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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1576
Safari, Keynote v. Microsoft: Biting the Hand that Feeds?
By Remy Davison, Insanely Great Mac
January 23rd 2003
Could an AppleWorks Pro compete with, or ultimately displace, Office?
Is Apple going up against Microsoft once more? The Baltimore Sun seems to thinks so. A
story at the Sun focuses on Apple's recent release of Safari and Keynote, and wonders
what's brewing for AppleWorks.
The article argues that Microsoft's Office suite represents Apple's dependency upon MS
for its very survival, and speculates whether Apple could beef up AppleWorks
sufficiently to make it an effective Office substitute, should MS ever pull out of the
Mac business/productivity market.
An AppleWorks Pro? Maybe, says Sun correspondent David Zeiler. With absolute
compatibility with Office and separate AppleWorks components (such as a word
processor, a spreadsheet) which could sell separately, as MS Office components do [as
far as we're aware, only Entourage on the Mac side is sold separately now, although
Word+Entourage 2001 did sell as a special package].
Zeiler's point is that Apple would control the product and price, as well as the own
the profits. Plus, it already has some elements in place, such as Keynote
(Powerpoint), Safari (IE), Mail/iCal/Address Book (Entourage) and Filemaker Pro
(Access).
Analysis: It's a nice scenario, but I can't see anything realistically displacing
Office's dominance for the foreseeable future. I have a major bone to pick with Word
v.X [of which more later], but it's difficult for the average user, who works
consistently with others using PP, Excel and Word to rely on translaters, or asking
people to save to RTF or AppleWorks. I make a point of turning people's HTML mail off,
but they don't know, don't care and have no idea what HTML mail is.
Unfortunately for us, the average user who has no interest in computers, but merely
has to use them for work is our worst enemy.
And Microsoft's best friend.
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