OpenOffice.org Aqua Development Snapshot - First Impressions and Comparison with NeoOffice

I came across the news that the first OOo Aqua build was released. This is still an early alpha and as my brief testing proved it's not suitable for any kind of production use.

First impressions are good though. OOo Aqua looks a lot like NeoOffice. There is still of lot of areas where OOo Aqua is lacking behind, but the improvement from the X11 based OOo are definitely noticeable.


OOo Aqua


NeoOffice

The application is much faster than the X11 version and feels more like a Mac application than X11 application. If any of you tried running OOo via X11 on a Mac you know what a pain it is :-/.

My shallow experiments showed that OOo Aqua uses only half of the memory compared to NeoOffice. If the stable release will keep this feature it will be a huge improvement and a slap in the face to NeoOffice.


Don't forget the NeoOffice numbers don't include memory used by X11

Some users claim that the alpha version of OOo Aqua is faster in certain areas than the current NeoOffice (see this in-depth review). I didn't notice a big difference between the two, except for performance in window resizing where NeoOffice is faster (but still terribly slow compared to any other Aqua application).

Overall I'm impressed about the results of only a few weeks of active development since the project announcement in the May. OOo Aqua developers keep up the good job!!!

(If you ever wondered why OOo Aqua and NeoOffice are two very similar projects that run in parallel, then here is a couple of answers that shed some light on this situation)

Where Is Apple JDK6?

Apple usually takes its time to get Java on MacOS up to date with Sun's releases. But with JDK6 it seemed that things will be different. Apple kept on releasing "Developer Preview" versions of JDK along Sun's beta builds.

The last Java SE 6.0 Release 1 Developer Preview 6 was released on Sepember 13th 2006 and after that date Apple became quiet. What has happened?

All the unconfirmed and confirmed rumors about changes of the UI framework in the 10.5 version of MacOS X (Leopard), has given me a feeling that JDK6 got stuck because of Leopard's delay.

Each significant modification to the user interface has to be reflected in the Swing Java UI library. And since Leopard was scheduled to be released in spring 2007, I think that it was safe for Apple to modify Swing to support the latest UI and to release JDK6 along with Leopard.

That's why I think that the roadmap of JDK6 probably got disrupted by Leopard's delay. JDK6 simply can't be released because Leopard hasn't been released yet.

Does it mean that JDK/JRE6 won't run on Tiger? Unfortunately I think so. After all that's exactly what Apple did with JDK5 and MacOS X 10.3 Panther.

While writing this entry I stumbled upon an article by Matthew Schmidt from Javalobby, who has very similar feelings.

Does anyone have a better explanation?

Btw, I checked, Sept 13th 2006 wasn't a Friday, so we can't blame the delay on the date of last Developer Preview release :)

Will Apple Start Giving MacOS X Tiger Away for Free?

According to the AppleInsider, Steve Jobs made an interesting comment regarding the future of MacOS 10.4 Tiger:

During the shareholders meeting, Jobs also entertained the suggestion that Apple could mimic Microsoft's strategy of offering developing nations Windows Starter Edition -- a low cost version of Windows XP as an alternative to the much more expensive Windows Vista. "Do you think we should offer Mac OS 9?" Jobs quipped in response.

"I think Apple could sell the developing world Tiger while selling Leopard here," the attendee replied. Jobs paused for a moment and said that could be an option.

If this really happened and Tiger was released to the community for free, it would be beneficial for both Apple and the community, especially for those folks from developing nations that don't have extra money to pay for software.

Tiger for free?

I don't think that Apple should charge users for the old versions of MacOS X. That seems to me like a business model that is very close to the one, that the company they laugh at all the time (read Microsoft) is using. Besides if a customer pays for a product he/she expects to get some support for it which would be an extra burden for Apple.

How would this work?

Apple would remove all the protection that prevents Tiger from running on non-Apple x86 hardware and encouraged the community to build a driver database for hardware that is not supported by Apple.

Tiger would not be released as an open source (Apple is not that generous! :) ). When it comes to support, Apple would not provide any support for customers that don't have AppleCare and/or that run Tiger on non-Apple HW.

Why would this be good for Apple?

The more users that get exposed to MacOS, the more potential customers Apple will have. I believe that some users after seeing and being able to play with MacOS would be willing to pay for the latest, more advanced version.

All of this for almost no effort (no support, drivers developed by community).

Why would this be good for the community?

Users that can't afford to pay for SW and for whatever reason don't want to or can't run Solaris or Linux would have a third choice (besides running a crippled version of Windows, which can't be really counted as a choice).

Do I see this happening?

Uhh.. well... I'm not sure... but it is certainly something that I would welcome!

Hello I'm RubyOnRails, Hello I'm Java :-)

This is pretty good! The Java-developer half of me feels offended, but the RubyOnRails half is laughing hard :-D

reasonsToIgnoreMicrosoft++

Last night I read about the big news from Microsoft.

Microsoft claims that free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents. It wants royalties from distributors and users.

Is Microsoft really so desperate that it turns to desperate measures like this? I started my boycott against Microsoft two years ago and I've never had a moment's regret :-).

Here at Sun we strongly believe in open source software and open standards (need proof? see OpenJDK, OpenSolaris, OpenJFX and many others). Why? Because we are convinced that this is one of the things that can make the world a better place.

If you use Microsoft products you might want to look into alternatives which are often far superior. Most of these alternative applications/services are free or even open source. And these are the applications that Microsoft is trying to destroy because they can't find a better way to compete with them.

Check these out just to name a few:

• Java - as an alternative to .NET
• Ubuntu Linux/Solaris/MacOS - as alternatives to MS Windows
• OpenOffice/NeoOffice - as alternatives to MS Office
• Firefox - as an alternative to MS Internet Explorer
• Thunderbird - as an alternative to Outlook
• Miranda/Adium - as an alternative to MSN Messenger
• Google Online Products - as an alternative to MS Live

If you like any of these, don't forget to tell you friends and help us make the world a better place :)

Java MVM (Multi-VM, Multitasking VM) resurrected?

While reading up on JavaFX (formerly F3), I stumbled upon a Chris Oliver's blog entry describing his approach to MVM. I was surprised to see that he was looking into this while working on F3.

It really makes sense, though. Java applications suffers from one major issue and that is the startup time. It takes quite a while for the almighty JVM to initialize and warm up. So to make JavaFX successful in the bloody battle with Flash this issue has to be resolved and his approach looks like a possible solution.

There used to be a project at SunLabs led by Grzegorz Czajkowski, called The Barcelona Project which was targeted for JDK7. Unfortunately this project got canned last year after Grzegorz left Sun for Google. I'm not quite sure why SunLabs froze the project. It definitely looked very promising.

One way or another I think that it's not going to take too long and (close to) instant start of Java apps will be real and Consumer JRE will be the solution.

JavaFX Killer App - PDF Reader

This is an awesome app. It hasn't been released yet due to licensing issues with the underlying PDF rendering library IIRC. But the work is in progress to get it out.