Apple and Star Office (Sun)

[ktlx]

Re: Cocoa, Java, ObjC, etc.

Originally posted by tychay
OBTW, I'm willing to bet that Microsoft makes more profit off of Office than Windows. They maybe even generate more total revenue off Office than Windows. Office, Windows, and Explorer should be all but implied when one talks about a Windows monopoly, illegal or not.

Take care,

terry

I read several times during Microsoft's trial that Microsoft Office is the company's cash cow. I heard claims that somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of Microsoft's profit comes from Office. That is why Microsoft wants to move businesses to an Office subscription because they need it to keep being the cash cow. Companies have been hesitant to upgrade from Office 98 and Office 2000 which hurts Microsoft's bottom line.

 

[pbailey]

Microsoft Office Upgrades

It's not only the Mac market that Microsoft is going to effect. Many companies and consumers are not ware of the changes in store for the PC market that will take place after July 31, 2002.

Microsoft will no longer offer PC users an option too purchase upgrades from earlier copies of Office after July 31, 2002. Anyone that has not upgraded by this date will need to Purchase a License alone or License & Software Assurance (L&SA).

Where I work, we just can't afford to upgrade all users to Office XP even at the current upgrade pricing. Now that we would effectively need to purchase new licenses the pricing goes out the roof. We will start moving everyone over to either StarOffice or OpenOffice as our default office suite.

You can read more from the URL below.

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/programs/sa/office.asp

 

[Rocketman]

Star Office Legacy File Import

One thing that would make Star Office valuable would be the ability to import and deal with "old file formats" we al have on discs which have not been opened under new apps or cannot be opened under new apps.

Things like MacPaint, MacDraw, Word 1,2,3,4,5, WP 2,3,4, And probably a fairly long list.

Some of these are addressed by other translation packages (well not older word or MacDraw files) and some not.

Also it would be nice to open and view autocad files which seem to be an increasingly popular way to transfer images of engineering nature.

All of these things are relatively small additions to a program like Star Office and even a $10/20 per feature might be worth paying for if necessary. But as we move into a local server world we want full access to all legacy files.

Of course some day somebody will come up with a useful way to actually use these older files and integrate them into current activity better, and make it available at consumer prices and systems.

Rocketman

 

[NHMac]

Other Enterprise Barriers

Lack of M$ project and an Exchange Server compatible eMail/calendar app on the Mac does as much to keep the Mac out of corporate environs as anything.

Looking forward to the day when there is some options in office bundles.

fluppy2 seems right on... Apple can only be stronger by having many options.

NHMac

 

[tychay]

Originally posted by creed


I may be wrong, but I don't think iTunes 3 is a Cocoa app. I was told a really quick way to tell if an app is Cocoa is to open a dialog with one of the 'pulsing' buttons in, and then - anywhere else on that dialog window - hold the mouse button down. If the button stops pulsing it's a Carbon app: if it keeps pulsing, it's a Cocoa app

I may stand corrected. I assumed that since iTunes appears on my process table as "iTunes" instead of "LaunchCFMApp" and since iTunes is no an .app bundle instead of a single binary, that it was a Cocoa application. I guess that was not correct. There definitely seem to be a lot of under-the-hood changes in iTunes 3 vs. iTunes 1/2 beyond the smart playlists and such that was added.

In any case the fact that iTunes 3 does not run on OS 9, carbon or not, shows Apple is attempted to use their iApps to get people to upgrade. (Remember, iTunes 1 wouldn't install in pre-OS 9 systems without a hack of the installer and binary.) OpenOffice would be both easier and faster to port into Cocoa (Java-based or otherwise) and porting it to only run on OS X seems to follow Apple's modus operandi.

We'll find out by December

 

[dongmin]

Office good; IE bad

Apple is definitely making a concerted effort to become independent of Msoft. First, an expanded Mail, Address, and iCal which makes Entourage obsolete (even though it's a decent program). Next, they hired Dave Hyatt to do development on a Mozilla/Chimera-derivative browser. Now, Office.

To me, having Office for the Mac is good for Apple. As good as AppleWorks or StarOffice may be, MS Office is one of the more popular apps on the PC side. So Apple needs it to give the Mac OS platform more credibility to the potential switchers.

As for IE, I think it's a second-rate product. It's definitely inferior to the PC version which is considerably faster and more stable. It used to be my browser of choice, but I got so tired of it bogging down after use and crashing so I decided to give Mozilla a shot. Now, I wonder I didn't switch earlier. Mozilla is more stable, faster, and more feature-rich, especially with tabbed browsing and the ability to shut off certain annoying Java things. And the development on it is great. I can't wait for Chimera to become a non-beta app.

 

[Cappy]

Re: Preview of things to come

Originally posted by askien
Two major products come from Microsoft. IE and Office. Apple already hired Dave Hyatt to (I guess) come up with something to replace IE. No problem there.

I hope people keep these statements in perspective that this is being said on a "rumors" board. Unless someone can show me something different no one knows that this is the reason he was hired by Apple.

 

[foniks2020]

off topic

iTunes 3 Cocoa App?

I was under the impression that Cocoa apps are the only apps in pre 10.2 that have access to services. If this is true, then iTunes 3 is Cocoa as it does have services available.

Concerning OpenOffice as a Java app... whether or not it is Cocoa, it should run faster than current Java in 10.2 which is supposed to have several Java performance enhancements and hopefully full support for Java 1.4 as well.

 

[ryan]

Re: A couple of things...

Originally posted by Scab Cake
j763 said something about the fact that StarOffice is written is java, so it could not be a cocoa application. Cocoa is a set of tools and libraries built into OS X that sits above the BSD Unix layer and allows a developer to write in either objective-C or java. So, if StarOffice were to come out native for OS X, it would definitely be a Cocoa app. However, I haven't heard of Apple writing anything in Java, other than WebObjects, since Java apps have been proven to run slower in OS X. Apple wrote all of the frameworks in Objective-C, so writing in Objective-C would make StarOffice faster as there would have to be no sort of compilation translation so it could run under the Objective-C frameworks. Sun, however, would probably push for the Java version, and, since it's already written in Java, it's probably going to be java.

You can be sure of something, though. Apple will NOT release StarOffice any time soon as there is a lot of work to be done. It needs to be ported to run natively in Jaguar, Apple needs to find the right time to release a serious competitor to Office, and they need to make sure that it will open/save/manipulate Office documents without a hitch. This will involve a lot of testing. Office is a very complicated piece of programming. I mean, the apps are HUGE. I imagine that we will not hear anything about a final version for at least a year. Eh...sorry for talking so much.

Did you read the artilce????

Star/Open Office is not currently written in Java, else it would already be able to run on OS X, but the Java-based Open Office is due before the end of the year and the commerical StarOffice version sometime next year.

PS - Java runs well on OS X and is only going to get better; in fact Sun is incorporating some of Apple's code of their JVM into their other JVMs.

 

[ibjoshua]

Re: Re: Preview of things to come

Originally posted by Cappy
I hope people keep these statements in perspective that this is being said on a "rumors" board. Unless someone can show me something different no one knows that this is the reason he was hired by Apple.

i'd just like to say thanks to everyone on this thread for an inteligent and informed discussion. being a long time mac fan i read the hardware and processor threads on these forums quite a lot and the standard of your posts is way higher.

although i would say your views/arguments are that much more effective if you have read the whole thread and related articles. (state the obvious josh )

a reminder: MS Word originally found it's legs on the mac and it would be a great shame if it left our platform of choice.

josh
out

 

[Scab Cake]

Re: Re: A couple of things...

Originally posted by ryan


Did you read the artilce????

Star/Open Office is not currently written in Java, else it would already be able to run on OS X, but the Java-based Open Office is due before the end of the year and the commerical StarOffice version sometime next year.

PS - Java runs well on OS X and is only going to get better; in fact Sun is incorporating some of Apple's code of their JVM into their other JVMs.

Yeah, I read the article. It doesn't say anywhere that StarOffice ISN'T written in Java. Secondly, OpenOffice is currently written in Java, however, it uses the X11 interface. So, it does run on OS X, you just have to have XDarwin.

And though Java may be fast in OS X, it's still running on a Virtual Machine. It's going to take quite a bit to convince me that a machine that my computer is emulating is going to be faster than my computer running the code natively.

 

[slaboda]

We still need M$

Though I'm glad that Apple is giving us more options, I think they need to be more careful about managing their relationship with Microsoft. This announcement does not come at the most opportune time.

MacBU has given us some great things, like the recent release of Remote Desktop for FREE! (The release notes also hint that an Exchange server compatible email app is not far off). Remote Desktop makes my life about 100x easier; I can work remotely from my Mac and I don't need the powers that be to set up "special" (i.e. non-proprietary) services for my Mac. This makes it much more acceptable for me to use it in a Windows environment. Actually, it's kind of a Trojan horse. People gather around my desk to ogle my TiBook.

If Microsoft stopped developing for the Mac, it would be far less acceptable to use one in a corporate setting and I think it would give more ammunition to corporate IT Windows bigots. I'd love for my computer to be M$ free, but that's not in the cards yet for a lot of corporate users. Perhaps in a few years once Microsoft's new licensing scheme has alienated about 50% of their customers, which it seems to be doing . . .

 

[jettredmont]

Originally posted by ktlx


Objective C is not just an extension to C that Apple made. In fact, neither part of the statement is correct. It is neither just an extension nor was it made by Apple. Objective C adds significant syntax changes to C and is not simply an extension. Cocoa requires the use of these additional language constructs and so you cannot just leave them out. Please look at some of the information on Apple's developer website instead of making uninformed claims.

First, correct, Objective C is an open standard, not just used by Apple. On the other hand, the only major usage of Objective C I've ever seen is the Cocoa/Aqua frameworks. But, yes, Objective C will compile with gcc on most platforms I'm aware of.

However, Objective C IS just an addition to C, and talks quite adeptly with unmodified standard ANSI C, even in the same source module (.m file). In fact, the first implementations of Objective C were as nothing more than a pre-processor for C files.

As an example, the project I am working on uses a solid C++ cross-platform basis plus a C API (it's easier to link Objective C to plain C than to C++) and a Cocoa front end. It works incredibly smoothly, and uses the best of both worlds (Objective C is nice for the Cocoa frameworks and UI widgets, but I wouldn't want its "type-looseness" anywhere in the chunk of our application that actually does work!).

As for StarOffice, I believe it is in C currently, not Java. The Java "port" will give Sun a common UI face to the underlying C code (which reduces development time significantly in a cross-platform project). The Java port could use Cocoa frameworks to do its thing, but doing so directly would completely defeat the purpose of a Java port in the first place (the Cocoa frameworks are non-portable). Note that the use of Java in Cocoa apps is supported, but not advised, by the Apple team.

Also, of course, note that in order to plug a Java UI onto the C code base Sun/OpenOffice will have to consolidate their apps' C API's and create a JNI Java-to-C translation layer. Once you have such a consolidated C API, slapping a Cocoa UI onto it is literally child's play (no harder than a Java UI, although again you have to do the Objective C/Cocoa API only for the Mac whereas the Java API work could be repurposed for the various other platforms).

Cost/benefit: Cocoa in my experience is much faster than Java/Swing for most UI elements, especially in startup time. The Objective-C to C translation is compile-time intensive and nearly completely transparent at runtime (assuming the compiler generates efficient code, which gcc tends to do). The Java-to-C translation is runtime-intensive and reflective (because Java is a late-binding language), and as a result is nowhere near transparent. Possibly outweighing this, though, Java/Swing runs pretty much the same on most platforms (there may be per-platform modifications, but they are minimal compared to the bulk of the UI code), AND, of course, Sun owns Java and would love to see it used in OpenOffice.

My guess: Sun will transition its version of the suite to Java UI. Apple and/or OpenOffice.org will tackle a pure Objective C/Cocoa UI implementation using the API developed for the Java UI.

 

[eddit]

There is NO plan to port StarOffice

Here's a comment from the OpenOffice FAQ

Question: Will there ever be a StarOffice for Mac OS X?
Answer: Sun Microsystems has no current plans to bring the StarOffice suite to Mac OS X. However, Sun contributed much of the base and core technologies for the current Mac OS X/Darwin port, and the Mac OS X/Darwin porting team is working hard to finish it. Sun continues to provide support to the OpenOffice.org community, and therefore the Mac OS X/Darwin porting project.

There appears to be a confusion between the MacOS X OpenOffice 1.0 Alpha port which was just released and StarOffice. There has been no press release from Apple or Sun saying that they have come to some agreement RE StarOffice, and certainly no agreement on shiping with MacOS 10.2. Looks like CNET got it muddled (as per usual). As for the talk about using the java API for Aqua support? Sound bizzar to me!

Anyway here's the OpenOffice Roadmap

 

[ThreadGuru]

OpenOffice.org vs StarOffice

First, the fact that Sun's StarOffice web page doesn't mention plans to port StarOffice to Mac OS X doesn't mean there ARE no plans. It doesn't actually even mean the plans aren't announced, since web pages often aren't updated as regularly as one might like.

On OpenOffice.org implementation language, it's mostly C++, at least for some definition of "mostly".

Since StarOffice is just OpenOffice with a few additional licensed bits that Sun couldn't make open source (like a spell checker, language fonts, and some input/output filters), "porting" StarOffice is just OpenOffice.org plus porting those separately licensed bits. Actually, the biggest part of StarOffice that's not in OpenOffice.org is SUPPORT... and the Sun quotes show they're hoping Apple will pick that up. (Which, in a way, means Apple almost might as well forget StarOffice and stick with supporting OpenOffice.org on their own.)

In any case, OpenOffice already runs on Mac OS X, though not spectacularly well. There's now a version 1.0 "developer release" that I nearly picked up except that it claims not to be MP-safe and I decided to wait before subjecting my dual processor to it. It's also X11 -- but there's an earlier OpenOffice.org build that's been ported (at least somewhat) to Aqua. I don't know whether that means Carbon or Cocoa; either would be plausible, but Cocoa would make more sense since this is unique Mac OS X interface code anyway (no portability concerns) and it's definitely Mac OS X only since the underlying "engine" is really Darwin/UNIX.

So, OpenOffice, and any threat to Microsoft, will come to Mac OS X no matter what Apple says or does. While some business users may not be able to swallow the lack of formal support, most people will accept that the dedicated volunteers who put it together in the first place will provide sufficient support. (And of course the source is always there if you need it.)

Certainly bundling some form of it (whether "OpenOffice.org" or "StarOffice") will put Apple squarely in the middle, they can't get completely out of the way. That's just one of the "problems" (or, for most of us, BENEFITS) of the Mac OS X open source UNIX core. Microsoft hates it... but it's not going away.

 

[sparkleytone]

www.osopinion.com has a clarifying story on this whole issue/debacle. apparently Sun is not making plans to port staroffice to OS X. the only current plans are for OpenOffice to be made for OS X. they have rescinded their earlier statements and have stated for the record that again, there are no plans for staroffice.

"Sun Microsystems spokesperson Marie Domingo confirmed on Monday that the Sun-Apple collaboration actually took place before Sun decided to release the source code for StarOffice, and that Sun's current plans for a Mac version are focused on OpenOffice rather than StarOffice."

 

[ktlx]

Originally posted by jettredmont

First, correct, Objective C is an open standard, not just used by Apple. On the other hand, the only major usage of Objective C I've ever seen is the Cocoa/Aqua frameworks. But, yes, Objective C will compile with gcc on most platforms I'm aware of.

Just because that is the one you are familiar with does not mean it is the only one. Objective C is over 15 years old but never took off like C++ did. That is why the other frameworks died off/never took off. Apple is very courageous to base Cocoa primarily off a language that was rejected by the market over a decade ago.

However, Objective C IS just an addition to C, and talks quite adeptly with unmodified standard ANSI C, even in the same source module (.m file).

True, it is backwards compatible in that Objective C can call ANSI C no problem at all.

In fact, the first implementations of Objective C were as nothing more than a pre-processor for C files.

Are you sure you are not thinking of C++? The original implementations of C++ from AT&T used cfront which was basically a C pre-processor on steriods. The two original Objective C implementations I used in the mid-80's were both traditional compilers. While you could probably get away with calling them pre-processers, the amount of mangling necessary is more akin to pre-compilers. They were not pre-processors in the cpp or m4 sense of the word.