OpenOffice 3.0 has reached public beta status. They’ve actually taken the Mac community’s criticism to heart and this is the first version to sport an all new Aqua interface.
With Version 3.0, OpenOffice.org is now able to run on Mac OS X without the need for X11. Thus, OpenOffice.org behaves like any other Aqua application. The cool thing is, while the market leading office suite vendor dropped VBA support and the Solver feature, OpenOffice.org recently introduced limited VBA support and includes a powerful Solver component. In addition, OpenOffice.org integrates well with the Mac OS X accessibility APIs, and thus offers better accessibility support than many other Mac OS X applications. Finally, people like OpenOffice.org 3.0 for Mac OS X because of its very good stability and performance. Reportedly, some Mac users have switched to OpenOffice.org just because of its extremely good stability.
Ouch, ouch. Microsoft must be searching for its cup right now. I still remain skeptical that dropping VBA support in Microsoft Office for Mac was the right move. At any rate, this is a way to get even rudimentary support.
I’d also like to suggest that the OpenOffice folks lay off the use of the word “good”. While “good” is superlatively good, it’s not jaw-droppingly good. A thesaurus is our friend. OpenOffice has one, right?
Anyway, the download is now available and I expect some expert reader commentary on the new interface. I’ll be sticking with iWork. Turns out it has everything I needed.
Count me among those who will not upgrade to Office 2008 because of the lack of VBA. I still don't quite understand MS's rationale behind the move, but for me, it's a deal breaker.
There only seems to be an Intel version available - no PPC version as yet
I looked at OO3 and don't think it up to the standards of NeoOffice 2.3. While it's nice to seem them finally coming to the party, it's a bit late.
I agree with you about iWork. Apple has done a great job providing office tools for the majority. I only use NeoOffice for the few things that iWork doesn't do.
Interesting. What does this mean for NeoOffice? I thought the point of NeoOffice was to deal with the issue of making OpenOffice Aqua compatible. Although they have announced 3.0 this would appear to obviate the need for a separate build.
@Peter, the rationale is the same as a fourth grader who doesn't want to do his homework: "It's really, really hard."
I used iWork last week to fill out a bunch of scoring forms given to me in a Word format. They imported and exported without a problem.
As far as I'm concerned, office:mac has lost its raison d'etre. Take it out back and put a bullet in it.
As was said before ... Where is the PPC version of the beta? If they are using XCode it should be simple to compile a PPC version.
A few years behind the leading edge - Terry O'Leary
@ Anonymous :
I may be wrong but this page holds a PPC version of OO 3.
http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/aqua-PPC.html
one issue is that this 3.0 beta of Open Office is only for intel macs. Neo Office has intel and ppc versions. If they come out with an Open Office ppc version that doesn't use x11, I'd try it out.
Well, I tried the OOo 3 for PPC version (liked in my previous comment) and it doesn't need X11 at all. So, give a try.
Still, I found the design (mostly icons) too close from MS Office, but it work very well IMO.
now it needs to follow the Leopard HIG, this looks soo off compared to UI of iWorks, and other mac macs.