OpenOffice.org 1.1 is already available in the Release Candidate stage, but not on the Mac. For reasons that continue to elude me, the OS X version is grossly out of step with the other versions.
It’s apparent that Apple and Sun don’t wish to support OpenOffice on OS X. The question is why. They have a common enemy, Microsoft, but you’d never know that from their inexplicable behavior in this case.
Posted by: Dan Gillmor on July 15, 2003 11:07 AM
Unfortunately, Nisus doesn’t have a “track changes” feature. For several projects I’m working on this has been an absolute requirement.
Posted by: Cyrus Farivar on July 15, 2003 01:05 PM
What do you think of ThinkFree Office?
Posted by: Dan Gillmor on July 15, 2003 01:22 PM
It’s interesting and well-donw. But it has the same problem for me with Word: no track changes feature.
Posted by: doggy on July 16, 2003 06:42 AM
I used Open Office on Linux and aside from the lack of track and change it was pretty solid. The Windows version seems to work well also. Since converting everything to OSX I had to get a copy of MS Office for OSX. Open office seems thave trouble on osx.
Posted by: GerenM on July 16, 2003 10:04 AM
A Mac version (ANY Mac version) of this has been lagging since before it began!
I’ve been waiting for it for almost four years, first as StarOffice, and now, OpenOffice. I’ve been told that there was a “serious commitment” to the Macintosh community. To date, I’ve never had a version of StarOffice or OpenOffice that would run on a Mac of any flavor.
Frankly, I wouldn’t hold my breath on ever seeing it.
Posted by: Jerry Boetje on July 16, 2003 10:24 AM
While Apple and Sun (I hope) do regard MS as a common foe, they both have to worry about Linux. Several articles in the trades have commented on the problem Linux poses for both of them – possibly moving Apple to 3rd place on the desktop and confining Solaris to the high end. Neither is an enviable place to be.
Posted by: Dan Gillmor on July 16, 2003 10:53 AM
Seems to me that Apple would benefit from a solid OS X version of StarOffice.
Posted by: Chris Lewis on July 17, 2003 05:59 PM
I’ve been using OpenOffice 1.0.3 on the Mac for a few weeks now, and I haven’t had any problems with documents yet. I haven’t need any of the advanced Office features yet, though, so I probably get a more rosy picture than some. It’s ugly, but it does the job, and configuring .doc and .xls files to open using OpenOffice worked just fine.
Posted by: steve crandall on July 15, 2003 11:04 AM
At some level Apple probably needs to keep Microsoft onboard as having “real” Office is a requirement for more than a few Mac users in the business world (even if a clone is good enough).
That said I’m very happy with Keynote as my PowerPoint clone and Nisus Writer for word processing. Both are great improvements over the Microsoft experience if you largely create documents for your own use. (both read/write MS formats, but the mapping isn’t perfect)