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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.
I'm sure you mean instead of gecko, the mozilla core, rather than basing it on mozilla itself.
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?
No, OpenOffice.org is not a worthy contender (yet). It requires X11, has no integration with Mac OS, looks ugly, etc. These are things that Mac users don't tolerate.
...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
If by "from the get-go" you mean when it was still called ClarisWorks, I have to take offense (given that I wrote a lot of it). All the reviewers of the early versions, and millions of users, would disagree with you. In fact there are still lots of things you can do with AppleWorks that you can do with no other single program out there.
That said, by the time the name was changed to AppleWorks, the ball had clearly been dropped, and essentially nothing has been done for the past few years. So, dated - yes. Sucked from the get-go - I think (hope) you have a minority opinion there.
Details on ClarisWorks/AppleWorks history here:
http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bob/clarisworks.php/
Bob Hearn
They reported that on Dec 29th.
Think Secret Predicts Sub-$500 Headless Mac
Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 29, @07:03AM
The MacOS version requires XFree86 to run and work has slowed on the Aqua and Quartz tracks.
I'm quite certain that should this rumored office suite actually come to market that it will not require XF86 to run. This should please the average Mac user that finds the current OOo interface terrible looking, not to mention very interesting to use.
Don't get me wrong, I use OOo and am happy for it. I hope to help the porting along as much as I can. Right now, it's still scary for most (Mac) people.
Slashdot's Apple section: Rumors for Nerds. Speculation that matters.
Ahem...
They mentioned the sub-$500 last week...
Probably already posted, but there's NeoOffice/J, which does a much better job of integrating into Mac OS X. Ignore the Windows-style widgets in the user interface - properly important things like styled copy-and-paste, printing, system fonts and so on work brilliantly, unlike with the X11-based port.
:-)
Also, it's very much in active development, and keeps on improving. They've been working on the low-level stuff first, getting that to work nicely, and they're now starting on making it much more Mac-like. Aqua menus are just one recent addition...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
OpenOffice=Bloated. Microsoft Office on OSX is pretty good IMHO. I don't know where the submitter got the idea that it's bloated. I run it on a 1 GHz Powerbook and it runs fine. The BIGGEST item I have to bitch about with Apple is that OS X runs best with at least 512MB and can take all you can give it (more you have, less you have to swap). Increase ram and OS X and everything else including Office will run faster.
Gorkman
OO.org, much as I like it, makes MSO:Mac look lithe and graceful by comparison. In addition, OO.org lacks the features and ease-of-use of MSO:Mac, as well as the speed. The only thing it has going for it for most users is price, but even at $0 I still pay for MSO:Mac because I need what it offers.
Meh. AppleWorks is a Bad Carbon Port, which is shameful coming from Apple. Its user interface is not consistent with the rest of OS X, even with other Carbon apps. And the text rendering is pretty terrible. I'd rather use TextEdit. Or TeX. And that's saying a lot.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
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.
& is shorthand for 'et'. It is actually 'et', written all as one character, if you look closely at it.
Rik
Not that Keynote really caused any problems--but iWord is a different story.
They already have iWord, only it's called TextEdit, and it's fully compatible with 98% of Word docs. Most of the rest will be compatible when tables are added in Tiger.
If the name iWorks is correct, it means that this suite won't be aimed at the pro market - that would be PowerWorks. Everything from Apple that starts with "i" has been targeted at the home user. So you almost have it, though your numbers are reversed: iWorks for the 95% that don't need the bloat Office offers, MS Office for the 5% that do.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
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
it's not quite a Powerpoint killer.
For you, maybe.
What killed powerpoint in our company was the total lack of an export feature for anything not resembling a PC.
After trying 3 different companies' variations of "ppt2dvd", and discovering that all three basically served as a low-framerate screengrab of the running presentation (one wouldn't even work in a dual head setup with ppt running the presentation on the second head), we gave up and used keynote's ability to convert the thing into a video file which we then turned into a dvd.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Just to add to this, for non-Mac users who don't know, Apple's X11 support isn't even installed in a default OS X install. Nor is it preloaded onto their systems. If you want it, you either have to select it at install time, or use your OS X install disc(s) to install it yourself, as I had to do on my pre-installed PowerBook G4.
Technical users will have no problem installing this to get OpenOffice installed and running, but many Mac users won't have any desire to do so to run an office suite which has a terrible look and feel on OS X.
Yaz.
There's a patch that give NeoOffice the Aqua menus, but when I downloaded the latest beta, I found they have already included Aqua-style menus. The scrollbars are still un-Maclike, though.
JA
http://www.johnalex.org/
The fundamental difference between MS and Apple is that MS already has a monopoly in desktop operating systems, and US antitrust laws prohibit leveraging one's monopoly status in one market to monopolize another. Which is exactly what MS did with IE and with Office.
Apple, on the other hand, is not a monopoly, and does not fall under such rules.
Lyx on Mac or Linux and even Windows for me.
Mac port:
http://wiki.lyx.org/pmwiki.php/LyX/Mac
My blog, if you're interested: http://www.purp
OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 is for Mac OS X (X11)d s.html
http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/ooo-osx_downloa
OO is for X-11...no-one I know has been able to install it properly due to dependency hell
don't bother with OO -- use NeoOffice instead (office suite)
http://www.neooffice.org/
or AbiWord (word processing only)
http://www.abisource.com/
or spend $60 and get
Nisus (word processing only)
http://www.nisus.com/
I have all three and like each for different reasons but tend to use NeoOffice and Nisus the most...
You might as well just use X's TextEdit. Especially on laptops, it doesn't drain the battery nearly as much as either AW or MW.
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
Design issue.
The framework for selecting the default browser is accessible to any program, so any browser could theoretically let you pick the default browser. But there is no place in the system where the user can access this setting directly without having to go through a browser.
Now, rewrite your post pointing out where and how Apple has used its so-called monopoly power to walk over competitors and create unfair playing fields or situations where honest competition cannot happen. Oh, and the perception by a third party that there is no incentive is not the result of Apple abusing their "monopoly." And neither is Apple stealing ideas for Sherlock and Dashboard or whatever from small developers. Those developers could have patented their ideas and staved off such a move. Copying someone's unprotected idea is fair game in business. That's all fair (not very nice, I've give you, but fair nonetheless.) However, if Apple were actively undermining the efforts of their competitors by using their monopoly power in a behind-the-scenes way, that would be illegal.
That's what Microsoft was accused of doing and summarily found guilty of. The bundling of software by MS wasn't illegal per se but was rather pinpointed as part of the way MS kept competitors at bay.
Just being a monopoly isn't illegal at all, and in fact, in some situations, the government supports a monopoly in order to further a given technology or product. I think we can all agree that the government-sanctioned monopoly on telephone services served a purpose at one time in history.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
&c is an abbreviation for et cetera which is hundreds of years old. If you want to stop this abomination, you've got a lot of momentum to cope with. The ampersand glyph is, in fact, derived from a ligature of "et" as written in Carolingian Miniscule lettering.
Actually TextEdit consistently pleases and amazes me with what it can do (including open most MS Word .doc files)...and it integrates images in a way that I only wish Word could do.
The idea of an all-cocoa Appleworks-like product is just wonderful.
See Alain Cottrell's ``Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient'':
http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html
Painting a document visually is a bad idea --- semantic markup is a far better idea, and which can be leveraged for more.
LyX makes LaTeX accessible to the average Joe --- go take a look.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
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 is a good point. Apple developed something called OpenDoc, which consisted of object-oriented documents with plug-in replaceable reader and content generator code. That way, if you didn't like the text editor, you simply bought another that worked the way you wished. BBEdit had a module that replaced the one Apple shipped. IIRC, ODoc was killed in a MS-Apple deal that left Office running on Macs...
This line no sig
Gnumeric is better. As a statistician, he should be avoiding Excel anyway due to its known innacuracies in calculations. Gnumeric is better on that front, too.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Microsoft hasn't learned that lesson. They would happily drive all third-party software off their platform. They are notorious for working with their "partners" in the same manner that preying mantises mate. And Microsoft is totally on the rocks because they do that. Right?
So what is it that Apple has to learn, to avoid disaster?
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
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.
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.
Don't use closed, proprietary formats? Actively maintain the storage of your data on current mediums?
Not rocket science.
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.
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.
You do know that the MacBU (guys who make Mac Office) is one of Microsoft's most profitable businesses. It brings in about a billion dollars a quarter, or something stupid like that. MacOffice isn't going anywhere soon.
Microsoft realised a long time ago that Mac users will never switch, so they may as well make some money off them. Bill Gates was once quoted as saying that MS made more money from every Mac sold than Apple did. I would say that probably still true.
If nothing else, iWork will force MS to compete... which is good for everyone.
erm, the QuickTime you're thinking about isn't an application, it's a library. You could however remove the "Quicktime Player" application without any ill effects and it can be done simply by dragging the icon to the trash which is what the original poster was talking about. That's not possible with IE on Windows as testified by Microsoft in court.
As I said above, I like Cocoa, I get that its richer, but the reality is that most haven't moved to it yet because there's no compelling reason to port (incremental productivity gains aren't a business case, they're a technique for execution). Skills for Obj-C also are a perceived obstacle (an exagerrated one, but nevertheless present).
Thus new apps (Omniweb, Mail.app, etc.) have many reasons to go Cocoa, but legacy apps (Adobe, MS, etc.) have little reason.
But note that even some new apps, like Safari, are hybrid. Speed was an issue, at least prior to 10.3, when I noticed Mail.app and OmniWeb sped up.
which is why people who want to write native OS X programs usually write in Cocoa.
Mostly small ISV applications, not larger apps, yet, from my knowledge. It would be nice, but it's a slow growth.
-Stu
> MS gives away free viewers for these filetypes here for Windows and Mac
For Mac? Where? I don't see any viewers for the Mac. Some *import* converters, but not any viewers that I can see (apart from the full Office Suite, of course).
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.
Deleteing Quicktime.app doesn't remove any of the codecs. I can drag it to the trash and empty it, no problem. Finder still previews just fine, thank you. As I understand it, WMP isn't quite so easily removed.
And as long as we're talking about the Finder, I could decide to trash it and port Konquerer, use it as my file browser instead. Or Safari. Or even IE. Now wouldn't that be ironic.
I can download the source and binaries for OS Xs kernel. I can install and run it without any GUI layer at all. Could you please point to directions on how one installs NT without the GUI layer?
Which is why I said 'portrayed' as inseparable. MS seems to want everyone to believe that their apps can't be removed without hampering core functionality. I'm not saying it's true. I understand that the apps are (or should be) nothing more than front-ends.
(tig)
Ignorance and prejudice and fear
Walk hand in hand
The majority of people in my country drive on the right side of the road. Hence I find it a good idea to do the same.
.1% preference.
The majority of people read and write office/excell documents, hence I find it a good idea to at least write to that standard if not with the same apps (which happen to be not so bad as people make them out to be, regardless of the mud and blood that hangs on it). And incidentally I do enjoy being able to open these same documents, instead of sending them back with a note 'please accomodate me and my
Cheers!
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Excuse me? I think you are confusing DisplayPostscript (NeXTStep) with DisplayPDF (now called Quartz). They are completely different technologies. Quartz is a compositing engine (MS is copying with longhorns avalon).
They scrapped DisplayPostscript because of licensing issues with Adobe and because it was old and messy. Get your facts straight.
X11 is a client/server graphics and window server, like DisplayPDF. Apple could drop DisplayPDF entirely and replace it with X11, while keeping the rest of the platform identical; most users and developers would not even notice, except perhaps for the smaller memory footprint and better performance they'd be getting with X11.
You are either a troll or clueless. I'm not sure which. X11 only provides a graphics port and some simple gfx primitives/widgets. It does not support transparency/alpha channel effects and it does not have a compositing engine. I'm not even going to respond to the rest of your comment. You don't have a clue what DisplayPDF/Quartz is. I will say this. Aqua http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/aqua/ is the widget interface akin to X11 on other Unixes and it makes use of Quartz (a compositing engine based on PDF) http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/quartz/ and OpenGL http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/graphicsandme dia/ for rendering the aqua widgets/interface.
Here are a few more links:d ex.html/ e /
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/architecture/in
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/quartzextrem
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
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.