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Thursday, 24 May 2007

On the way to a native Mac OS X OOo

Joerg Sievers

I visited Herbert and Philipp in their room yesterday to evaluate a Mac-specific thing in our Sun environment. We used Herberts session and I asked "Do you have an office?" and Herbert started the latest result of his work and ....WOW! Great progress - I have seen the latest build as Pavel added the toolbar to the top. Herbert was very enthusiastic about the progress of his work.

In the evening I joined the IRC channel of the Mac porting community of OpenOffice.org to talk to some members. Eric B. asked me if I could have a look to a new native build he has made with the latest CVS chganges of the day and I agreed. Again WOW! What a great progress. It really makes me happy to see the native Mac OS X file picker dialog to load and save documents. It makes really fun to see no X11 starting in the background. Never I have hoped to see that so fast!

Great jobs guys and many, many thanks to get the dream true I have written to my software director on 5^th Oct 1998! At that time the name Rhapsody was more known than Mac OS X ;-) So, keep cool and don't agitate - I have waited nine years...

Mac OS X Aqua port of OOo with file picker

tags: apple mac openoffice.org porting

Posted by Joerg Sievers on 24 May 2007 | PermaLink |

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Comments:

Though I'm running OOo on Linux (I simple love my little "working horse") I wonder why is Apple not joining the development here. It's the best thing that could happen to them because since years they are struggling over and over with MS about MS Office and since ages everybody knows that Mac would loose a large userbase if MS would stop supporting Apple (and as far as I can remember there was also an internal mail by Billy G. regarding this) [1,2]. A simple link to a discussion in a forum or so would be fine. References: 1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY 2) http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=macintosh_os&articleId=9012227&taxonomyId=123&intsrc=kc_top

Posted by pete on May 26, 2007 at 02:59 PM CEST #

It's possible that Apple thinks that supporting OpenOffice would make Microsoft angry... and likely to stop making Office for Macs. So Apple doesn't want to jump on the bandwagon quite yet.

Posted by b on May 26, 2007 at 05:12 PM CEST #

"It's possible that Apple thinks that supporting OpenOffice would make Microsoft angry... and likely to stop making Office for Macs. So Apple doesn't want to jump on the bandwagon quite yet." I assumed something like this too but I guess there is no official statement from the Mac-makers. Anyway, how is the reaction of the Mac-Users so far. Do they embrace OOo/Mac with open arms or is their reaction to be considered as reserved?

Posted by pete on May 26, 2007 at 06:54 PM CEST #

I doubt that Apple's lack of involvement has anything to do with making not making MS angry. It's far more likely that they don't want to compete with themselves. Remember, Apple still has their iWork office products. (http://www.apple.com/iwork/)

As a mac user, I've very excited about this. MS Office costs quite a bit, and I'm not sold on iWork (no spreadsheets). NeoOffice has been good so far, but a bit on the slow side.

Posted by Matthew on May 29, 2007 at 04:45 PM CEST #

I'm also inclined to think like Matthew, they have iWork, which is not a direct competitor of Office, but there's really a market for Open Office on the Mac. It can be NeoOffice right now, it will (probably) be the official version once it's released. The most important reason I think for this is that MS Office on the Mac is so unatural to use for a Mac user. Unlike NeoOffice which is using the same logic as in every other Mac app, Microsoft chose to use a menu layout which is commonly used on Windows. The result ? You search for the pref for a very long time and a lot of things are awkward. Another example ? Pallets on top of the save window... how dumb is that ??

Posted by Yann on May 30, 2007 at 07:58 PM CEST #

Regarding Apple's official stance I found this interesting. I was at a local computer store talking with an Apple representative about the new MacBook. As we started talking about office productivity tools and compatibility with Microsoft the first thing this rep recommended to me was Open Office :-) A sample of one does not an official position make certainly, but, it struck me as refreshing that he'd pipe right up with Open Office. Who knows what Apple is really saying inside their organization.

Posted by Rebecca on May 30, 2007 at 09:38 PM CEST #

I'm fairly new to this. All I do know is that MS Office has become a real headache, & unfortunately isn't getting any better; it's all so stupid & counter-intuitive, when I think of that brilliant Word 2 for Win. It's a lesson: don't become too clever. OK. To the present. What's the difference between NeoOffice, which Apple customers are already using & gratefully praising, & OpenOffice for the Mac -- which promises to be better, perhaps, but which is proving somewhat difficult to implement? What I'm saying is: should I wait for the Mac OpenOffice version, or adopt NeoOffice?

Posted by Mike on June 06, 2007 at 05:08 AM CEST #