Alternatives To Office For Mac OS X

imatt writes "From eWeek's article on MS Office Alternatives for Mac: 'Major milestones were recently announced for two Mac OS X-compatible software suites that could provide an alternative to the near-ubiquitous Microsoft Office...NeoOffice/J uses a standard Mac OS X installer, presents native Aqua menus, does not require Mac OS X users to install and use X11 software, uses Mac OS X fonts and has native printing support.' Most [options] seem to be open source, which is good for the programming community and better for the Apple user."

Comments

NeoOffice/J

[LochNess]

I have NeoOffice/J installed on my PowerBook, and it works pretty well. It's a bit slow, but definitely functional, and it has loaded every Office document I have asked it to.

Um

[mcc]

What do you mean?

Re:Um

[Senjutsu]

I like pages a lot, but don't go into it expecting anything like your standard Office-esque word processor, because that isn't what it's intended to be. It's essentially a combination simple word processor and page layout program, and using it is much more akin to a sort of visual version of the experience of writing your document in LaTeX.

Both options are great

[AKAImBatman]

As a Mac user, I have to say that both Office v.X and NeoOffice/J are excellent options. Microsoft gave Office v.X the full Aqua treatment, and even made certain that the interface was more consistent with the OS X desktop than with the Windows Desktop.

That said, NeoOffice/J is my personal favorite. While it hasn't looked very "lickable" up until recently, I've found it to be far more user friendly, and overall quite stable. (With one of the best document rescue implementations I've ever seen! If something bad happens, it still usually manages to stop, save the file to disk, then dump its core. Amazing.) IMHO, I couldn't do articles without it.

Re:Both options are great

[corporatemutantninja]

I've been using v.X, and while the functionality is there something down deep isn't quite right. My Powerbook runs hotter if any of the MS apps are running, even in the background, so even idling they're hitting the processor hard. Worse, with Tiger my Powerbook FREQUENTLY gets tied up paging the harddrive, and I'm pretty sure it correlates to whether the MS apps are running or not. In particular Entourage (i.e. Outlook for OS X) is a piece of garbage. Quitting Entourage often seems to clear the carburetors out for me. Again, got much worse with Tiger, so I'm hoping (but not exactly holding my breath) for an update.

Re:Both options are great

[elbobo]

Spotlight's indexing processes are also a *major* culprit in Tiger's slowdowns and lockups. I'm at the end of my tether with those, which is really sad as I love Spotlight and use it all the time.

Tiger's also more of a memory hog than Panther, sadly, so performance is going to suffer more often in Tiger simply due to memory exhaustion.

If 10.4.2 doesn't fix at least the Spotlight issues I'm going to start losing my good feelings towards Apple. Bah humbug.

Apple extending iWork?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is always the possibility that Apple will extend iWork as a replacement for AppleWorks which is a bit long in the tooth now. So thinks the AppleWorks User Group: http://www.awug.org/misc/iwork_iwug.html/

Why does Apple need office, anyways?

[ChllaPk]

I've used Appleworks on every Mac that I've owned, never had a compatability problem yet. You can easily convert most files back and forth between Office and Appleworks, and it has just about every feature that Office does.

Re:Apple Office

[LochNess]

Actually, AppleWorks doesn't come with every copy of OS X. It comes pre-installed on the "consumer" Macs (iBook, iMac, eMac), but not generally on the PowerBooks and PowerMacs.

Re:Open Office

[AKAImBatman]

FYI, I think the moderators marked you "flamebait" because you weren't paying attention. OOo for Mac require X11, looks like crap, acts like crap, and can't properly size a window to save its life. This spurred the invention of NeoOffice/J, which is OpenOffice, but using Java to fill in a few holes (such as the GUI). It does not require X11, it's reasonably snappy, holds up quite well, and has most (all?) of the features of the latest 1.x release of OpenOffice.

though excel really is the best spreadsheet software that I have yet seen on any platform.

That is the oddest thing to saY. IMHO, most spreadsheets are alike and interoperate quite well. It's the word processing documents that are the killer.

Microsoft has to hate this...

[Hamster Lover]

I haven't bought the Office suite from Microsoft for close to five years now with the introduction of free alternatives like Open Office.

What originally got me started was the inablity to open an old MS Works file in Office 2003, even with the proper conversion utilities installed. I was able to open the file in OO and make the necessary changes and save it in multiple formats for the future. I have recommended OO for precisely this problem to several friends and many have converted out of sheer spite for breaking compatibitlity between versions of Word.

Re:Microsoft has to hate this...

[jschoenberg]

The word processing that was in Works is not the same as Microsoft Word. They didn't break any sort of compatibility between versions.

Most people in this thread who want basic word processing should be comparing the various Mac word processing software to Works, not MS Word. MS Word has way more integrated enterprise and work-group features than a regular consumer will ever want to take advantage of. Most people who migrate away from Word to OO or others just want a word processor, not a collaboration tool, so they shouldn't be buying MS Office in the first place, they should buy Works, or...better yet....download Open Office or other free word processors.

Comparing any of those basic tools to Office just doesn't make sense. Apples and oranges.