that in the next few years, the only company creating softare for Apple OS - will just be Apple.
What incentive is there for other companies to create software when Apple decides to create competing products themselves?
One major advantage of Windows is that it's everywhere and can run on anything.
You apparently don't have much experience actually trying to install Windows on lots of different hardware. I do. Installed out of the box, Windows often lacks drivers, misrecognizes hardware, and has all sorts of other problems.
The only reason Windows seems to "run everywhere" is because every manufacturer goes out of his way to make their hardware windows compatible (bug-for-bug) and preinstall Windows; and to fix a broken installation, manufacturers ship restore CDs rather than Windows distribution CDs because ordinary consumers wouldn't be able to reinstall Windows from the distribution (it requires too much tweaking).
In different words, Windows "runs everywhere" because Microsoft has a monopoly and every manufacturer does whatever is necessary to make it work, not because there is anything intrinsically portable about Windows.
If MS and Dell merged and produced one product, I can see the end of Windows as the monopoly operating system.
So, Microsoft effectively outsources hardware manufacturing--I fail to see how that makes a big difference to their monopoly status.
In any case, courts have found Microsoft guilty of monopolistic practices, so whether you "see" it or not really doesn't matter.
Seems to me that if you're demanding document interoperability between MS office and Mac you've already got some problems that any OpenOffice-ish thing might not fix. Wouldn't it be better to implement something else in your workplace, where networked groups can work and share together? If there is a corporate requirement to coexist Macs with PCs why do all the Macs have to accomodate? Why don't you find something both can use? If your PC heads won't move an inch, then trust me, it's only a matter of time before they toss out all your Macs too.
I agree that Apple should be as open as possible.
Regardless of the direction Apple takes on this, open document standards are the most important consideration. I hope they are looking at Open Office or OASIS or any means of ridding us of the cursed concept of some big company having more rights with my data than I do.
I want to send my document to anyone I choose, and know that the recipient will easily work with my document, regardless of the machine or software that they are using.
I want to move between machines at home and work and in between in any of their modes, and still be abled to edit the document.
I want to know that the arrangement of bits and bytes are still useful as long as my data is useful
Business, individuals, the computer industry, everyone should benefit from changing to a document centred world from the current application centred world.
A bold move in that direction will help me to favor a shiny new Mac in a clamshell, when this machine goes belly up (hopefully no time soon). My workstatation/server will probably remain Linux.
The killer-app is dead.
The killer-doc must rule the new information era.
Long live the killer-doc!
AppleWorks doesn't suck, never did.
The idea of an all-in-one application always worked against the Macintosh operating system. How could Apple show how well divergent programs work together when promoting a single application? Office suites and bundles (like iLife) make much more sense.
Personally, I still miss WriteNow and SuperPaint. I never did really replace them, nor did I ever find a spread sheet program that was in the same class (fast, functional, light weight, reasonably priced). ClarisWorks was okay, but personally I never could get over the stigma of using an all-in-one package.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
X11 on Mac is adequate--enough to get the job done, but little more than that. I'll take native apps over X11 any day of the week.
Quite right. And the reason for that is that Apple doesn't want people to write GUI apps to an open standard, they want to lock developers into Carbon and Cocoa.
If Apple made X11 start up transparently on a Mac, improved its performance, and provided a small X11 extension to access the menu bar and a few common Cocoa components, you'd have a version of OOo that looks and feels indistinguishable from a Cocoa application within a few months.
But Apple is still firmly stuck in their proprietary thinking. They'll take advantage of open source software when they can and when it is commodity functionality, but they want all the stuff that matters to be proprietary.
I'm hoping that the upcoming OpenOffice 2.0 is what's going to kill MS Office. With a new Access-like app, I think it finally offers everything MS Office does. Plus more. I can't get over the usefullness of having OpenOffice Draw. Trying to do page layout or vector graphics in a word processor is a pain. Whenever I had to do this in office, I just used PowerPoint, which was mediocre at best. For someone who grew up doing page layout in CorelDraw, using MS Word's draw capability makes me want to kill myself.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Do NOT feed the trolls, they're just upset there is no OS X for the X86 line for them to pirate.
True, after buying a Mac they can just pirate it like the other Mac users when apple releases the patched... I mean, next version.
OSX was a success because the core of the operating system was already there and Apple could concentrate on the user experience. I wonder if putting a good front end to TeX could achieve a similar effect.
Oh lord, how I hope you are wrong. My opinion is no guide to the market, but I'll venture it as an opinion of one.
Caveat: Faughnan's Law says that if I have a defined need, marketers should run screaming in the opposite direction. I am representative of a less than tiny sliver of the market. So I'm not exactly contradicting Danielrm. On the other hand, if a vendor produces a clone of Word, we might as well stick with Word.
So a better solution than Word, even if the market is only 1% of the total world of computer users, might still be more successful than a Word clone -- esp. if the measure of success is the ability to sell a very end-user friendly low cost OS X hardware/software bundle.
That said, I despise Microsoft Word. Here's why.
Oh, there are good things to Microsoft Word. It's a great grammar and spelling checker. It handles fonts well. The tables could be worse. Overall, though, it really is an awful piece of software. The collision between the inline formatting and object-oriented formatting models is a horrid mess. I think Word is tolerated primarily because most people use it as a slightly fancier version of TextEdit/WordPad -- and because only a few of us are old enough to remember MORE 3.1, FullWrite, AmiPro, even WordPerfect/DOS. (Frankly, in some ways WordPad is a better wordprocessor than Word.)
Word wasn't always bad. Until 1995 (97?) it really was excellent. Around that time though, it ran into the Product Manager from heck. That person is probably fairly senior at Microsoft now -- they ought to be pelted with something smelly.
I read (Joel on Software) that Microsoft, disgusted with Word's bleeding mess of a code base, once tried a full rewrite. That effort failed.
My biggest complaint with OpenOffice is that it's TOO MUCH like Word. Of course that may make sense from a marketing perspective, but I don't like it.
Mellel has a very closed and very proprietary file format. I won't risk it. In the OS X world Nisus Writer Express is the most promising option -- it uses an RTF derived file format. If Apple does release iWorks Pages I'll compare it to Nisus Writer Express. I may end up with both, as I would not be at all surprised if iWorks Pages is a resource hog.
John Faughnan
jfaughnan@spamcop.net
This should please the average Mac user that finds the current OOo interface terrible looking, not to mention very interesting to use.
This is really Apple's fault. If Apple made a firm commitment to supporting X11 transparently alongside Carbon and Cocoa, software like OOo would quickly have the necessary Macintosh hooks added to it to look and feel natively (even though they would continue to be mostly X11-based internally).
No self-respecting Mac user wants a bloated application with a Windows interface. Sadly, that's what OpenOffice is and we already have a commercial version of that called MS Office.
What is more likely is a paradigm shift. Lots of talk about the program being called "Pages" which hints at perhaps a more digital variation of documents (HTML? PDF?).
Apple's software always has a sleek interface with it. Just look at the last few years of application releases: iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, iCal, Garageband, etc.
Finally, 100% office compatibility is over-rated, especially if the format is a more portable one, like PDF. I can use PDF to send documents to virtually any PC user, no Office required.
Apple's not going to do critical damage to itself by pissing off MS sufficiently to get MS to cancel MSO:Mac. Their number one question for switchers is "Can I use MSO?" Apple knows how important MSO:Mac is, which is why they can't support MS's chief rival.
For how many years have I been using the ampersand without realizing this?
It's like you've just shown me the old-lady / young-lady illusion.
Wow.
timothy -- beats head with mallet to shake loose a brain cell
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
...status.
Microsoft is a monopoly who uses integration without openness to lock out competition.
Apple does a lot of integration and then open up just about every important framework for the developer community to extend it and make it better than Apple does.
Those are huge differences.
I've said for years the problem isn't multiple platforms. It's the lack of file format standards.
Look at HTML, JPEG, GIF and other widely accepted standards. The same could be done for word proceessing, spereadsheet and presentation type files. Use XML, whcih I think MS was planning until they realized XML based Office files meant you no longer needed Office to work on them. ;-) Not sure what the status of that is now.
--- Ban humanity.
Hah! I denounce you as one of the false elite! Surely a person of your supposed education would know that the portcullis is lowered in the closed position, not pulled up. It is the drawbridge that is raised.
seriously.
EOM
I was very dismayed when Office 2004 was released and failed to support right to left languages at all. OS X has had support for Arabic and Hebrew since Jaguar; plenty of time for MS to implement this feature. In all likelihood Apple's Word replacement would be a Cocoa app, which should support right-to-left text seamlessly.
I'm throughly impressed with Keynote, and it has long since replaced Powerpoint for me. Assuming Apple can create a word processor of the same caliber, I will be there in a second. Recently I was working with a 200+ page document full of tables and equations; Word 2004 was dog slow dealing with this, crashed a few times, and occasionally would refuse to save the document complaining that there was insufficient disk space, even with 10+ gigabytes free. Feature-wise Office for Mac might be better than the Windows version, but its performance is seriously lacking. Yes, it may perform fine on your machine (it's okay on my 800mhz G4 and G3), but it's still not as speedy as the Windows version.
I wouldn't be too concerned about MS seeing this as a competitive move on Apple's part, no more than they did when Keynote was released. People who need a full-fledged Office suite are still likely to purchase Office, while the student or family who needs a functional suite will be happy with Apple's offering.
Everything Apple is doing is designed to sell more Macs:
They opened their retail stores so there would be places where people could see and try out well-maintained Macs (as opposed to the vandalized, broken ones my local CrapUSA always seems to have), and see how much software and how many accessories exist for the Mac.
When iTunes and the iPod became available for Windows, the idea was for Windows users to get exposure to Apple hardware and software. They might test drive a Mac in the Apple Store while there to buy their iPod, and may even walk out with an iMac or iBook. Still more people might consider the Mac for their next computer purchase, where they would not have before their Apple Store visit.
Additionally, the iTMS has the most favorable DRM, and music purchased there only works on the iPod.
Currently you can't download QuickTime for Windows anymore without installing iTunes. Windows users who get QuickTime will check out iTunes, and they may buy a song or five or ten.
Soooo, Apple is hoping Windows users will install QuickTime for whatever reason, end up buying a couple iTunes songs, buy an iPod on which to play them, eventually discover that the Mac is a viable alternative to Windows, and finally convert to the Mac platform.
~Philly
Hey, I'm a reporter with National Public Radio and I'm doing a story about this year's MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. Is there anyone out there who is a big Mac fan who plans on attending? I'd like to talk with someone about what they find exciting about the expo. You can give me a call at 415-503-3164 or email me at LSydell@npr.org Thanks. Laura Sydell
... just ONE word: StarOffice!
Sun has yet to creat a version of this fine
product for Mac OSX, instead supporting MS
Windows, Solaris (SPARC + Intel) and Linux.
If Apple were to help (paying Sun) for the
native Quartz release of StarOffice, Sun
would probably be happy to license it to
Apple. I understand that most of the desktops
at Sun Micro are already Apple Macs, not
Solaris platforms, so there would be wide
adoption just inside Sun.
So then why would they write their own suite? That's not going to PO Microsoft any less.
My point is: if they're going to be in the office suite business, they shouldn't re-invent any more wheels than absolutely necessary. If they're going to risk the Wrath of Redmond, then take any advantage they can get--fund a port of OO and leverage at least part of the work the OO group has already done.
NeoOffice.org
Current release is based on OO.o 1.1.3 I believe. Works rock-solid. Check it out!
As a sys admin in an advertising department of a huge corporation, I've been trying to move my clients to OS X, but the lack of MAPI support (so my users can run an Outlook client and use the collaboration tools) has made this a pipe dream. Until Apple or MS ports MAPI, my users are stuck at OS 9. LDAP in my company is not an option, and the only other solution is Terminal Services. I wish Apple and Microsoft would clue into this -- I'm sure I'm not the only one with this issue...
Thanks for the reply. I disagree with the need to dump the OO codebase. UI issues notwithstanding (since Apple would be re-writing much of the UI as a port anyway), the majority of the document manipulation, storage and formatting functions in OO are independent of the UI. It's this work that I would prefer Apple leverage rather than re-invent.
Don't get me wrong: the UI would be a huge task. But I don't think Apple is going to save any time by having both UI and document engine tasks on their to-do lists.
Regarding speed and memory size--obviously those items are in the "YMMV" group. Speed is and was a potential issue--we'll see how it works with 2.0 final. Memory...I don't know. It does use a lot. That might make a difference for some users. But I don't think it would be an "auto-kill" issue for most people.
I still miss WriteNow and SuperPaint
I loved WriteNow, although it had idiosyncratic headers (all headers were the same depth as the largest one), and not-quite wysiwyg multi-column view (although T/Maker did explain that they sacrificed wysiwyg columns for speed and low memory footprint). Unfortunately, by the time WriteNow 3.0 came out (which was 32-bit clean), ClarisWorks 2.0 was around, so I actually bought it. I did (temporalily) go back to WN when I got a PB100, as it was a pain trying to run CW in 2Mb RAM, but once I upgraded it to 4Mb, it was bye bye WriteNow, and hello (on the other machine) ClarisWorks
SuperPaint was also brilliant, in the way it could mix paint and draw layers (and trace from one to the other), but it didn't want to play when I went from a 68000 Classic to a 68040 Centris. Hence ClarisWorks.
I also remember when ClarisWorks 1.0 for Windows was given away on a magazine cover disk - it made for an ultra-cheap setup for people to type in odds and ends during a convention (no big budgets then). A friend summed it up "ClarisWorks just got it right first time!" Version 2 more so.
Now, if only I could have got footnotes to work from text frames...
"She's furniture with a pulse"
FWIW - we're light users at home, but I've been extremely impressed with NeoOffice.
Even in beta it works quite well for us.
(Too cheap to pay for MSOffice, and happy with the improvement that NeoOffice provides over OOo/X on OS X)
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
to those needing OO on OS X but don't want to hunt down obscure and tempramental dependencies to make it work on X11 I suggest checking out NeoOffice http://www.neooffice.org/
it seems a little sluggish but it does what I need it to do and even has a drawing app for simple graphics...and its FOSS
I'm a bit puzzled here....
Certainly, I don't like MS, and I very much love my mac.. but if you ask me, the MS office suite for OS X is better than the windows version.. it's a native OS X app, not some nasty port, it behaves accordingly. I was actually shocked that it came out of microsoft.
If Apple can outdo MS in this regard, more power to them.. but Office X for mac is quite a nice product, believe it or not.
" I think embracing and extending Open Office (or even open-sourcing their custom app) would be a better move for Apple. "
OpenOffice blows. Jobs is smart enough to realize it needs lots of work to even keep pace with MS.
If you're going to keep up the soi-disant intellectual routine, you might want to lose the AOL IM in your profile.
If anything, a huge surge in Mac ownership might increase the chances of getting some Big Name Games ported within the same year of the PC release. :P
Like either of that is going to happen. Go on, keep telling yourself that.
I think the essay you're thinking of is Edward Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint," which is available for purchase (but, unfortunately, not perusal) here.
That's my bet. I'll expect you all to pay up when it happens...
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
Here's how Apple could be successful even without MS Office
If the rumors about a robust Apple office suite are true, and I'm pretending I'm Steve Jobs, I'm guessing Apple will continue to work in and around the OS community as IBM has done (and Apple has already done so far).
Apple has learned quite a bit about the open source community by now, after their experiences with Darwin/Mac OS X and KHTML/Safari. The use of open standards is prevalent throughout the bundled applications (Mail -> mbox; Address Book -> vcard; iCal -> icalendar, etc.). Apple should continue this trend with their office suite.
Make the interface irresistible. They have already shown how to do it with ClarisWorks (I never used AppleWorks, but CW 4 was a thing of integrated beauty). They have shown the ability to put great power in simple packages. iTunes. Garage Band. iPhoto. Personally, I have never liked Word's interface (even on the Mac), but there's not a lot of choice. Bring on a contender with a fresh face, and Word's 20-year-old baggage (elements from 1984 are still there -- where's the fscking Font menu!?) will suddenly look very ugly.
Read Word documents reasonably well. Write them perfectly. All translation leaves something to be desired. I don't believe that it is necessary for a Word contender to be 100% feature compatible with Word. It absolutely needs to get styles, sections, margins, tables, footnotes, endnotes, and graphics right, though. A spreadsheet program needs to duplicate the function set of Excel (though not necessarily the syntax; q.v.) It needs to be 100% right for the features that 80% of the people use. Word won not because of its interface, but because people are locked into its format. Break the format and you break the biggest barrier to alternate office contenders. Perhaps this will require work with Open Office developers. That substep should happen no matter what, if only for the following point.
Make the format an open standard. Let anyone write an app to read or write Apple Office documents. This is the corollary to the point above. Don't give people reasons to fear switching to or from your app. Give them the ability to change their mind. That's a feature; people will buy it.
Don't imitate Office Seriously. Do something new. Give people a jump start on new ideas and possibilities. Make everything wiki-like. Docs on the network should be sharable. Build a Subversion repository into every document or home folder.Extend it to every OS X server. Build on the embeddable parts idea from OpenDoc (and semi-executed in CW). Instead of a spreadsheet program, build a full-featured spreadsheet on top of a robust, professional RAD environment with an open API. Let regular people be developers again (whatever happened to HyperCard?).
Buy Omni Group. Or take notes. Or just give them money to continue developing fantastic software. OmniWeb, OmniOutliner, and OmniGraffle are all head-of-class programs. Graffle could easily be part of an Office Pro suite. Especially if you can build and take snapshots of SQL tables like Visio.
IBM is building its business on enterprise open source software like Linux. Apple should continue the progress they have made in the direction of doing the same for personal computing apps.
Et cetera, often abbreviated to etc., and sometimes in older texts as &c. or &/c. It is often used to represent the logical continuation of some sort of series of descriptions. For example:
We need a lot of fruit: apples, bananas, oranges, etc.
It is important to avoid the phrase "and etc." because then you are saying "and and the others".
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
How very crushing...
:|
I must point out that in my defence, I have perhaps only three people on my AIM list, only one of whom I talk to, and that I cut my teeth on ICQ.
Still, you have a point.
iqu
If this rumor is true, I hope that the designers took the time to integrate a seamless desktop&office apps contact/calendar metaphor. They should reside on the desktop, be easiliy accessed from any application that would benefit from it, and sync/share in logical fashion.
MS office's entourage/contact/calendar is okay, but doesn't play well outside the suite. Apples address book/ical/isync/mail gets some of it right but doesn't work well with office apps for example.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Ok, that's one of the funniest posts I have read today.
You are correct, though. OOo for OS X is severely lacking. Another problem it has (aside from the ones you mention) is the difference in the font anti aliasing. Documents opened in OOo look inferior to documents opened in MS Office, or even TextEdit.app. Aqua (and Qucktime) render fonts beautifully on the Mac. X font rendering used for Open office pales in comparison.
To be clear, my beef isn't that Word still *uses* Carbon calls, there are plenty of good reasons to do so, but rather that it uses Carbon calls that only made sense under OS 9, meaning the code wasn't cleaned or re-written from previous versions so much as ported and added too.
Does Word in Office 2004 fix long file name issues ?!? I didn't think it did for some reason...
Stronger: What exactly defines a computer's "strength"? If multitasking is the issue, OS X trounces Windows, and Linux is pretty equivalent.
cheaper: Not for low-end laptops. And if the rumors pan out, not for low-end desktops either. The bottom line for high-end systems favors the Mac nowadays.
Well, my naive troll, you're off, off and off. Macs are traditionally better for "media" because:1) They are still the industry standard--on both the workstation and printing ends.
2) Color management is still far superior on them.
3) In order to use older PostScript type on a Windows machine you ostensibly need a hack.
4) Windows is less efficient--on the user end--when it comes to bouncing files between multiple applications.
4.1) Drag and drop is poor and inconsistent in Windows--almost as inconsistent as the open/save dialogs between different apps.
I hate Grammar Nazi's
To which definition we can also add proprietary music format vendors.
Trust me: I'm over it. I just want stuff to work; no corporate worship for me.
They're trying to sell computers. You can't really sell a $500 computer if you have to pay $400 for MS Standard Office for the Mac. That leaves $100 for the hardware.
If they really want to sell inexpensive computers to home users, they need a current word processor. That's it. No David and Goliath. It's just that Mom needs to write a letter and the iPod doesn't have a keyboard. Enter the xMac.
Just like Apple to make things unnecessarily complicated, isn't it? I don't know how many times I've stared at the OS X desktop and said, HUH?! Where's the damn prompt??? ;-)
I'm sorry but your generalizations about every Mac user being superficial is just not true. There is a lot of power and usability to be found, and a lot of users are attracted to the platform because of specific features and not the idea of some computing utopia. If a certain platform were to be indeed perfect it wouldn't attract a certain group that excludes all others, many demand perfection in specific areas and if a Mac fulfills that need then great. You on the other hand come off as pretentious and elitist, far from the perfection you see in the platform.
M$ Office works with framemaker pro. Will the new mac office?
He He. Just messing with you. Guess I am dating myself.
Never any mod points when you need them... besides not wanting to give up my karma for the grandparent. Here's the meat of the real posting:
I get the crash too. I found it happens from tables made in word on windows. DO NOT SCROLL when you open a large document on word for mac if it was created on word for windows. Use (??ctrl-)command-end to reach the end of the document (then wait until it actually moves there). You should find that the crashes don't happen anymore after that initial lag. The crash, AFAICT is caused by the renderer in word. It appears as if the tables are converted to a metafile and then rendered. This is a blocking operation. If you attempt to scroll past one of these (which is on a seperate thread), the renderer will ask for data that is beyond the current conversion point (which it thinks is the end of the document). The behavior is not unlike a buffer overflow. I was able to create a trivial 6 page document that exhibited this behavior reliably. Incidentally, I haven't had this problem since the last office patch. Instead, I now get the "out of disk space" message when I try to save a document that has been open for a while. I started getting that after the last OS X upgrade.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I've been very impressed with EVERYTHING that the Mac team at Microsoft has created. The Mac version of Office was developed with about 1/15th of the number of people as the Windows version, and I find it damn solid. There are a couple of issues with Entourage that I've found, but they're pretty minor, esp. when you compare them to Apple's Mail.app. As a business owner, the copies of Office that we buy for everyone on OSX are definitely worth-while. Sure, I wish they were free, but that's still *quite* a few years off, to have the features (not bloat) that Office has.
That's just simply not true. You are saying that Windows XP cannot operate idependently of Microsoft Office. One word; lie. You are a moron.
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
TIMMY!!!!
Wouldn't it make sense to build an office suite based upon something that works well with it?
Well, KOffice integrates so well into the KDE environment, it is incredible!
KOffice always felt more like AppleWorks than MS Office to me (not sure why). I, for one, would love to see Apple take this promising piece of software and use its underlying libraries as the basis of iWork.
Apple has been great about submitting KHTML changes back to the project tree. KOffice would benefit so much from Apple taking up their code.
There's only one way to type a document. Apple making their own office suite would be redundant in today's market. Also, would it be wise to have Apple making their word processor's documents Apple Only or Microsoft won't allow .doc's to be opened in Apple, or Microsoft won't allow Apple's format to be opened in Word?
Let me, up front, profess my ignorance about Open Office and it's development, other than the blurbs that have appeared on /. I've been a long-time user of LaTeX and Xmgrace for my word-processing and data presentation needs, so I've generally avoided the need for any other office-type software. In recent months, I've installed gnumeric and abiword to deal with some Word and Excel documents, but that's been about the extent of my dealings with office suites.
.doc or .xls file ? I'm thinking about something along the lines of libjpeg, libtiff, or libmpeg, but more along the lines of librtf, libmsword, libmsexcel, etc ? So that any office suite would be able to use these conversion libraries, render the document correctly, and make available the editing features the author wants to implement...
...
So the million dollar question is - are there any libraries out there (being developed) that will let any program open up a
It just seems to that all of the work that has made gnumeric as good as it is should help make OO better, and likewise for OO writer and abiword.
So do such libraries exist, or is every OS office project doing their own conversion, and essentially "reinventing the wheel." It would make sense to pool efforts here, make the libraries, and slap whatever front-end you want to on it, just as is done with Gecko, and KHTML
IIRC, in OS X it was never a part of the system prefs. When they were shipping with IE as the default browser, you could change the URI helper apps from IE's prefs (and looks like you still can). Now that no one in their right might uses IE as a primary browser, we've all wondered where that panel went to
There are several 3rd party panels that do a fine job. I'm using More Internet. But I agree it really should be a Apple supplied pane.
You, and others in this thread consistently misuse the term 'monopoly.'
Monopoly means, under US law, sufficient market power to set the price for one's product without regard to the price of competitors' offerings.
Apple has no such market power. Apple must price their computer/OS combo with careful consideration to the cost of comparably configured PCs with Windows, or they will go out of business. So, no, Apple does not have a monopoly.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has been judged by a Federal court, (a finding of fact upheld by the US Supreme Court, BTW), to have a Monopoly in PC operating systems. This means that MS can price Windows without regard for the price of, for example, Linux. Clearly, this is the case - Linux can be had for the cost of a blank CD ( $1.00). Even the most bargain basement price for Windows is an order of magnitude more expensive.
In the trivial lay sense you use 'monopoly,' every commercial entity has a monopoly: The Dunkin Donuts at Porter Square has a 'monopoly' on donuts in Porter Square; The Kinko's next door has a 'monopoly' on copying services on that block, etc. This is simply a lay misuse of the term 'monopoly,' and has nothing to do with the legal definition of term, which legal definition has been found by Federal Courts to apply to Microsoft, not to Apple.
Bravo! One of those posts that light up the Slashdot sky.
If Apple made a firm commitment to supporting X11 transparently alongside Carbon and Cocoa...
...then Mac OS X would become just another flavor of Linux. Not likely to happen any time soon. Apple realize that the only thing that differentiates their platform is the ease of use and integration of software with software and software with hardware. Apple most certainly doesn't want users confusing the abomination that is X11 with Aqua/Cocoa. X11 and the native Aqua GUI will remain noticeably separate for as long as Mac OS X computers are a key component of Apple's bottom line. Similar logic applies to why Classic is so jarringly distinct from Aqua (hint: if the integration were seamless, why would developers ever do a native Mac OS X port?)
If the iworks thing is true and this new office suite comes with the next version of os x, I will start throwing away PCs at work.
Modest Mouse was great about 6 years ago. Now they suck, but they have massive popularity. Now they put on absolutely horrible shows on SNL. People who like their new album (I am not one of them) simply hate their old stuff.
My other first post is car post.
1. Apple makes everything. Talk about having all your eggs in one basket! What happens if they go under
Four billion or something in cash. I think they're good.
I don't think so. Owning the hardware, the OS, the apps, AND the Office suite, geez, what a nightmare!
I think you're reading way too much into it. Think of it this way: you are free to not buy a Mac. Unless that changes, there is no monopoly. Nobody calls Sony a monopoly because they make both the Playstation hardware and software. You can buy a GameCube.
How much incentive is there for 3rd party dev folks when Apple is doing it all?
Apple's hardly "doing it all." What they've been doing for some time is addressing the weaknesses in the platform. MS Office is "okay," but far from the best representation of what the Mac OS X frameworks have to offer.
I understand Apple has a sliver of the marketplace but I'm not sure making everything for your computer platform helps you in the long run.
I don't really feel like I have the time or patience to muck about with stuff that doesn't work so well, so I choose to buy a Mac.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
A few things to keep in mind:
1. Mac OS X has had some level of built-in Word compatibility since Panther shipped
2. Apple and Microsoft have a broad cross-licensing agreement.
Also, it's not like the only reason to write an office suite is to overthrow Microsoft. Apple didn't write Safari to conquer IE.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Except for tables
A relevant story:
Jobs said Tiger will continue Apple's drive for improved Windows compatibility. New features aimed at interoperability will include better support for SMB home directories and the ability to display Word tables within TextEdit.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
If Apple puts Microsoft in a position where they are competing, Microsoft may well do what they did in the Safari situation and stop developing the product
Not sure why everyone assumes IE's dropped development was a effect of Safari.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
There are also rumors that Apple will drop their computer unit and focus on the music side of things.
Uh, no. That would be corporate suicide.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
With this "iWork" or whatever it is, Apple is probably producing something that is little to no threat to MSO, which is actually in Apple's best interest, for the reasons in my grandparent post.
So what's the shorthand symbol for "phone home"?
01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789 01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789 01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789 0123456789.doc
End of Line.
Or, like most of the people I should OSX too, "Where are all the icons?! How do you launch anything?"
...the incredibly dated Apple Works and incredibly bloated and slow MS Office.
MS Office on the Mac is a fucking dream compared to MS Office for Windows. In fact, it has been more enjoyable than any other office suite that I have come across.
Office just flies on my iBook.
Yes, yes, yes.
It's also Version 1.0
Most people just use the Applications directory. I myself have made an alias directory that I keep in the dock. I use that to launch programs.
Actually, if you haven't noticed, spell check doesn't work in web form fields in Mac OS X. If it did work here I would get a nasssty notice of underlined red carats where I typed nasssty, but I didn't, twice. Therefore, spouting about spell check system wide, when it is really not, is harmful to your image and the image of Mac OS X., so make sure you can spell and read your posts before you submit them (which I think you did). Also, spell checking is not one word. ;-) Check the OED if you want to confirm. It is well up to date.
That level of component-based integration was done commercially by Microsoft and IBM first; Apple's OpenDoc was a late "me too" effort.
But neither OLE nor OpenDoc actually solve the problem: they are API-level efforts and far too fine-grained. That has made using them far too complex and unreliable. It's their complexity and lack of reliability that made developers shun them.
The failure of OLE and OpenDoc to become more widely used is a testament of Microsoft's and Apple's inability to develop good, simple, usable APIs and good implementations. But a good component standard will eventually be developed, you can be sure of that.
There are a lot of barebones alternatives around. But most people WANT the features in Office. And I must say that up to now I haven't found an obvious Office replacement. And believe me, I'm looking.
(one nice - and yes, less bloated - alternative would be a native KOffice, even then I couldn't really swear I wouldn't re-install Office)
Disclaimer: not a FOSS critique, not at all! Just my preference, which seems to be shared by a majority, however uncool...
I think, therefore I am...I think.
a prettied up textedit, a simplified keynote, a simple database app and a simplified excell.
with plenty of templates that actually mean something to home users. and maybe some nice new ideas that hadn't occured to me yet (the typical apple surprises), but not a professional MS Office replacement. That'd be a futile exercise. Not that they wouldn't succeed, but they wouldn't be able to make it stick.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Actually, if you haven't noticed,
;-)
From Safari:
Edit -> Spelling -> Check Spelling as You Type.
Ouch, my image and the image of Mac OS X!
nasssty gets a nice red dashed underline.
spellcheck doesn't
I don't think that, if Apple release any office suite, that they'd want to use a base of OOo, or anything else, for that matter, for several reasons. Against OOo's favour is the fact that it's very Win/Linux geared, both in terms of interface and, I've heard, that even getting it to run in X11 on OS X, let alone Quartz/Aqua, is challenging.
The reason Apple wouldn't use any third-party app for a base is simply that it wouldn't give them enough room to create something truly unique and innovative.
All of that said, I could see Apple using the import/export engine of an open-source app (see Nisus Writer Express http://nisus.com/ for an example using AbiWord's engine). Then again, might improve upon what's already present in TextEdit.
Kirin
As far as I know, sic literally means "so" or "thus" as in sic semper tyrannis, which sorta means "thus always tyrants" or "that's how it always is with tyrants". In case you wanted a literal definition of sic. Someone else already noted the word's use in editing.
Again, yhou're talking about Office v.X--from 3 years ago. Office 2004 is the current version, and I don't think ANY of your complaints apply. It's received very positive reviews all around. I got a student edition for $99 which gives me 3 installs.
Mac rumor sites offer a constant barrage of unfounded and stupid speculation about every possible product Apple might possibly offer. Thinksecret tends to be pretty reliable to start out with, but whenever Thinksecret has an article with photos or screenshots removed "at the request of Apple's lawyers", it's a pretty good confirmation of the truth of the info.
First, if it were a rebranded OpenOffice, they wouldn't make much in the way of sales (GPL, people would have to be able to get it free). This might not sound so bad, except why jeopardize Microsoft's interest in developing Office for the Mac by starting a potentially money-losing venture (takes money to develop, but won't sell). Plus Sun would have too much control (since they are behind OOo). If Apple is making its own office suite, I would imagine part of the motivation would be to be out-from-under relying on another company to make sure you have basic productivity apps.
But there's another reason why it wouldn't make sense to go with OOo for their word-processor-- they've already done too much in-house work on the components necessary for a word-processor. Spell-checking, reading/writing Word documents, and PDF generation are all built into the OS. TextEdit can already be used to make basic docs. I bet some of the advanced formatting and interface design that is missing from TextEdit, Apple's already worked out for Keynote (I haven't used Keynote, but I'm saying some of that work could probably be reused). So, if they just expanded the capabilities of TextEdit and improved the interface a bit, it could be as good a word-processor as I'd need.
So why start over with a non-native office suite, spend all that time an effort porting it over, reviewing the code, bla bla bla, when you could just pull together some in-house components and have a pretty good app?
So why start over with a non-native office suite...
Just one reason: market share. The only thing they can do to improve the Mac's image in the work place is to have a toolset that works better on Mac and has a large market share.
Businesses are moving to Linux, and there is no good Office tool for Linux (Open Office is the best, but still not professional quality in my opinion). By making whatever the Mac solution is open source, it gains market share and credibility. By making it run better on Mac than on Linux, they sell more Macs. Trying to sell office software means going head-to-head against an entrenched competitor (Microsoft). It is much better to go against a commodity market (PC manufacturers) with a diferentiated product.
The main problem is that most CTOs and CEOs, know that MS Office runs best on Windows. If you make your money using Word and Excel, you don't "risk your job" buying a Mac. Of course that is not really true, but perception is reality here. If you tell them to use TextEdit, it better not just run on Macs!
I wasn't really saying use OpenOffice and make it better for Mac - I'm just saying whatever they do will probably meet strategic objectives (not near term financial objectives) better if it is open source.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
However, if you notice, Apple isn't really an open-source shop. They help open-source, they support open-source, they use open-source, but they don't really open-source their own products. I'm not saying they shouldn't, I'm saying that don't.
However, I do think their profitability would be hurt by, say, open-sourcing all of OSX, iTunes, iPhoto, etc. If I were running Apple, I also wouldn't choose to create an open-source office suite or run an OpenOffice porting project. Like I said, they'd be risking Microsoft withdrawing support of MS Office (as well as quashing other 3rd party developers) by creating a project that they won't be able to sell. I don't think the peripheral benefits would be sufficient.
Again, if I were running Apple, I would sooner create an office suite and port it to Linux and Windows. But I probably wouldn't even do that. Most likely, I would probably make a highly compatable closed-source office suite with open file-formats while throwing some help/support toward the OpenOffice/NeoOffice projects (and the support would include helping them read the Apple file-formats). For Apple's current business model, it makes a lot of sense to cultivate an open-source community, but not a lot of sense to open source your own products.
It makes you wonder when Apple is going to name one of their products "iSuck". Well, if the name fits . . .
They could just give me a Carbonized version of Word 5.1 and I'd be happy...
Like anyone can even know that
My wife made a DVD of a long slideshow (~300 photos/8 songs/30 minutes running length) on our PowerMac using iPhoto(pics from digital camera and scanner) /iTunes (music from CDs and ITMS) /iMovie (creating slideshow with music)/iDvd (creating DVD with menus and burning.) It had very nice quality and was very easy and fun for her to make. My brother-in-law wanted to do something similar for his daughter's 16th birthday, but of course he only had a WinTel PC. However, MS actually has a pretty nice program for doing this kind of thing: MS PhotoStory. You can
download it for free if you let MS validate that your version of XP is legit, or I think you can buy it as part of MS Plus! for a nominal fee (iLife ain't free either these days.) It seems to be a very nice and easy program with integration to Media Player (for music.) I haven't tried creating a DVD with it, though I would guess you would need another program for this.
You've got to be kidding when you say Apple should port OO.o to OSX. OO is one of the most bloated pieces of software out there. You aren't gonna be able to run it on a 5 yr old mac period (remember macs live 5 years, not 3). If Apple was going to use existing OSS stuff, they should avoid OO like the plague and port Abiword and Gnumeric.
The Macintosh sometimes refuses to eject a CD if there is a file open from it. The problem, though, is that sometimes it just reuses to eject the CD without comment, and I get the impression that it didn't recognise that I pressed the key.
Oftentimes the file that I have open is a disk image, meaning I have to "eject" the virtual disk before I can pop the real-world one out of the drive.
It's a minor annoyance, but I consider it less of an annoyance than ejecting the CD and having other operations fail because they were still accessing the disk when it was open (which I accidently do on my Win2000 macine at work). It was part of why the original Mac hid the eject button of their floppy drive behind the paper-clip hole. Heck, if Apple could they would put clamps on USB sticks to keep them from being pulled unless you dismounted them first.
Apple does a lot more double-checking to see if a volume is still in use before it dismounts. It's part of the original Macintosh philosophy, why the old floppy drives didn't have eject buttons (or more precisely, hid them so that you needed a bent paper clip).
you retard
and no self respecting mac zealot elitist would be caught dead drinking merlot.
it's f**king joke people get the f**k over it
It's been long enough since IBM bought them and there is no sign of improvement.