[HOMBRESINIESTRO]

When Keynote came out, it was more or less obvious that it probably was based on code/concept of "Concurrence", an Next/OpenSTEP app:

http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/Concurrence.gif

With the advent of Pages we could see another nice NeXT app being reborn: OpenWrite

http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/OpenWrite.gif

There has also been some other word processor around which was called WriteUp. Unfortunately I haven't found a screenshot of it. Perhaps anyone else can provide one for us?

There has been Quantrix for spreadsheet, btw, which would close the gap in the "Sugar" suite:

http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/Quantrix.gif

[Superchicken]

You know, if Apple could manage to get good Excel compatibility as well as making a spread sheet app have a similar but more OS X look and feel to that one, I think we could have a winner on our hands... and here I was all set to drop a good chunk of my college cash on office at the start of this next semester

Glad I waited!

By the way I hope pages offers some good student to student features. That said I'm not sure if anyone else in dorm is gona buy it haha.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by Superchicken:
You know, if Apple could manage to get good Excel compatibility as well as making a spread sheet app have a similar but more OS X look and feel to that one, I think we could have a winner on our hands...

I think Excel 2004 is quite good, right down to the look and feel. Excel is the one Microsoft app I don't really feel like replacing.

I'm also not sure what sort of feature would be generally useful enough for "students" to justify inclusion but not generally useful to everyone else.

[Sven G]

Interesting analogies, Hombre!

BTW, on another front, "Pages" is a strange, almost too elementary and definitely not too international name: "Document" (according to rumors) was much better. Apple should try to also have names that are appealing to international users - not only some plain, everyday English terms. We'll see what the final name is, anyway - and what kind of program it is, of course (NeXT/Apple-based, or enhanced/modified X11 open source application?)...

[Randman]

"The Document document could not be saved as a document in Documents."


Too confusing.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Randman:
"The Document document could not be saved as a document in Documents."


Too confusing.

Exactly. "Document" is too generic. "Words", of course, is right out; Microsoft would nail them for a confusingly-similar trademark.

At the same time, "Pages" almost sounds like something more suited to some kind of HTML editor. That's not impossible, given Safari 2.0's WYSIWYG editing support, but it would once again leave AppleWorks users out in the cold.

[Randman]

My choice would be Editor.

[osxisfun]

HOMBRESINIESTRO,

http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bob/clarisworks.php

i do not think they are going to go with a old next app. i think its build from the old GoBe / Clarisworks creators.

[HOMBRESINIESTRO]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
HOMBRESINIESTRO,

http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bob/clarisworks.php

i do not think they are going to go with a old next app. i think its build from the old GoBe / Clarisworks creators.

<quote from link above>
but whatever it is, it does not involve the Gobe Productive codebase. Nor, I am reasonably sure, does it involve the ClarisWorks / AppleWorks codebase.
</quote>

They hired three Gobe founders in 2000. My bet is they have been working on Keynote, too, which looks pretty much like old NeXT codebase.

What would you prefer:

(1) take a real good NeXTStep app, which is written in Obj-C and transform it into a state of the art cocoa app and add some of the MacOS ease of use or
(2) start from scratch end reinvent the wheel or
(3) take some app written for Be and ported to Windows to fork it and base your next gen word processor upon the codebase?

I'm convinced they asked the same question, and, as I see it must come to the logical conclusion that they should opt for (1).

I don't know how many former NeXT guys are working for Apple now, but someone told me that Apple by now is practically a rebranded NeXT. These guys have a strong affection to their old system, too, which could be another hint for the "codebase of choice" for Pages and/or the whole Sugar suite.

[Superchicken]

One has to wonder if apple had this code base for so long... have they been developing it the whole time, or has this been a "Hey M$ you drop the ball on Office, and we'll pick up the slack" or "Price it better or we'll come out with something" I imagine Apple and M$ have had lots of talks about this.

That said, so long as it does footnoting as good as or better than Word, I'm sold.

[osxisfun]

hi.

yes i would love a cocoa app but i think its (iworks) is going to a be ground up new app written in cocoa that the old claris guys have been working on for a few years. In the article it says they are not going to use any gobe code. which makes sense.

i think it will be a totally new app with no code from someone else so

2) start from scratch end reinvent the wheel or

since in this case reinventing the wheel will allow for all the dev goodies in 10.3 and the ability to link to iphoto etc...

so i am pretty sure (but could be wrong) that there is no next code in it.

for keynote:

i actually spoke to some apple people about that. its newer version of an app from lighthouse? steve basically wanted the same presentation app he had on next so he hired the team for a few months to port it to osx.

[osxisfun]

ps How are you doing?

(i see you are on a west indian island.)

Hope you are safe.

[HOMBRESINIESTRO]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
ps How are you doing?

(i see you are on a west indian island.)

Hope you are safe.

Thanks for asking. I'm fine, but the West Indies are miles away from India and the tsunami area. They are actually "between" the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Indies

[osxisfun]

Originally posted by HOMBRESINIESTRO:
Thanks for asking. I'm fine, but the West Indies are miles away from India and the tsunami area. They are actually "between" the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Indies

DoH!

I thought you meant indian ocean.

[MacGorilla]

Oh OpenWrite was a Lighthouse app, a nice one, kind of a cross between Word and Framemaker. Sun bought out Lighthouse years ago and the code has been locked in a vault ever since. Makes you wonder why they bought it to begin with. Maybe Apple got them to open the vault.

[HOMBRESINIESTRO]

Originally posted by MacGorilla:
Oh OpenWrite was a Lighthouse app, a nice one, kind of a cross between Word and Framemaker. Sun bought out Lighthouse years ago and the code has been locked in a vault ever since. Makes you wonder why they bought it to begin with. Maybe Apple got them to open the vault.

They have ported Concurrence which was a Lighthouse app, too. Perhaps they have some kind of deal with Sun?

[BuonRotto]

I would be curious whether Apple bought or made some deal for the Lighthouse apps quietly a while ago, or whether they simply modeled their app on the look and feel of Lighthouse's efforts. If this rumored WP app is Framemaker-ish in at least some important aspects, it will make a LOT of people very happy.

Looking at the screenshot, it's interesting how some of the items in the main palette are now part of the regular Cocoa text toolbar (which the toolbar in that screenshot looks just like otherwise). Being familiar with Stone's Create, it's interesting to see a multi-pane Inspector and a resource library palette (Toolbox) that look a lot like what Create for OS X has now. I imagine that if this WP app is modeled to fit with Keynote, that its inspector will look like Keynote's rather than Create's, using small icons instead of tabs. Odd perhaps that Keynote currently doesn't have a resource library palette but simply opens a Finder windows from the menubar. I wonder if Apple comes out with this product and upgrades Keynote to version 2 whether they will introduce such a library view or whether they will continue to refer to Finder windows for such a role.

Thanks for the insight!

[Millennium]

Cocoa is good, but overrated by zealots.

Personally, I'd prefer to see it be a well-written Carbon app. My reason for this is simple: AppleWorks was in fact the original Bad Carbon Port, one of the two reasons (the other being the Finder in OSX 10.0) that idiots who don't know what they're talking about revile Carbon to this day. It was so bad that people assumed that Carbon must be inherently inferior, when the real problem was simply that Apple didn't put any effort into the port.

A well-written Carbon app from Apple along the same lines, such as a hypothetical "iWork", could do much to redeem Carbon's reputation. Call it software homeopathy: a bad works app destroyed Carbon's reputation, so a good works app may restore it.

[TETENAL]

iTunes is a very good app.

[BuonRotto]

I wouldn't want Apple to do any more projects with what I would consider a political agenda. It just interferes with good design. I don't mean to be a Cocoa zealot, sorry if I came off as one. Still, it's far more likely that Apple will do a Cocoa project especially if the development team is comprised or related to the Keynote team in any way. The Cocoa/Carbon dichotomy is quickly becoming outmoded anyway with Apple providing Core* APIs and the ability to mix Carbon and Cocoa where appropriate in a given app. I just don't want to go down that road in this thread. It's and old, tired, worthless debate.

[bob_hearn]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Cocoa is good, but overrated by zealots.

Agreed. Let's remember, the Cocoa architecture dates back to the 80s. It was pretty cool then, but it's rather amazing that there's no significantly better framework now. I put several years into working on one myself. I may yet get back to that code base one day...

Personally, I'd prefer to see it be a well-written Carbon app. ...
A well-written Carbon app from Apple along the same lines, such as a hypothetical "iWork", could do much to redeem Carbon's reputation. Call it software homeopathy: a bad works app destroyed Carbon's reputation, so a good works app may restore it.

Sure it's possible to write good Carbon software, but you get so much more for free with Cocoa. Starting a new project from scratch, one would not choose Carbon except in very special circumstances.

With ClarisWorks/AppleWorks, on the other hand, Cocoa-ifying it would have been completely impossible; it would have to have been a rewrite. So Carbonizing it made sense. I was not part of that effort, and naturally I'm not too thrilled with the result, either. It's very depressing to me to see the current state of AppleWorks. Personally I think it's possible there could have been some backroom Bill/Steve deal to keep it that way, but even being an (ex)insider, I don't have any actual knowledge of this. I do know that at one time in the early 90s Claris claimed ClarisWorks was outselling Office (must have been by units, not dollars), and Gates was overheard by Claris folk expressing some concern about ClarisWorks.

And, please - AppleWorks is not a "bad works app". It's a poorly-updated descendant of what was once considered to be a very cool and innovative app, believe it or not. It's now an app living in a world it was not designed for. Even so, I still use it on a daily basis, because there's still no other single program that will do everything that ClarisWorks can. OK, I admit it - I use ClarisWorks 4.0, under Classic. The hassle is worth avoiding the interface changes.

- Bob Hearn (author of the ClarisWorks history mentioned above)

[osxisfun]

excellent story btw,

thanks for adding to the conversation...

Looks like we will all know in 9 days...

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by Sven G:
"Pages" is a strange, almost too elementary and definitely not too international name: "Document" (according to rumors) was much better. Apple should try to also have names that are appealing to international users - not only some plain, everyday English terms.

How is "pages" a plain, everyday English term that'll cause international users to foam at the mouth and spit bile, but "document" wasn't? It's not as though "Document" is Chinese (or, for that matter, "Tunes").

[TETENAL]

If Apple would make a word processor, they should call it Gutenberg (or if they think that's too long Mainz). That's internationally recognized.

[Chuckit]

It's internationally recognized by smart people. The average American would just go, "What's this 'Gutenberg' ****? Has Apple been taken over by those Commie Germans?"

That said, I think it's actually a cool name.

[Amorya]

Originally posted by Chuckit:
It's internationally recognized by smart people. The average American would just go, "What's this 'Gutenberg' ****? Has Apple been taken over by those Commie Germans?"

Really? It appears I'm overestimating the average American!

Amorya

[hudson1]

Gutenburg? Something to do with the wine press, right?

[MacGorilla]

Originally posted by HOMBRESINIESTRO:
They have ported Concurrence which was a Lighthouse app, too. Perhaps they have some kind of deal with Sun?

It would be cool.

[osxisfun]

>Gutenberg

Its a little too on the nose. Plus it would be the only product named after a person in apple's current lineup...?


iWrite would be better

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
>Gutenberg

Its a little too on the nose. Plus it would be the only product named after a person in apple's current lineup...?

How is that any different from Soundtrack being the only product named after a component of a movie and GarageBand being the only app named after a musical phenomenon from the early '90s? (Or for that matter, "Pages" being the only one named after the medium onto which it prints?)

[osxisfun]

Gutenberg was a person. people react differently to people then things like a soundtrack.

[waffffffle]

I'd really be interested to see if this suite supports both Microsoft Office files and Clarisworks files. I still have a bunch of old ClarisWorks docs that I'd like to access, and maybe even convert to the new format.

I also hope it as the Drawing capability of ClarisWorks. I have used it for so many things that are just impossible to do in Microsoft Office. Back in high school (5 years ago) I used to run the model congress club and I created a worksheet called "The Anatomy of Bill" where I had a piece of legislation cut up and a bunch of little text boxes with arrows pointing to each section to explain what it means. When I was making copies in my school several teachers took a look at the pages and asked me how I made them. When I said AppleWorks they looked at me puzzled and walked away.

My sister needed to do a similar task a while back and I told her to try out drawing in AppleWorks, an app which she had never launched on her iBook and hadn't used for years (she switched over to Word long before me). She told me recently that it took her no time to figure out how to create what she wanted and all of her classmates were amazed that she could even create something like that.

People don't realize that more can be done than what Microsoft allows you to do. Apple would be wise to capitalize on this.

[Randman]

Don't know about Claris but it would be suicide if it didn't work with Office, but I don't think that'll be much of an issue. Even TextEdit plays nicely with Word.
However, I do wish Keynote 2 could import PowerPoint items in a nice manner.

[Sven G]

Originally posted by Chuckit:
How is "pages" a plain, everyday English term that'll cause international users to foam at the mouth and spit bile, but "document" wasn't? It's not as though "Document" is Chinese (or, for that matter, "Tunes").

"Document" sounds much more professional, besides being an almost international term (document, dokument, documento, ecc.); "Pages" sounds much more trivial and is also less international. (Of course, I'm talking mainly about European languages, here...)

[Randman]

Originally posted by Sven G:
"Document" sounds much more professional.

You didn't see my post above on how "Document" could be confusing?? I still like Editor, but that's just me.

[Sven G]

Originally posted by Randman:
You didn't see my post above on how "Document" could be confusing?? I still like Editor, but that's just me.

Ooops, forgot to mention your post: yes, it could indeed be confusing, but I was rather talking from a principles point of view. "Editor", OTOH, sounds very good, but maybe leads one to think about a simple text editor (too similar to TextEdit), and not a full-featured word processor. We'll soon see what the final name is, anyway - if the rumors are true, of course...

[Superchicken]

My guess would be Apple picking a name more like, Composition, or something like that. Keynote is obviously a certain type of presentation but it works really well as a name. If they hadn't used Ink Well as a name for their text recognition I'd actually suggest that. I could almost see them calling it something simple like "Pen" or something like that. You have to also consider how they'd do the icon and what not. They could even go with something like Apple Notebook. Wonder how hard M$ would sue em for iWord haha.
I doubt it'll be called an iApp though since this is something that's supposed to not be part of iLife.

[moonmonkey]

"Pages" sounds stupid
"Document" is very dumb for Randman's reasons
"Gutenberg" does not sound very fluid, and is more suited for a DTP app
"Composition" sounds like a music app.


From this moment forward it shall be known as "Writer".

[Thinine]

I like the name Thesis. More professional and along the same lines as Keynote.

[Randman]

Since my first choice got shot down, how about Scribe ?

[moonmonkey]

Originally posted by Thinine:
I like the name Thesis. More professional and along the same lines as Keynote.

I like it too, it refers to final result:-

Ie.

Keynote
Final Cut
Thesis

But it may be too student like (I don't know what the target demographic is yet).

Good idea!

[cpac]

My suggestion for a name:

Content.

(it's what you're making regardless of what component you're using, and it has got the bonus of sounding "happy")

[Oneota]

Hmm...IGG Software's "iWork" has been renamed "iBiz". Wonder why...

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10163

[cpac]

Originally posted by Oneota:
Hmm...IGG Software's "iWork" has been renamed "iBiz". Wonder why...

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10163

anybody want to do the trademark search?

[osxisfun]

>Wonder why...

big ole fat paycheck signed by steven m jobs?

[HOMBRESINIESTRO]

Originally posted by cpac:
anybody want to do the trademark search?

I just found this blog entry:

http://homepage.mac.com/okkibokki/ib...5/E1028910854/

Apple seems to have filed application for the iWork trademark on August 5, 2004.

[pliny]

Appleworks doesn't distinguish different file names with different components of the suite, they're all Appleworks files, maybe the supposed writing component will just be called iWorks liek the rest of it all, but just present a different toolbar set.

If this thing is for real I hope they have slightly better Word compatibility, which now that I think about it they should, since they will have had the latest Office to work from. Also Appleworks compatibility will be built in I suppose.

I also wonder how the supposed serial number thing is going to play out.

[osxisfun]

>I also wonder how the supposed serial number thing is going to play out.

It would be interesting if they did a $99 single or a $199 family pac that allows for install on all the machines in the house... like they have for panther...

I don't blame them on the serial number thing though. piracy is getting just plain ridiculous.

[theolein]

Originally posted by HOMBRESINIESTRO:
When Keynote came out, it was more or less obvious that it probably was based on code/concept of "Concurrence", an Next/OpenSTEP app:

http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/Concurrence.gif

With the advent of Pages we could see another nice NeXT app being reborn: OpenWrite

http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/OpenWrite.gif

There has also been some other word processor around which was called WriteUp. Unfortunately I haven't found a screenshot of it. Perhaps anyone else can provide one for us?

There has been Quantrix for spreadsheet, btw, which would close the gap in the "Sugar" suite:

http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/Quantrix.gif

Some more old NeXT apps:

One called "Pages"
http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/Pages.jpg I guess this one is perhaps the best bet for a m odel of a new app called "Pages"

Some more from Lighthouse Design:
One called "Diagram!"
http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/Diagram.gif

One called "Equation Builder"
http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/EquationBuilder.gif

One called "ParaSheet"
http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/ParaSheet.gif
This combined with OpenWrite and Keynote make a nice Office combo.

One called "Tables"
http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/Tables.gif

One called "TaskMaster"
http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/TaskMaster.gif
Say hi to Microsoft Project

One called "VarioBuilder"
http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/VarioBuilder.gif

which, in combination with "VarioData"
http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/VarioData.gif
makes a nice Access replacement.

and last but not least from Lighthouse Design:
"WetPaint"
http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/WetPaint.gif

All of the Lighthouse Design apps together make quite a powerful Office combo, and they do, at the very least, give Apple a whif of leverage in case Microsoft decides to cancel Mac development. I assume, given that the ex-CEO of Lighthouse Design now works for Apple, that Apple has rights to all the Lighthouse Design apps. That said, however, although the anti-Microsoft sentiments are high amongst the Apple faithful, I think Apple would have to be extremely careful in introducing aaps that compete directly against Microsoft Office. I don't think it would take much to convince Microsoft that it was not worth the effort, and no Office on the Mac would be a significant hinderance.

What actually interests me more is the wealth of Bitmap and Vector editing apps that were available for NeXT, and which subsequently disappeared. The one that really raises my eybrows is Caffeinesoft's Tiffany.
http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/TIFFany.gif

Caffeinesoft very unexpectedly closed down in 2003. They provided no explanations and no updates to Tiffany, which had been available on OSX until then. Tiffany was an excellent app but somewhat expensive ($500) and had a unique set of filter features that no other graphic app has. I actually wrote to them asking why they didn't consider lowering the price in order to raise marketshare, and they wrote back stating that they were doing quite well with Tiffany, which had it's special niche amongst scientific imagers (The filters were all object oriented and are non destructive). And then they were gone. I've always wondered whether Tiffany was not aquired by Apple with an eye to providing a bit of leverage against Adobe in case Adobe decided to quit the Mac stall completely.

[HOMBRESINIESTRO]

Some further info on "Pages"

There has actually been a word processing app for NeXTStep which was called "Pages". It was later transformed into "WebPages" by ITC. I found a reference to it in this usenet thread:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=d...dcc15.ucsd.edu

Another site, which I could only access through Google's cache, mentions Pages for NeXTSTEP and says it is a "high-end solution", which sounds like music to my ears.

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache...a03.html&hl=en

If I couls only get some screenshots of either NeXTSTEP's Pages or WriteUp.