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Posted by Tim Streater on 01/30/08 21:59
In article <slrnfq1rt0.4eu.spamspam@bowser.marioworld>,
Ben C <spamspam@spam.eggs> wrote:
> On 2008-01-30, Toby A Inkster <usenet200801@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:
> > Travis Newbury wrote:
> >
> >> Oh please, if Microsoft pulled Office from the Mac it would go the way
> >> the Amiga went.
> >
> > 2 or 3 years ago, I would have agreed. But Apple have started showing a
> > knack for taking an existing open source project, polishing it up and
> > creating a gem.
> >
> > Look what they did when Microsoft seemed to be letting Internet Explorer
> > development on OSX slide: they took Konqueror's rendering engine, ported
> > it to Mac OS X, put some Aqua chrome around it and released it as Safari.
> > A few years down the line, Safari not only has close to 100% penetration
> > on Mac OS X, but it's now competing on Microsoft's home turf; WebKit (the
> > Safari rendering engine) has been improved so much that the Konqueror guys
> > are dropping their original engine in favour of it; and various Gecko-
> > based browsers (e.g. Epiphany) are thinking of going WebKit.
> >
> > If Microsoft dropped Office for Mac, Apple could fork OpenOffice.org/
> > NeoOffice and have a decent suite within 6-12 months -- one that supported
> > Microsoft Office formats
>
> That's much harder than making a browser based on KHTML though. For
> HTML/CSS/JS there are open standards and specifications. For Office
> software you'd have to reverse-engineer MS Office as quickly as they add
> new features to it.
>
> OpenOffice is a fine product if you like that kind of thing, but it
> isn't as interoperable with MS Office as many people need, and it would
> be hard to achieve that.
>
> Macs seem to be quite popular as home computers. They're more
> fashionable-looking, usually less noisy, get infested with viruses less,
> and people associate PCs with work. You don't need Office software at
> home much anyway, so I think people would still buy them.
Hardly fashionable looking, dear boy. I have a Mini - because its cheap,
small, and I don't need a number of permanently empty slots. I maxed out
the RAM and bought a LaCie external drive that sits nicely under the
Mini. Small footprint. The KVM components got recycled from the previous
Mini. The only thing it lacks is a second video port.
I have Office 2004 (prolly to be upgraded to Office 2008) for
compatibility with others, and I do all my page layout using Pages.
Meanwhile at work I have a Mac Pro with three 2-port video cards (three
screen used for network monitor displays). I have TextWrangler (free,
you know) for PHP development (PHP included), and I downloaded mysql and
installed that (not quite trivial but nearly).
Typically at work I have three Safari windows and 20 or so tabs open. I
could wish Safari had better JavaScript error reporting, but hey, I
haven't been a programmer for 40 years for nothing. I get by.
I wouldn't have said a Mac Pro is particularly fashionable looking -
although everybody went "Wow!" when I took it out of the box.
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