WordPerfect vs, MS Word (was: Re: [Ti] Re: OpenOffice on Mac)

[Chris Olson]

On Dec 4, 2005, at 6:31 PM, Ardeshir Mehta wrote:

> Oh well. A pity, because now in doing one of the things the Mac was  
> always strong in, namely publishing, layout and typesetting, people  
> will increasingly go over to Windows machines!

Not only DTP and prepress, but CAD and GIS as well.  We use GIS  
software for development of hardware.  We participated in the pilot  
program for ESRI products on Mac OS X, then finally got a letter from  
them.  Contrary to what some would like to think, processor  
architecture has had nothing to do with the Mac's declining market  
share, and switching to x86 is not going to help it.  It's all about  
the API's.

Quote from the letter we got from ESRI:
"ESRI's position on operating systems is entirely market driven. We  
will support any/all operating systems and technology for which there  
is a large market. This is because it is very expensive for us to  
port to another platform and support it over many years.

We see computing today as falling into two distinct architectures;  
the desktop/server environment and the server-centric environment.  
The industry standard platform for desktop clients is Windows, and  
the industry standards for server technology is both UNIX and  
Windows. Java and Internet server technology play key roles in the  
server environment. Generally speaking, ESRI has been migrating its  
client and server technology according to these two trends.

ESRI selected Windows for its desktop environment because it offers  
many advantages, including advanced user interfaces and development  
environments that are simply not available in the UNIX environment.  
This platform is also fully interoperable with the other desktop  
technology pervasive within most organizations. We have been  
communicating this decision to our users for a number of years.

ESRI has fundamentally redeveloped and rewritten ArcInfo and ArcView  
for a native Windows environment using Microsoft's desktop standards  
(COM, VB, etc.). This means the Windows platform has become our  
standard platform for initially developing and releasing desktop  
products. ArcInfo 8, released in early 2000, was the first ESRI  
software product built using this architecture. ArcView 8.1 is near  
final release and is developed on the same Windows/COM platform using  
the same component technology. As a result, the BSD lineage of Mac OS  
X does not help in the task of porting our current desktop GIS  
software products to Macintosh.

In conclusion, ESRI is not planning to support the Macintosh platform  
with future releases of ArcView or ArcInfo."

-- 
Chris

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