Last updated on July 23, 2020
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.