Mac OpenOffice debut may be preview

While the Macworld UK article seemed to indicate that OpenOffice 2.0 would “ship” for the Mac this month, a look at the OpenOffice.org Mac timeline reveals that while the Aqua version will be “presented” next month, an alpha is now scheduled for next January or February. I wouldn’t expect to see it lauded at the January Macworld event, though. Not only does Apple have its own quasi-suite in iWork, but from all accounts it hasn’t reached out very much to the OpenOffice effort. Indeed, much of the difficulty in getting OpenOffice to the Mac is explained in the FAQ of the NeoOffice project that seeks to circumvent the delays:

OpenOffice.org is paid for by Sun Microsystems so its paid staff are most concerned with completing whatever goals Sun Microsystems sets. In comparison, NeoOffice averages less than a million downloads per year and NeoOffice only runs on a platform that Sun Microsystems has rarely released software for. Because of these differences, any Mac OS X work must be coordinated with the OpenOffice.org paid staff to ensure that the Mac OS X work does not conflict with any work on the Windows, Linux, or Solaris platforms.

Sure doesn’t sound like the kind of egalitarianism that the FOSS world generally embraces.

The Mac’s office is finally open

It’s been a big week of new arrivals at Apple. First, Google CEO Eric Schmidt joins its Board of Directors, but I’m more skeptical than many about how directly Board participation results in direct collaboration between companies. This does not of course mean that Apple and Google have an alliance, even though Bill Campbell’s participation on Apple’s Board seemed to have helped the plight of Intuit products for the Mac.

In any case, I’m persoinally more excited about the imminent and long-awaited arrival of an “official” OpenOffice for the Mac next month. It may not be the prettiest Mac application out there, but OpenOffice is an incredibly capable suite, and there is nothing like the convenience of being able to download it and be almost instantly productive. Nowadays, Mac users looking for a free alternative to Pages or Microsoft Office need to look to products like AbiWord, which work poorly under Mac OS X. 

CEA tries to pick up E3’s pieces

CEA today announced that it’s formed an advisory group to look into a “gaming and entertainment event” in the spring of 2007, making no bones about its desire to again serve as the focal point for the games industry. For all the success of CES, E3 is “the one that got away”; its split in 1994 left a wound in CEA’s side that’s never healed.

If the big videogame companies pulled out of E3, why would they join a trade show of similar scale hosted by CEA? For one thing, E3 has always had more of a circus environment than CES; the industry has grown up. Also, CES attracts more mainstream media, which is important for expanding the videogame space beyond the fanboy blogs. And while the Xbox and PlayStation groups are their own entities within Microsoft and Sony, both corporations are CES exhibitors as are Intel, nVidia and ATI, er, AMD.

On the other hand, while CEA has long been adept at making overtures to content companies, they haven’t quite cracked that nut to the extent necessary to create a true alternative to E3, where most of the large booths were from software publishers such as Sega, Activision, Atari, EA, Namco, Konami, Square Enix and NCSoft.

They build cathedrals in Cupertino

Via Digg comes an Infoworld article on the Australian LinuxWorld site (whew) regarding Apple’s retreat from OpenDarwin, its highest-profile open source initiative. The article claims that Apple was actually never all that cooperative with the open source movement. Perhaps they didn’t need to be for Darwin, but while the Mac version of Firefox is excellent, it’s a shame that there isn’t a full implementation of OpenOffice 2.0 for the platform yet.

It’s unclear why Apple open sourced Darwin; the InfoWorld article likely accurately describes it as “an experiment” even though NeXT engineers had plenty of BSD and Intel experience. Apple had issues with hackers trying to get the Intel version of Mac OS X running on non-Apple hardware, something that hasn’t become much of an issue since the OS started shipping there and may now be moot in light of Boot Camp and Parallels, so perhaps that led them to withdraw.

So, maybe the retreat from open source is “new,” but Apple’s embrace of proprietary design certainly tracks back to the company’s roots. Apple has little to fear regarding this:

Of course, there is a certain amount of hubris associated with such a top-down approach. It means that all the risk is placed squarely on Apple’s own shoulders. If the judgment of Steve Jobs and his lieutenants remains sound, Apple will doubtless continue its string of successes. If not, they will have no one but themselves to blame.

Or, to paraphrase Guy Kawasaki in a recent interview regarding Apple, the key to its success is hoping that Steve Jobs continues to think up great products. So far, his track record is pretty darn good.

“We three” kill E3

I indulge those who note that software drives the videogame industry — and it would certainly have been damaging to E3 if, say, EA and Activision pulled out of the conference — but the hardware oligopoly of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo deciding to pull out of the show is what really killed the major event. Next Generation’s analysis is guilty of the same kind of exaggeration that killed the conference itself; the list could stop at the second reason. Next Generation should also be careful to avoid any schadenfreude as its history has also been marked by a significant collapse and attempt to rise from the ashes.

In other coverage, News.com buys the association’s line and says that the 2007 show will likely be an invitation-only affair (let’s hope not) while Penny Arcade looks at the more emotional side of E3’s “evolution” in ESA’s euphemism, and a comic is worth a thousand words.

Of many major tech events from the ’90s that have faded away — Comdex, PC Expo, summer Macworld and now E3 — one most wonder if another is on the chopping block. CES continues to grow out of control, but it would require a much stronger coordinated effort to bring down that show — Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Philips, Samsung and LG would all have to walk, and yet you’d still have big booths from many other exhibitors including HP, DirecTV, Creative, Intel and Microsoft — not that my feet would mind seeing CES scaled back a bit, or at least having its growth slow. CEA has just done a better job of diversifying the exhibitor base.

Adobe’s bagging it

This wasn't quite what I had in mind, when I suggested that Adobe should get into the hardware business, but accessories may be the closest you can get to software margins in the technology business and it may be the best looking leather mega-murse I've seen this side of Kenneth Cole, even if it is "for creatives and designers." The bag's exclusive brick-and-mortar retailer will be Barney's New York.

From the PDF (of course) press release:

The carryall balances form and functionality with style and elegance. Produced in striking black leather and outlined in red stitching, it’s designed to hold a 17-inch laptop, folders, PDAs, keys and cell phone.

I don't think even the most mindful "creative" would tote the space-wasting box used by most software as Adobe shows in the interior shot.

Vista delay the HP way?

To hear Microsoft tell it, Windows Vista's much publicized delay is not really the company's fault. After all, the operating system will ship this year to business customers and Microsoft says that it could have supported some of their PC customers, but chose to delay shipment to enable all of their PC customers time to prepare for the hot December (read: consumer) selling season. As a CNet interview with Microsoft's Brad Goldberg, the Microsoft executive notes:

The feedback we got from OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partners, retailers, channel partners and others was pretty consistent. They were asking us for visibility around our ability to deliver broadly for consumers at the holiday season. They said the thing that would have been hardest and most challenging would have been getting to a point close to the holiday and either scaling back availability to the point where people wouldn't have the supply to meet demand, or that we would have to alter some plans after they had made investments. So, this decision was really made based on very consistent feedback we got from the industry about how to think about our release timing.

However, the conference call where Jim Allchin announced Vista's delay did not paint a picture of such consistency. Allchin says that Microsoft could have shipped for some OEMs but did not in order to provide a more universal quality standard. So, it leads one to think that the largest consumer-focused OEMs could have put the kibosh on Vista getting out the door this holiday season, and the one with the largest, most globally complex business at this point is certainly HP.