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Re: [News] New Microsoft Office Locks Apple Users Out

__/ [ Maverick ] on Tuesday 05 December 2006 18:31 \__

> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> 
>> The lock-out begins for Office Mac users
>> 
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | Microsoft is calling these "Microsoft Office Open XML Formats", but
>> | Office for Mac users will find them far from "open". In fact, they
>> | can't read them.
>> | 
>> | Take Word 2007, for example. By default it saves documents in the
>> | new *.docx format. Trying to open one of these in Word for Mac 2004
>> | yields the following garbled mess
>> `----
>> 
>> http://apcmag.com/node/4755
>> 
>> This looks like another case of binary mess.
>> 
>> 
>> Related:
>> 
>> Publish And Perish
>> 
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | Alexander Rose, the executive director of the futurist Long Now
>> | Foundation, worries about the impermanence of digital information.
>> | "If you save that computer for 100 years, will the electrical plugs
>> | look the same?" he asks. "The Mac or the PC--will they be around?
>> | If they are, what about the software? " So far there's no business
>> | case for digital preservation--in fact, for software makers like
>> | Microsoft, planned obsolescence is the plan.
>> | 
>> | "The reality is that it's in companies' interest that software should
>> | become obsolete and that you should have to buy every upgrade,"
>> | Rose says. We could be on the cusp of a turning point, though, in the
>> | way businesses and their customers think about digital preservation.
>> | "Things will start to change when people start losing all of their
>> | personal photos," Rose said.
>> `----
>> 
>>
http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/30/books-information-preservation-tech-media_cx_ee_books06_1201acid.html?partner=yahootix
>> http://tinyurl.com/yyjqoh
> 
> Yeup.  Microsoft is moving their goal posts yet again.  I suggest that
> users of OS X use NeoOffice, an open source alternative that is free.

It truly looks pretty with that Aqua integration, but I wonder if there's a
mix of Neo and that other OpenOffice edition that comes preloaded with heaps
of Free clipart. Having used OpenOffice in the past, I can tell there's a
lot of FUD going on. It is fast, versatile, user friendly, and it contains
features that don't exist elsewhere, not even in Office 2007.

This morning I saw a Microsoft-commissioned IDC study that attempts to mock
ODF. They have spread enough OpenOffice FUD already, so they move on to
format and code contamination (IP or macros, AKA viruses).

I wish to add that Open XML format support in OpenOffice is worryingly
exclusive. It also contains C sharp (Mono), which leads to IP woes (Red Hat
rejects Mono for example). This essentially shuts out Abiword, KOffice,
(non-Novell) OpenOffice, etc. Microsoft used their pacts with Corel and
Novell to either fork or exclude. It's divisive in nature. If only the media
wasn't so blind and as selfish as Novell (a Novell executive admitted the
selfishness)...

Best wishes,

Roy

-- 
Roy S. Schestowitz      |    "Turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie"
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