OpenOffice For Mac Alpha Out Today

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on June 05, 2007

A few weeks ago in my Tech 101 video podcast, a viewer asked about alternatives to Microsoft Office on the Mac. (You can see it here, or find it on iTunes.) The viewer who wrote in apparently thought that since Microsoft hadn’t yet released an Intel-native version of Office For Mac, that there simply wasn’t a version of Word available for the Mac at all. I proceeded to correct that impression, first by running a the most recent version of Office for Mac on a MacBook, and proceeded to explain. Then I launched into a discussion about such alternatives as Google Docs and Spreadsheets, ThinkFree, Zoho.com, as well as AbiWord, and finally Apple’s own iWork.

What I left out, on purpose, was OpenOffice, which at least on the Mac required the installation of X11, which to me, is a huge barrier to entry. I mean I’ve installed X11, but am nowhere near proficient in its use. But at long last there is a new version of OpenOffice that is Mac-native, meaning it doesn’t require an X11 installation up front. That’s the good news. The bad news is that is is an early, early Alpha version, so don’t even think about using it seriously yet. Known issues, as the download page warns, include the fact that copying and pasting doesn’t work correctly, nor does printing, and PDF export doesn’t work correctly yet either. All that said, it’s good to see OpenOffice coming back to the Mac. Looks like the new attention from Sun Microsystems is beginning to bear fruit.

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