[Eriamjh]

Now that Keynote is out, doesn't it seem possible that Apple may be working on its own version of office that is 100% transferable between "MacOffice" and Windows OfficeXP? Could that explain why Appleworks has not been updated in over a year?

With OpenOffice and the other Office compatible clones, can anyone give any reasons why Apple shouldn't make its own version of Office? If Office is the only application that really holds back switchers, woudln't it benefit Apple to make its own?

It's not impossible to make an "Explorer compatible" browser. Safari may be just that. We already have Apple's "Mail" app that many have used to replace Entourage/Outlook. Finish it with Word and Excel compatible programs and you have a clone of Office.

I realize that there is significant catching up to do with Office XP, but isn't the money better spent on Apple than Microsoft?

Does anyone have any comments?

(This suggestion is based on nothing but what has been publicly announced and discussed. I have no insider information.)

[pliny]

I think it's very likely Apple will release an updated and more featured Appleworks this year. Well, likely as in, I hope it's likely. I think Keynote and Safari points me even more to this conclusion, since Apple seems to have renewed (and welcome) interest in developing apps apart from the iLife ones.

As far as Appleworks opening Office files, it already does that. Appleworks can open .doc and save as .doc, and the spreadsheet module can open Excel files and save as Excel files.

The question re: updated Appleworks for me is, would they bundle a new or more full featured database module given that Filemaker Pro is out there?

[gadster]

I'd suspect that they will make separate MS compatible components, rather than an all in one suite like Appleworks.

Browser, mail, presentation, spreadsheet, word processor, database(?) etc, all linked with each other, services and the address book. Kind of like iLife for the Office.

I think it will piss off a lot of developers, but, like with Safari, it's almost as if Apple have said to the development community: "you've had your go. Enough is enough, you wanna see a browser? This is a browser."

If they do pursue this strategy, expect to be charged for the apps. Fair enough, I reckon. Apple have let the developers have a go for decades.

After all, when you can't (or won't) control the hardware, there is always the software (something Microsoft have always understood).

[jwblase]

Heck, if Apple's following their current Opensource -> product model, then they might use either Openoffice.org's model (which now uses X11) or they might use something like KOffice (www.kde.org).

Since they used khtml for Safari, they might use the same logic for KOffice.

Anyone else looked at making a cocoa wrapper for KOffice?

JB

[MickS]

If you look on MacRumors you'll see a story that says that Apple recruited the gobe team back in 2001.

I remember looking at GoBe on BeOS. It looked very, very good. If Apple can get that functionality into a new AppleWorks I don't think we'll need to worry about what MS does with Office.

[BHD]

Originally posted by MickS:
If you look on MacRumors you'll see a story that says that Apple recruited the gobe team back in 2001.

I agree that, if this information is true, this is vrey good news indeed. I also looked into the suite awhile back, encouraged them to port to OS X, etc.

If Apple was able to hire these guys, yet another great talent addition! Appleworks 7 (or whatever they call it) ought to be pretty interesting...

[forkies]

Originally posted by MickS:
If you look on MacRumors you'll see a story that says that Apple recruited the gobe team back in 2001.

I remember looking at GoBe on BeOS. It looked very, very good. If Apple can get that functionality into a new AppleWorks I don't think we'll need to worry about what MS does with Office.

I didn't know that. Although I have never used the software, I remember hearing a lot of good reviews of it on TechTV. Interesting.

[muchfresh]

hmmmm.. If you remember Gobe went out of business last year after releaseing GoBe Productive 3.0 for windows. They were also in the process of developing Productive 3.0 for Linux. After going out of business a couple of the employees of Gobe formed a new company called Freeradical Software. Freeradical was going to buy the code and release the code as opensource. A new company called GoBe LLC was going to market and sell the windows version. A couple months after this idea was floated Freeradical was unable to raise the money to buy the code. So what has happened to the programmers and the code?

here are a couple links:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1520
http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=2308

The only problem with the french new site story is that JLG suggests Apple hired the GoBe team in 2001. GoBe developing Productive until they went out business

[KidRed]

muchfresh- What's the problem with the site saying Apple hired them? That's not a problem.

It's $125!! What's M$ Office like $500 or something sick!?!? HAHAAHA. Would Apple make Apple works a suite like Gobe or would they make a new suite basically porting Gobe, or, would they make individual apps that are intergrated like they did with itunes/idvd/imovie ect?

[jwblase]

No matter what they use, or how cool gobeProductive is (even if it does look way cool...), if it can't natively read and write seamlessly to MS Office formats, then it will never fly.

Office is the default. I hate to use MS Word or Excel. Personally, I find Applework much more user friendly, without all the bloat, and most of the same features that average people need in a word processor. However, most people (like me) need Office formats so that other people can actually read what I'm writing them.

I'd love to use RTF all the time, but people seem to want .doc files. ("What's all this RTF crap? I can only read Word files!" What a bunch of bull!!!)

JB

[Axo1ot1]

I have hear speak of a collaborative effort between Apple and Aun Microsystems to make an OS X compatible version of StarOffice. What I would like to see personally is a really powerful office suite that does everything Word and Excel do, and can open and save in both .doc format AND Word Perfect format. I have talked to a ton of potential switchers who would absolutely love to get a mac, but can't because they need Word Perfect compatibility. If apple could put that together along with a great interface like that of keynote they will have an M$ killer on their hands. Microshaft will have to once more run for its money.

[Ozmodiar]

Originally posted by gadster:
it's almost as if Apple have said to the development community: "you've had your go. Enough is enough, you wanna see a browser? This is a browser."

excellent.

Can Microsoft object to Apple using .ppt, .doc, and .xls? I don't know the copyright laws on things like this. Is this considered intellectual property?

If AppleWorks and Keynote are/become fully compatible with MS Office, then I will drop Office in a heartbeat.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

All we need is a Word compatible AppleWorks and an Apple Excel and we can get rid of that MS crap all together.

With MS releasing all that copy protection next year many PC users will be happy to switch.

[godzookie2k]

iirc, back in the day most of the Gobe team *were* the Clarisworks team.

[Eug]

I still don't see why everyone wants to get rid of Office. I use Office because I-actually-like-it (TM).

I've tried Star Office before, and it was crap. Mind you it was a while back, but even if it had 100% Office compatibility (which it didn't), I would have still thought it was crap. Not only was it crashy, but the GUI sucked, and any themes for presentations etc. were basically unusable. Think Microsoft geek type tacky, but magnified 10X.

To use it as a base, one wonders if Apple would almost have to redo the entire suite.

But I reserve final judgement until I have the chance to try the current version of Star Office.

[normyzo]

Originally posted by Eug:
I still don't see why everyone wants to get rid of Office. I use Office because I-actually-like-it (TM).

I've tried Star Office before, and it was crap. Mind you it was a while back, but even if it had 100% Office compatibility (which it didn't), I would have still thought it was crap. Not only was it crashy, but the GUI sucked, and any themes for presentations etc. were basically unusable. Think Microsoft geek type tacky, but magnified 10X.

To use it as a base, one wonders if Apple would almost have to redo the entire suite.

But I reserve final judgement until I have the chance to try the current version of Star Office.

Try StarOffice 6 and see if you like it better. Beware that its Win32/Linux/Solaris only of course. Otherwise, pull down OpenOffice.org 1.0 X11 for Mac OS X and Darwin (Final Beta) from www.openoffice.org since that's basically StarOffice 6 without the database component.

Dan

[Eriamjh]

I don't want to get rid of office, I'd just be happier giving the money to Apple instead of Microsoft. It would be nice to have the compatibility of office with most of its features (god knows I don't need MOST of them for letter writing and simple documents) for far less than the $550 M$ wants for a full version.

I'd pay Apple $199 for a fully compatible version of MacOffice with a few less features. However, it has to be useable and not as butt ugly and confusing as Appleworks.

[Eug]

Originally posted by normyzo:
Try StarOffice 6 and see if you like it better. Beware that its Win32/Linux/Solaris only of course. Otherwise, pull down OpenOffice.org 1.0 X11 for Mac OS X and Darwin (Final Beta) from www.openoffice.org since that's basically StarOffice 6 without the database component.

I'll try Open Office. It seems I'm missing some libraries at the moment though. They certainly don't make it idiot-proof do they? (Yes I am a *nix idiot. At least Xwindows is working and GIMP is sorta working.)

Yeah, the version of Star Office I tried was 5. I don't want to have to pay to try version 6. Is there a functioning demo somewhere (not flash)?

Plus I've become a little apprehensive these days with Sun software on Windows. I had a perfectly functioning Windows 2000 machine until I installed Sun Java. Hosed the machine. I had to reformat.

P.S. I guess one reason some of us are less critical of MS Office is due to cost. Office v.X is only $200 at the moment with a new computer, and in my case I only paid $70 for an educational copy. I'd rather use Office v.X for $200, than Star Office 5 for free. However, my attitude would probably change if I had to pay $500 for MS Office.

[Sarc]

The problem is that people is lazy.
Even if Apple got out a perfect clone of Office, some things would be different (ie. menus, toolbars, etc) and people wouldn't like it because they would have to learn these little differences.
They rather go with what they know, even if it's pure crap.

[Adam Betts]

If Apple is going to release new version of Office, they shouldn't call it AppleWorks 7. Appleworks already have bad name.

Apple should go for new name such as iOffice. That'll confuse people between Office X and iOffice and they'll buy one with Apple logo on it because they feel that it is mac version of Office X

[alphasubzero949]

Originally posted by Adam Betts:
If Apple is going to release new version of Office, they shouldn't call it AppleWorks 7. Appleworks already have bad name.

Apple should go for new name such as iOffice. That'll confuse people between Office X and iOffice and they'll buy one with Apple logo on it because they feel that it is mac version of Office X

I was thinking the same...

[Eriamjh]

iOffice. Quant.

I like MacOffice 10. It requires OSX so it should have a ten in it.

[Sam Venning]

I'm not bagging Microsoft Office X... I am bagging the price - it is ridiculous! There are also a few features that actually get in the way of producing simple documents. MS Word 4/5 is great software. It is a pity MS Words 4/5 isn't Mac OS 10 compatible.

AppleWorks is also great software. It is a pity Apple hasn't updated AppleWorks for a while and made it more Microsoft Office document "friendly". The spreadsheet features aren't very substantial. It is a shame that Apple doesn't promote AppleWorks. I hope it simply means Apple has some "killer" new, reasonably priced, office suite in the works (Keynote is a great start!).

Please!!!!!! I hope so. This is sooooo long overdue.

[Northform]

Apple won't use OpenOffice.org. There are too many issues. They can't really make it behave properly in Windows never mind Aqua. It's the mozilla thing. They might take the MSOffice translators from the project. OpenOffice.org is released under the LGPL like KHTML.

Apple might buy/have bought Gobe Productive. Nice, clean design there.

[mamamia]

Originally posted by Sarc:
The problem is that people is lazy.
Even if Apple got out a perfect clone of Office, some things would be different (ie. menus, toolbars, etc) and people wouldn't like it because they would have to learn these little differences.
They rather go with what they know, even if it's pure crap.

microsoft office is not pure crap. nothing about it is pure crap, actually. it is an excellent suite of software. i defy anyone to tell me one thing about it's that is crap.

AND DON'T FSCKING SAY THE PRICE.

The price is now 200 dollars. for four programs!: word, entourage, pp, and excel.
that is fifty dollars a program for four of the most mature, integrated, and functional programs ever produced.

why don't the whinies who bitch and moan about the price bitch and moan about the price of keynote. it costs $100, for one program. that is double what microsoft charges for pp. and from the reports i've been reading about keynote, it is truly a version 1.0.

sometimes i think these forums are populated by a bunch of hypocritcal pre-teen wannabe computer users who have never had to actually do anything with their word processor than write a high school book report.

the day that microsoft stops development on office is the day that the mac platform ceases to be a viable platform. period.

i'm done with that rant now. thank you.

[snerdini]

Originally posted by mamamia:
microsoft office is not pure crap. nothing about it is pure crap, actually. it is an excellent suite of software. i defy anyone to tell me one thing about it's that is crap.

AND DON'T FSCKING SAY THE PRICE.

The price is now 200 dollars. for four programs!: word, entourage, pp, and excel.
that is fifty dollars a program for four of the most mature, integrated, and functional programs ever produced.

why don't the whinies who bitch and moan about the price bitch and moan about the price of keynote. it costs $100, for one program. that is double what microsoft charges for pp. and from the reports i've been reading about keynote, it is truly a version 1.0.

sometimes i think these forums are populated by a bunch of hypocritcal pre-teen wannabe computer users who have never had to actually do anything with their word processor than write a high school book report.

the day that microsoft stops development on office is the day that the mac platform ceases to be a viable platform. period.

i'm done with that rant now. thank you.

Actually, if you buy PowerPoint by itself, like you would buy Keynote, it's over $100. So actually, Keynote is a little cheaper. And I would imagine if Apple is making an office suite, they would bundle them at a competitive price to Office. So please get off your high horse.

I really don't have a problem with Office v.X...I use it, and it's pretty good. Better than Office XP IMHO. However, I know several people that have had stability issues with Word and Excel. I haven't, but then again, I don't use them extensively...

[passmaster16]

Originally posted by snerdini:


I really don't have a problem with Office v.X...I use it, and it's pretty good. Better than Office XP IMHO. However, I know several people that have had stability issues with Word and Excel. I haven't, but then again, I don't use them extensively...

I like Office v.X other than the fact that it's slow even on my DP 867 with most of the features turned off. It just lags at times especially in long documents. So in that respect, I would give Office XP the nod. I do like the interface in the Mac version more than its Windows counterpart. If they would resolve the performance issue, it wouldn't be so bad.

Back to the initial post. I think Apple would be foolish not to be working on their own suite. If at any time MS decides to pull the plug on Office for Mac, a large number of users would be out of luck. What would they do if they need Office compatibility? Openoffice isn't there yet. Appleworks isn't really robust enough for serious use. I'm sure with Apple releasing their own browser and the fact that Office sales are down, I would have to believe that MS is taking a serious look at whether they should continue developing the product. I will say this. I would be upset too if I had to pay a couple hundred dollars for slow software. Luckily university license with MS gets me the stuff for free, but I still think that it can use some major optimization.

[JLL]

Originally posted by mamamia:
The price is now 200 dollars. for four programs!: word, entourage, pp, and excel.
that is fifty dollars a program for four of the most mature, integrated, and functional programs ever produced.

You have to buy a new Mac to get Office at that price.

Originally posted by mamamia:
why don't the whinies who bitch and moan about the price bitch and moan about the price of keynote. it costs $100, for one program. that is double what microsoft charges for pp. and from the reports i've been reading about keynote, it is truly a version 1.0.

Bzzt. Wrong!

PowerPoint costs $369.99.

[TC]

Originally posted by mamamia:
i defy anyone to tell me one thing about it's that is crap.

Try sorting your contacts in Entourage using a date field. It sorts them alphabetically, not chronologically.

In excel set up 5 separate worksheets each one including a date and percentage column. Then try setting up a graph which brings all this data together.

Try finding any kind of useful help on their pile of crap help system.

Powerpoint is very fussy about the image formats you can insert, it screws up transparency + colours.

It is a pile of crap but thanks to years of it being bundled with PCs it is the most popular pile of crap so we are stuck with it. If Apple gives us a good alternative people will use it.
With the next release of office using XML as its file system it should be much easier for apps to import/export office documents.

[Eug]

Originally posted by JLL:
Bzzt. Wrong!

PowerPoint costs $369.99.

Well, PowerPoint 98 is $25 and Excel v.X upgrade can be had for $127. So that's about $150 if you're willing to deal with the hassle.

[rtamesis]

During MacWorld SF this month I spoke to a friend who works at Sun, and the word is that they are collaborating with Apple to get Star Office ready for OS X.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by mamamia:
microsoft office is not pure crap. nothing about it is pure crap, actually. it is an excellent suite of software. i defy anyone to tell me one thing about it's that is crap.

Okay, how about this: its absolute refusal to follow any standard Mac conventions. For example: shortcut keys. In any Mac app, you can jump to the beginning or end of a line by typing command-left arrow or command-right arrow respectively. In Mac OS X, you can also use the UNIX shortcuts for this: Control-A and Control-E. And in Mac apps, the Home and End keys scroll you to the top or bottom of a window. That is, in every Mac app except Microsoft Word. In Word, home and end take you to the beginning or end of a line, and the shortcuts that are supposed to be able to do that don't work. So you have to learn a completely different set of behaviors in Word than you do in the rest of the OS, because the text fields behave exactly like they do in Windows. Earth to Microsoft: if we wanted it to work like Windows, we wouldn't be using a Mac. Your developers need to learn to follow the standards of the operating system you're writing for rather than assuming you know what's best for the users.

Another example: line endings. On the Mac, the newline character is displayed at the beginning of a line, so that if you select a line of text by dragging to the right, copy, and then paste somewhere, you paste only the text you were trying to copy, and you don't get a newline that you later have to delete. Of course, in Word, you'll grab the newline when you do this, unless you're very careful and select the text very gingerly, just like in Windows. Earth to Microsoft: if we wanted it to work like Windows, we wouldn't be using a Mac. Your developers need to learn to follow the standards of the operating system you're writing for rather than assuming you know what's best for the users. (Granted, since OS X, Apple seems to have this same problem with the Cocoa NSTextView widget - this is something that also makes me )

Yet another example: Clicking below the lower limits of the text. In Mac apps, if you do this, it moves the insertion point to the end of the document, right after the last character of text. This is really handy, because it allows you to append something to the end of your document. In Word, however, it inexplicably puts the insertion point in the position on the last line which is directly vertical to the mouse pointer, so that if you just want to add some text to the end of the document, you have to be careful to click in just the right spot, which naturally is the way that Windows works. Earth to Microsoft: if we wanted it to work like Windows, we wouldn't be using a Mac. Your developers need to learn to follow the standards of the operating system you're writing for rather than assuming you know what's best for the users.

To summarize: the Mac version of Office will be run on a Mac, not a Windows box. Therefore, MAKE IT WORK LIKE A MAC APP.

</rant>

[Emotionally Fragile Luke]

Originally posted by Eug:
I still don't see why everyone wants to get rid of Office. I use Office because I-actually-like-it (TM).

We don't want to get rid of it because Office sucks, it is an OK app.

We hate it because they blackmail Apple with it, if Apple didn't make I.E. default for the past 4 years MS said they would not make an Office for OSX and we all know what would have happened then.

Now that the contract is up Apple has shipped Safari (which is better then I.E. hands down) and keynote which is better then Power Point in many ways.

If Apple came out with it's own word I am sure it would be better then Word in SOME ways but most of all if it was compatible with word then if Microsoft every wanted to play bigshot and try to blackmail Apple again by saying that they are pulling Word no body would really care all that much.

[CheesePuff]

Originally posted by mamamia:
microsoft office is not pure crap. nothing about it is pure crap, actually. it is an excellent suite of software. i defy anyone to tell me one thing about it's that is crap.

AND DON'T FSCKING SAY THE PRICE.

The price is now 200 dollars. for four programs!: word, entourage, pp, and excel.
that is fifty dollars a program for four of the most mature, integrated, and functional programs ever produced.

why don't the whinies who bitch and moan about the price bitch and moan about the price of keynote. it costs $100, for one program. that is double what microsoft charges for pp. and from the reports i've been reading about keynote, it is truly a version 1.0.

sometimes i think these forums are populated by a bunch of hypocritcal pre-teen wannabe computer users who have never had to actually do anything with their word processor than write a high school book report.

the day that microsoft stops development on office is the day that the mac platform ceases to be a viable platform. period.

i'm done with that rant now. thank you.

Office v.X is only $199 if you buy a new Mac with it.

PowerPoint alone is about $350.

[Colonel Panic]

well, an Apple Office would be interesting, i suppose, if it could reasonably approach 100% file compatibility, but my guess is that it would be several revs before it was as stable and usable as MS Office.

Frankly, i'd rather apple focused on iApps, which they seem to do very well, and improving OS X rather than trying to go head to head with a mature, solid office suite. my guess is we'll see another version of "office lite" from apple like appleworks.

what i'm looking forward to is MS Office 11...on Panther, hopefully with real speed improvements. (office v.x's one major flaw is that it is slow as hell)

[passmaster16]

Originally posted by Colonel Panic:


what i'm looking forward to is MS Office 11...on Panther, hopefully with real speed improvements. (office v.x's one major flaw is that it is slow as hell)

Assuming MS doesn't pull the plug on 11 due to low sales and the release of safari/keynote. I agree. I wouldn't mind office 10 if it wasn't so slow.

[pliny]

Appleworks comes free with many new Macs and does many of the things MS Office does. Toss in iCal and Mail and there you have it, all for free. I can't think of a problem I've had opening MSOffice documents through Appleworks.

[joe_kr]

Originally posted by muchfresh:

The only problem with the french new site story is that JLG suggests Apple hired the GoBe team in 2001. GoBe developing Productive until they went out business

There's was an updated story on http://www.macrumors.com about it.

They linked to a "history of clarisworks" where one of the original coders for clarisworks confirmed that Apple did hire away 3 of the main programmers from Gobe.

They supposedly aren't working on a new version of Appleworks OR a version of Gobe Productive...

so maybe something completely new (in the word processing arena)

[ima_pseudonym]

Originally posted by mamamia:
i defy anyone to tell me one thing about it's that is crap.

Word has terrible control over text flow when you use footnotes - it will regularly continue a single footnote over several pages with one line on each page.

Also, next time somebody sends you a word doc. open it in a text-editor - its amazing what information you will find (including urls of webpages they happend to be viewing while working on the document)

Appleoffice should add a litte animated pop-up guy with text-bubbles telling you how long and complicated it would be to do in Word whatever you just did.

[Producer]

What I think would be nice is the same way that Apple is making Webcore available to developers and incorporating into the OS it would be good for the platform if they did the same with a word processor....making an sdk for it an open sourceing it...

Any there is some functionality like this in X and that it is easy to make a note type app...but I am talking something modular and where there wouldn't have to be a one size fits all app for word processing like MS Office...many users don't know how to use %90 of office... and when they need to do a basic thing it is hard for them...also if this were to happen then other apps could get much more functionality by incorporting it into there app just how webcore will do eventually...

[clarkgoble]

In any Mac app, you can jump to the beginning or end of a line by typing command-left arrow or command-right arrow respectively. In Mac OS X, you can also use the UNIX shortcuts for this: Control-A and Control-E. And in Mac apps, the Home and End keys scroll you to the top or bottom of a window.

Of course my vote for the #1 thing to change about keyboard shortcuts are these weird things. Why on earth would someone want to go to the end and beginning of the document in that way? Break out Quickkeys I say. Further it isn't standard in everything. Check out Terminal for instance, which follows the Unix way.

Besides, can't you change the key combinations? It isn't as if you *have* to use the PC style. However for people who use MS Word and switch, not having those "unexpected surprises" is a plus.


The interface for MS Word is a little askew. It is more a half-way position between XP and OSX. Kind of multicolored pastels, rather than a more gel-like look that most OSX apps have. However they fortunately didn't go overboard the way IE5 did.

[TimmyDee51]

I don't like Office (Word in particular) because I feel that it gets in the way when I write. And I write a lot. It took me forever to finally get Word to stop correcting all of my "mistakes" (many of which are in proper grammar). AppleWorks stays the hell away.

<soapbox>
I think that all this "Auto Correct" BS is dumbing people down. No one has to think of how to spell words any more or how to write a proper sentence. Plus, who made MS king of the English language? Not me. Sorry for the rant. As an English major, Word frustrates the hell out of me.
</soapbox>

[TC]

Very interesting read about the history of ClarisWorks:

http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/%7Ebob/clarisworks.php

Mentions that some members of the original ClarisWorks team have joined Apple.

[Colonel Panic]

Originally posted by pliny:
Appleworks comes free with many new Macs and does many of the things MS Office does. Toss in iCal and Mail and there you have it, all for free. I can't think of a problem I've had opening MSOffice documents through Appleworks.

how about spreadsheets with multiple sheets or macros, or word or excel docs with comments and tracked changes, for example? i think that at best maybe 10% of the docs i get in my office can be opened and edited without loss using AppleWorks...

[lookmark]

Originally posted by E.L.F:
We don't want to get rid of it because Office sucks, it is an OK app.

We hate it because they blackmail Apple with it...

Exactly.

It doesn't make sense for Apple *not* to be working on their own version of Office. Whether they can pull it off, and how they they'll be able to deal with other proprietary Microsoft 'standards' -- Exchange support, WiMP, remote access and so on -- with a nonfriendly Microsoft remains to be seen.

[pimephalis]

Originally posted by TC:
Try sorting your contacts in Entourage using a date field. It sorts them alphabetically, not chronologically.

In excel set up 5 separate worksheets each one including a date and percentage column. Then try setting up a graph which brings all this data together.

Try finding any kind of useful help on their pile of crap help system.

Powerpoint is very fussy about the image formats you can insert, it screws up transparency + colours.

It is a pile of crap but thanks to years of it being bundled with PCs it is the most popular pile of crap so we are stuck with it. If Apple gives us a good alternative people will use it.
With the next release of office using XML as its file system it should be much easier for apps to import/export office documents.

Nicely said. I actually moved from windows to linux in 1998 and stopped dual booting in 1999 such was my fustration with powerpoint. Preparing for a conference, it would crash regularly (and by this I mean 4 or 5 times a day), and in the end I had to present with overheads rather than with the computer. Never again, I said.

Now, remember that linux in 1998 was not the product you see today. I moved to LyX at first, and then latex to do my word processing and to prepare my presentations. This was not easy. This was a <i>vertical</i> learning curve. I had to do my computerized presentations with acrobat reader on linux, so no fancy graphics, backgrounds and the like. And despite this, it was still 10 times <b>less</b> painful than having to work with powerpoint or word, heaven help me.

Today, I still believe fervently that gnumeric is a superior product to excel, and I wouldn't work with Access if it was the difference between feeding my child or not. He'd go hungry, but his father would still be sane. And I will never, ever, work with word again if I have any control over my future. Any employer will have to provide me with massive quantities of prozac if they don't want a postal situation in their place of work should they make me load up word.

Office is a POS.

[cpac]

Originally posted by Colonel Panic:
well, an Apple Office would be interesting, i suppose, if it could reasonably approach 100% file compatibility, but my guess is that it would be several revs before it was as stable and usable as MS Office.

Three thoughts on this:

---------------
It would indeed be interesting, but unless it got near ~100% file compatibility, many will still need to purchase office.

Converting the file isn't all that tough if all it's got are text styles, maybe a table or two, and some footnotes.

But once you start doing more complicated things: tables of authorities, redlining information, etc., you almost need all of Word just to be able to look at the damn thing correctly.
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M$ *NEEDS* to continue development of Office for the Mac. It's the only way they can argue that They aren't using their market share of Office programs to kill off rival operating systems. If they *did* kill it off Office X, they'd need to open up some of the document formatting to other developers in some way...

(Of course with the current administration they could kill it and not get slapped by the government until a decade later)
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Finally, Apple, if it wanted to come out with its own, new, Word processor, would have been better off snapping up Okito writer before Nisus bought it. Even so, they might be better buying all of Nisus if they wanted to really develop an Office Suite.

That said, I also argued Apple should have bought up OmniWeb if they wanted to develop their own browser, but they didn't.

So by analogy - do we think Apple will adopt "open office" or one of the other open-source office suites out there? Vastly improve the code in secret, release an Apple app, and contribute code back?
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[normyzo]

Originally posted by cpac:
M$ *NEEDS* to continue development of Office for the Mac. It's the only way they can argue that They aren't using their market share of Office programs to kill off rival operating systems. If they *did* kill it off Office X, they'd need to open up some of the document formatting to other developers in some way...

Indeed, when we handed a couple of the MS bunnies an OpenOffice.org CD at MWSF, they were like "hey, this proves we're not a monopoly" (paraphrased).

Dan

[olli2]

Well, where to start...

100 % compatibility. I beleive you will never get it.

First, there are huge problems even with Office X on the Mac. You, English speakers, with your 26 letters in the alphabet and simple spell checker are fortunate people. Everybody else on the world is suffering of code tables, character sets, paying extra for Arial, Times, Helvetica, Tahoma and such that has nothing extra just working accented characters... OS 9 - somehow people find out over the years how you can create a document on the Mac that would be OK to have the same characters on a different platform, say written in Hungarian. New OS, new problems. We have for nearly two years, and it still does not work.
AppleWorks? How do you want me to use a word processor software that cannot display only 95% of the charachters that I type on the keyboard? It only show boxes when Apple should really run hard to solve the issue of characters, this is somewhere at the basis of all. And we are still not talking about displaying Word documents, just typing. But this problem is not unique to Apple. Even WordPerfect 2002 for Windows is messy displaying chars. If I dare to use anything different to Arial, Times New Roman or Courrier New, it gives up and my nice boxes come in the place of accented chars. Man, even Word 2.0 back years ago handled it better.

Second, the key for the success of MS is the fact that they have their proprietary Office format, and if you need the compatibility of the world, you have to buy their apps. For me, it is not enough to get the text with some formatting (if I can get my text without the hated boxes at the place of accented chars in AppleWorks), I need all the formatting. For me, the most time consuming is formatting. Typing is done fast.
But applying all the stuff again to every piece of text is like hell to do again. If you write something 2-3 pages, this is not a big problem. However, if you type a 50 page stuff in word, with automated reference numbering, self-generating table of contents, auto index in the end, some footnotes, auto numbering chapters, figures and tables - oh man, and if you dare to use bookmarks in your doc... these are basic things that you need when you write something a bit longer.
Until now, the best compatibility I have seen in my life is provided by DocumentsToGo for the PalmOS (by DataWiz). You can edit your document on the Palm without loss of formatting! It prepares a Palm OS editable copy inside the document or such.

Spellcheckers.... oh man, we still don't have a spell checker in Hungarian for Office X. For Office XP? There is one of the most sophisticated spell checker I have seen in my life, that can analyze words, find out the roots from wrong conjugation, reconjugate it based on the context and offer you the solution.

What would be my preference in terms of usability? The clear winner is WordPerfect, with perfect control on what I do, what and how I format. It handles my advanced needs to perfection.
However, I use Office XP: it can display all my characters without problems, have a nice set of fonts to use, has my Hungarian spell and grammar checker. The user interface is not very creative, somehow functional to me (hard to use), but it handles my basic needs. Not the advanced ones.

To date, if I need to properly read an office document on the Mac, first I open it up in Office X, if it cannot handle, I turn to VPC with Word XP.

I think this is the biggest objection agains the Mac platform - it speaks English only. The English speaking market, with the US, Canada, UK, Australia is big enough to finance the Mac company, but if it really wants to envade the world it should handle properly other languages beside English.

[BHD]

Originally posted by olli2:
I think this is the biggest objection agains the Mac platform - it speaks English only.

This makes no sense. OS X supports unicode, it has a variety of bundled international fonts. etc. From what I understand, there is still room for improvement on the application front, but to make such a sweeping statement that "the Mac platform" is "English only" is just silly.