Appleworks 7 coming?

IE wasn't just bundled, it was fully integrated as the default and could not be removed. If it was just a matter of it being distributed, then Apple would have been attacked for including Safari into all OS X installs. ;)
 
Considering the work that has been done to port OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 to MacOS X (even if it does still use the X11 GUI rather than native Aqua) it would be spectacular to find the work was being done at least in part to build a new back-end for AW -- one that supports the OOo document formats completely and carries along the M$Office compatibility of OOo. It would be like Sun developing the commercial and more polished StarOffice based on the OpenOffice.org sources.

Wishful thinking, I know, but man it would be sweet.
 
I don't know to many specifics about Apple's new document software but what I have heard is that the new PowerSchool will inplement some pretty cool plugins. For example. When students are in class their macs will be able to use a networked version of this new AppleWorks or Iworks suite so that school systems don't have to purchase multiple licenses and install seperatly on imacs and ibooks. This way it's very difficult to get your hands on a copy of the software since it resides on the network computers and the students access them from school and can save a copy onto the schools servers as well as on their harddrives. They can then work on this at home by logging through the net and everything will sync up nicely... no more chewed up homework. The students work can also be crossed check for plagarism as well as allow for the teachers to better understand how the students progress is coming along and give input along the way.
 
I agree with MisterMe, Appleworks is not really considered in the same sense as M$ office. Schools, my dad at home use the program for what it is worth. If Apple releases a new version, it is not even going to effect Office in anyway.
 
Well, it may affect Office slightly, but not enough to really notice. I remember when I started college I had no idea why I needed, or wanted Office and, after using Office 98 for a year, moved on to AppleWorks for the rest of my time. I didn't need the extra stuff, didn't care for it, and wanted to start using the OS X 10.0 Beta.

Now, the average school tells their students that they need Office, or Word. If AppleWorks was 100% able to open and save word files, properly, and came on all new Macs, well, I'd think a lot of people who would simply buy Word before may hold off, or not buy all together. Microsoft has made a more compelling argument making the edu pricing on the low side, but nothing beats free.
 
marz said:
Why wouldn't Apple just improve KOFFICE, isn't that how we got Safari?
Click to expand...

Think about the differences in a browser rendering engine versus a word processor. The rendering engine in a browser is far more complex. Look at how long it took Omnigroup to ship Omniweb 5 after moving to webcore. Apple looked at the prospects of building their own renderer, using Mozilla or khtml. They eventually decided on khtml because it had enough features to build off of and was smaller than mozilla.

Now when we look at Office Suite technology we are no longer encumbered with the same quandry. Apple has shipped Clarisworks/Appleworks for over a decade. They have programmers on staff that focus primarily on text based technologies. In short Apple doesn't really neeed code from KOffice or Open Office because they already have a codebase internally.

People tend to forget that Apple will use Open Source technology when it is beneficial to their needs. They just don't use it by default especially if they can work something up that performs better.

Apple is likely to already have a good Word Processor available. Keynote is a fine Presentation app and Apple owns Filemaker so Database needs are well met. This leaves them with the need for a good Spreadsheet and more robust Mail and Calendaring and they have all the ingredients for a Suite.

All Apple has to do is glue them together and put them under a nice user interface and name a price.
 
Aside from that, I think focusing on KOffice will be very difficult for Apple, because unlike khtml, Koffice is very heavily tied to Qt. That would mean that Apple will either have to port KOffice to Cocoa/Carbon which isn't an easy task, or have programmers developing in Qt and this adds to their development cost.

Either way, there isn't any clear benefit to using KOffice on the Mac.
 
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