Will Apple do to OO what it did to Webkit??
What if one of the secret features of Leopard was an Apple polished and spruced up Open Office??? This might make sense given the way that Jobs/Apples seems to have opened up the taunting factor against MSFT/Vista. People here have worried in the past about alienating the Mac BU and MSFT and them cancelling the Office product for Mac. With the ongoing progress with ODF adoption and even MSFT's ODXML and Apple participation in the open source software this might make a lot of sense.
It would also be a 'secret' feature that didn't need to be release with the testing builds as it doesn't affect the rest of the system or developers.
It would also be a 'secret' feature that didn't need to be release with the testing builds as it doesn't affect the rest of the system or developers.
Comments
Apple would need to completely revamp the interface, which is a surprisingly (to non-programmers, at least) large chunk of the programming work. Then it would have to make the program not dog slow and cut the memory usage in half. That's not easy. Pages is a much better base.
This is, of course, assuming that Apple wants to take out Office. I don't think that's feasible from a business perspective, assuming they had a superior product. It wouldn't even really put a dent in Microsoft's MacBU sales. It's probably not worth the effort. iWork is great for the right people, I'd rather they just slowly grew that instead.
If Apple genuinely wanted to take out Office, I think it'd be quicker to build iWork up than to try and make OpenOffice not a terrible, bloated piece-of-crap MS Office clone. OpenOffice has several arcade games in it as Easter Eggs, for Christ's sake.
Apple would need to completely revamp the interface, which is a surprisingly (to non-programmers, at least) large chunk of the programming work. Then it would have to make the program not dog slow and cut the memory usage in half. That's not easy. Pages is a much better base.
This is, of course, assuming that Apple wants to take out Office. I don't think that's feasible from a business perspective, assuming they had a superior product. It wouldn't even really put a dent in Microsoft's MacBU sales. It's probably not worth the effort. iWork is great for the right people, I'd rather they just slowly grew that instead.
I agree entirely that the UI is where a lot (if not most) of the work is. On the other hand this is what Apple excels (pun intended) at. I do think Apple wants to up the competative comparisons with MSFT - just look at the latest GetAMac add and the reports on the 'anti-Vista' in store promotion that seem to be coming. Gate's recent appearance also give the indication he is somewhat defensive about Vista. Apple may thing they need an 'Office' product that is not in MSFT's control. The only reason for OO, vs iWork is not Pages (which has a ways to go IMO but not trying to start Page flame wars) and certainly not Keynote, (which is way ahead IMO, again not trying to start Keynote discussion) but 'Numbers'/Excel. This is a must, if the feel they need an Office alternative to minimize MSFT 'control' of the Mac's in-office presence. Can they really put there long-term future in the office in the hands of the MSFT Mac BU no matter how well intentioned they are? If they could take bits and pieces they need from OO for the underlying framworks, keep them open source, and then layer on the Apple UI they accomplish a couple of things.
- An alternative to Office for the Mac that will eventually (ODF) be generally acceptable to the coporate environment
- Provide an real open source set of frameworks for other developers to use to also compete against office on the Mac platform.