Daring Fireball: VaporOffice
John Gruber is doubtful that an aqua-native version of OpenOffice will ever ship.
I think he's right. I've used it, but I still have to run it through a "real" copy of Office to make sure it's working correctly (it's close, but some graphics/formatting go screwy). With the overhead of doing that, plus running X11 as well, it's easier to use Remote Desktop to control my PC machine.
Surely Apple is not satisfied with the current state of office software for Mac OS X (which is to say, dominated by Microsoft). Quite the contrary. But if they respond by assigning Apple developers to write office software, it’s going to be Mac software, designed and owned by Apple. E.g. Keynote.
Yup. I've used Keynote, and it's fantastic. It's a PowerPoint killer. And this is a 1.0 version. Exporting back to PowerPoint isn't perfect, but if your goal is to create really nice looking presentations -- Keynote it is. Oh, and of course it does export to PDF and Quicktime movie as well.
OpenOffice, on the other hand, does certainly look and feel like "crap" a.k.a. Windows 95 as John points out. The valuable part really isn't the interface (it's likely the biggest problem) but rather the "Office compatibility". If you could split out the "translation" libraries for the various formats...
I wonder if Apple reverse-engineered the PowerPoint format from scratch, or if they got a head start somewhere? Will their "open format" (Keynote XML) be used elsewhere? Could Apple be the company to push open file formats, all XML-based?
Similar
Comments
It doesn't matter how it come.
Personally, I don't care whether or not Apple develops OpenOffice or someone else, we just need it, and the two groups might as well unite and use what work does exist from the two half-time volunteers.
But this is the problem with Open/Free source in general - people devote time to things that interest them, rather than things that will make the software industry a better industry, like doing the work necessary to make an open/free Office and OS better than Microsoft, on par with what Apple could/has done.
On the other hand, we have movement in Asia and Brazil and other parts of the Americas and Europe to adopt open source software in an effort to increase productivity, reduce costs, and for the altruistic goal of uprooting Microsoft's hold. This is wonderful news, and a sign that Multi-nationals have no sway when governments have courage and act with deliberate intent.
We *don't* need OpenOffice
There is a fine distinction here. An inter-operable/standards-based office suite is needed. OpenOffice may meet those requirements.
The point of the article is that there aren't two groups -- it is not in Apple's interest to help build OpenOffice; they would be better served by building a suite themselves, with Keynote as the first application.
One of the other rumours floating around was that TextEdit in Panther is capabling of opening/viewing/editing Word docs.
I don't see why...
...Apple couln't contribute to OpenOffice the same way they contribute to Konquerer. It is the polish that is important to Apple. They could add some resources to shore up the pretty good file importers/exporters and leave that open source (i.e. the renderer portion of Safari). Then they could take that and put the Apple UI magic on top of that and make that proprietary. That would benefit everyone, wouldn't it?
Agreed
I guess I was trying to point out that Apple does what is good for Apple, which is not necessarily what is good for all open-source/etc.
Also, I mentioned that Apple invented their own format for Keynote -- which does PowerPoint import/export. They've already made the decision once to not use existing filters.
Are the current libraries perhaps not very good? Or perhaps it is structured in such a matter that the libraries are part of code, so it's hard to separate them? Whatever the case, I have to think that Apple has a plan with regards a suite of "office-compatible" applications.