iOffice?

MacWhispers.com – Whispers From Around The Mac Community

Information from a variety of sources reports that Apple is near a beta release of their long-rumored professional word processing application. Details of the software are fascinating.

The new package, said to be named “Document,” includes 100% import and export functionality with Microsoft Word files, but goes much farther than that venerable word processor has ever managed in giving the user a full-scope document development environment (a term used by one of our sources in describing the new product).

I thought I had posted something somewhere that I fully expected Apple to be reworking OpenOffice just as they used the core of Konqueror for their own product.

I was close, I guess. It makes sense for Apple to do this, especially if they can keep up with file formats (MSFT has said for some time they are going to an open and/or XML based file format, a la AbiWord: we’ll see).

When I see how well the Koffice or GNOME office apps work (I haven’t found anything they lack yet), I have to wonder if a well-designed and integrated suite of office apps wouldn’t be all one needed.

And there’s always the specter of these running on x86 hardware: one less reason to sweat a switch is all your documents are accessible.