The Cocoa Office

**uoba** · May 21st, 2002, 09:20 AM

fryke!

What about the pros and cons for each app versus Office?

**fryke** · May 21st, 2002, 09:23 AM

A pros & cons list of each application might be a good idea. But I also think that each app is almost too different from its MS Office version. For Mesa, this might be an important thing (the pros/cons list), but I'm not much of a spreadsheet user, so I can't accomplish a good list for it.

To include ThinkFree Office would be strange, as this wants to be an alternative on itself, and I don't count the Java based apps to the 'clean Cocoa' apps, mostly because the interface slowness doesn't make them great alternatives to Carbon based applications. (They have advantages of their own, of course, x-platform mostly.)

**uoba** · May 22nd, 2002, 03:19 AM

I agree, Thinkfree is basically emulating Office X, so would be a good solution off-the-shelf as it were. But the Java thing does limit it.

As for the Word Processor pros and cons, maybe I'll try this weekend, between Word and Okito (work permitting!)

By the way, do the makers of DayLite have anything to do with Omni? DayLite crashes quite a bit, when it does it calls up Omni's crash report system, or is this an Omni application in itself?

**fryke** · May 22nd, 2002, 03:50 AM

It looks almost too Omni, also, right? I had the same thoughts, but this makes me like it even more. (Not the crashes, that it might be from Omni...)

Gosh, how I'd like to see office wars similar to the now active browser wars on Mac OS X. Give The Cocoa Office Suite at http://mac.fryke.com/cocoaoffice a try... It's very friendly.

**uoba** · May 22nd, 2002, 03:56 AM

Another question:

How much of an upgrade will Apple give to Address Book in 10.2?

**fryke** · May 22nd, 2002, 04:54 AM

As far as I can see, Address Book will not replace a proper PIM, although it might grow to be your one stop shop for contacts, both because you'll automatically use them for Mail.app and because iChat will also use it. AND it'll be integrated with cell phones that have Bluetooth/IRdA and vCard support (which many now have here in Europe). But for calendar functionality, a PIM is still needed. Integration for Mail.app would be good, integration of PDAs should be a high priority, although I've stopped using them. My cell phone is my PDA, and my TiBook is my PDA.