Month: January 2003

Reported: Apple’s Microsoft Word Killer

The new package, said to be named “Document,” includes 100% import and export functionality with Microsoft Word files, but goes much farther than that venerable word processor has ever managed in giving the user a full-scope document development environment (a term used by one of our sources in describing the new product).

It is said that Apple Document will draw heavily from the experience gained within the KeyNote development team, but has been a completely independent project within Apple. And, many of the rich feature concepts evident in KeyNote will also be present in Document, with full implementation of the Aqua interface and of Quartz graphics, including anti-aliased text.

Sources say that Document will seamlessly import and export components in a large number of formats, from Word, Excel, and Photoshop, among others. And, most interesting is a report that it will also provide many alternate output format choices, including advanced .PDF (with selectable compression), several levels of HTML (including DHTML), a wide assortment of multimedia formats, and will provide easy to use tools for adding XML tags to documents.

Hmm, very intresting. I hope it , or something pretty close to it, is comming from Apple.
[via reality bytes]

Reported: Apple’s Microsoft Word Killer

The new package, said to be named “Document,” includes 100% import and export functionality with Microsoft Word files, but goes much farther than that venerable word processor has ever managed in giving the user a full-scope document development environment (a term used by one of our sources in describing the new product).

It is said that Apple Document will draw heavily from the experience gained within the KeyNote development team, but has been a completely independent project within Apple. And, many of the rich feature concepts evident in KeyNote will also be present in Document, with full implementation of the Aqua interface and of Quartz graphics, including anti-aliased text.

Sources say that Document will seamlessly import and export components in a large number of formats, from Word, Excel, and Photoshop, among others. And, most interesting is a report that it will also provide many alternate output format choices, including advanced .PDF (with selectable compression), several levels of HTML (including DHTML), a wide assortment of multimedia formats, and will provide easy to use tools for adding XML tags to documents.

Hmm, very intresting. I hope it , or something pretty close to it, is comming from Apple.
[via reality bytes]

A Brief History of ClarisWorks. Claris(Apple)Works is still my favorite “productivity suite”. It was one of the cleanest and most stable set of applications I think I ever used.

Years later I realized that this feeling had led to a certain blindness to the pace at which the rest of the industry was moving. In its effort to produce slick, bug-free software, Claris was neglecting the hard reality that sheer number of features sells, independent of elegance of design. Some products, such as MacWrite Pro, were delayed so long by stringent quality assurance requirements that they lost their effectiveness in the market.

Shame to hear first hand how quality is not rewarded in the software marketplace.

Apple and Gobe did indeed discuss possibilities at various points in Gobe’s history; however, I am not at liberty to go into details. Apple did not in the end acquire Gobe as such, but three of its founders, Scott Holdaway, Scott Lindsey, and Carl Grice, did rejoin Apple as employees when Gobe failed. They won’t tell me what they are up to (even off the record!), but whatever it is, it does not involve the Gobe Productive codebase. Nor, I am reasonably sure, does it involve the ClarisWorks / AppleWorks codebase.

Hmm, intresting, more fule to the iOffice rumors floating around.

A Brief History of ClarisWorks. Claris(Apple)Works is still my favorite “productivity suite”. It was one of the cleanest and most stable set of applications I think I ever used.

Years later I realized that this feeling had led to a certain blindness to the pace at which the rest of the industry was moving. In its effort to produce slick, bug-free software, Claris was neglecting the hard reality that sheer number of features sells, independent of elegance of design. Some products, such as MacWrite Pro, were delayed so long by stringent quality assurance requirements that they lost their effectiveness in the market.

Shame to hear first hand how quality is not rewarded in the software marketplace.

Apple and Gobe did indeed discuss possibilities at various points in Gobe’s history; however, I am not at liberty to go into details. Apple did not in the end acquire Gobe as such, but three of its founders, Scott Holdaway, Scott Lindsey, and Carl Grice, did rejoin Apple as employees when Gobe failed. They won’t tell me what they are up to (even off the record!), but whatever it is, it does not involve the Gobe Productive codebase. Nor, I am reasonably sure, does it involve the ClarisWorks / AppleWorks codebase.

Hmm, intresting, more fule to the iOffice rumors floating around.