Id argue that without Sun (and Star before them) putting in all that
effort to get OOo native on Windows and *nix/x11 it would be much less
likely that we would have such a nice polished version of OOo (2.0 looks
really nice from the beta I played with) for those platforms. The Mac
platform has always been much farther from "completion" because of Sun's
decision making (I certainly can't imagine that it was a good decision for
them from a simple perspective - I think it must be some kind of long term
strategic goal) - not because the Mac community has no interest in the
project. And really - NeoOffice seems to be going along quite well - any
open source Mac coders are probably better off putting their effort there
(could be wrong - it might be slower at startup, but NeoOffice has better OS
X integration than the standard x11).
Really Sun's decision making in this matter baffles me. Do they want to
take away Microsoft's office suite dominance or not? So what if its 3
percent of the market - network effects are very important with something
like an office suite - not to mention the fact that Mac users tend to be
very open to alternate software. Do they think that they want to compete
against Apple on the desktop at some point? MS is their true competition
(as in the company that will wipe them out - Linux - or perhaps Sun's
confused and confusing Linux strategy - has accelerated the fall - but NT-XP
was/is Sun's real problem in terms of software competition) - so I seriously
question their decision making. Apple is an ally - not an enemy for Sun.
So then you might ask why Apple wouldn't be interested in directly
supporting the porting effort. Well, they like MS Office on their platform
- that's why. And that's why, unless Microsoft intends to drop support for
Office on the Mac - you wont see a direct competitor to office coming from
Apple. It would be stupid for them to force Microsoft to pull a very nice
piece of software (sorry - have you guys ever used the Mac Office? Sure v.
X was buggy and slow - but besides the usual MS bugginess v 2004 on the Mac
is VERY nice for what most people use their office suite for). If OOo hits
50 percent of the market - then it would definitely be in Apple's best
interest to push the product on the Mac. At this point Id be happy if they
just supported the file format in iWork and Appleworks (and have made a
feature request for them to do so).
iWork is not a competitor to MS Office or to Appleworks or to
OpenOffice.org. Its more like a low end publishing app like MS Publisher.
Just like Keynote behaves quite differently than Powerpoint (although I
noticed that the latest Powerpoint introduced a few nice Mac only features
to compete), Pages is quite a bit different than Word.
And as far as BSD goes - how many users run that? 5? BSD is dead ;).
Solaris is not used on the desktop in any big numbers at this point (being a
Sun shop I can tell you that the chances of us running Solaris in 5 years
are probably slim - its eventually going to be Linux - its just a matter of
time). A significant number of our faculty went to NT/2000 (they went along
with so many science and engineering apps that are now Windows focused) 5-6
years ago, and nobody is coming back on the desktop to Solaris. A few to
Mac OS X because they aren't happy with Windows, but that's it. And
ProjectLookingGlass? More like ProjectLooksGreatButUsableItsNot. Its a
great example of what happens when a bunch of geeks meet up with some
marketing guys and they design a user interface (perhaps Im being too harsh
- but I thought OS X was bad with the "all flash, less usability studies"
aspect of UI). Mac OS X is definitely one of the "big 3" on the desktop
(its still second place last time I checked). Unfortunately its still more
like the big 1 plus a few small potatoes ...
So lets not sit here and blame all the Mac users for not coding enough - its
just not fair. In my case, as a probably typical Mac user, I do my best to
support the effort - which in my case means an occasional post on here - but
mostly is comprised of me pushing the product on all my Windows or Linux or
Solaris using friends, students, and to the other IT personnel on campus.
The only time I toss OpenOffice on a Mac is if its a fellow geek (or at
least an open minded person), or someone that really wants interoperability
with the format.
And yes - Id be happy to toss a small amount of cash toward the effort if it
meant getting a polished, usable, integrated Aqua port. I certainly know I
can't contribute a whole lot in terms of time or coding (pretty much nil on
the last one).
Tony
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