As many of you know, I have been using OpenOffice.org, the free and open source office suite since before it was OpenOffice.org. That would be when it was Star Office. That was a long time ago. So I’ve seen it develop and change (and helped a tiny, tiny little bit along the way by submitting bugs.)
The Apple OS has been the poor stepchild when it comes to OpenOffice.org for a long time. With Windows and Linux, there were native versions that were easy to install and use. With OS X, you had to either use the most recent version of OpenOffice.org with X Windows, which most Apple users don’t use, and didn’t have the nice Aqua window dressing, or you had to use NeoOffice, which was steps behind OOo, and had some serious memory leak problems (it got better over time, but it still was pretty unstable last time I used it.)
But, while I was busy doing other things like moving, OpenOffice.org released version 3.0, and with it, native Aqua versions for Intel and PowerPC Macs. Can you see me doing a happy dance?
OpenOffice.org has been a great alternative to Microsoft Office for Windows users (and really the only full-featured office suite for Linux users.) But now, Mac users don’t need to sacrafice to get the latest OOo goodies.
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