New and Noteworthy: Is there a need for CodeWeavers technology on Intel-based Macs?; Office faces competition from NeoOffice; mo

Is there a need for CodeWeavers technology on Intel-based Macs? CodeWeavers, a corporate backer of the Wine project -- which seeks to re-implement the Win32 APIs to allow running of Windows applications on UNIX-based operating systems -- recently announced that it would create a Mac OS X version of its Windows application layer once Apple begins shipping Intel-based Macs.

David Coursey of ZDNet questions whether such a product will find a niche among a variety of other options: "There's already speculation that a virtual machine capable of running a real copy of Windows could easily be added to the Mac OS X environment running on an Intel-based machine. Microsoft still owns Virtual PC, which should also run on a Mactel box quite nicely. There may be other options, like CodeWeavers and Wine, as well.

"Given all these potential options?notice the use of the word "potential"?I am not really sure what CodeWeavers can offer that customers will want. Gee, I can run real Windows or I can run Wine. Hmmm, Windows or Wine? Given the choice, I'll take Windows every time."

Microsoft Office faces competition from NeoOffice Techworld reports on the release of the Mac OS X-compatible, Java-based NeoOffice/J, a potentially serious competitor for Microsoft Office. "Microsoft Office faces stiffer competition from the open-source world following major releases of Office competitors for the Mac OS X, Unix and Linux platforms this week. Open-source developers hope to give the software giant a run for its money in the enterprise by delivering productivity suites that cost less, work with Office formats as well as open-standards formats, and include commercial support options. The software appearing on the scene this week meets some or all of these conditions. On the Mac platform, is the first stable release of NeoOffice/J, a native OS X implementation of the OpenOffice.org productivity suite, which is in turn based on Sun's StarOffice. OpenOffice is available for the Mac, but it requires users to install the X11 graphical software, doesn't use an Aqua interface, doesn't have native printing support and doesn't use a standard installer." More.

Blatner: InDesign, Not Quark, Is the Future of DTP Publish covers a speech from desktop publishing consultant Blatner, who trumpeted InDesign's purported superiority over QuarkXpress. "Blatner, who doesn't work for Adobe, is a consultant specializing in InDesign, QuarkXPress and Photoshop. He has authored or co-authored 13 books, including 'Real-World Adobe InDesign,' 'The QuarkXPress Book,' (and more). [...] Blatner covered the history of InDesign, starting with versions 1.0 and 2.0 and how it started changing his way of thinking about QuarkXPress. 'I was all excited about Quark introducing tables to QuarkXPress,' Blatner said. 'Then I saw InDesign 2.0 and thought, 'Quark sucks.'"

Previously on MacFixIt:

• Intel-based Macs won't include proprietary Intel chipsets

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