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Sunday, September 7, 2003

Random thought:

Wordperfect -- something else to worry Microsoft?

Remember 1993? Wordperfect 5.1 was at the top of its form. Function keys were still where God meant them to be on the left side of the keyboard. WordStar was fading. Microsoft Word was a horrid application. Multimate and even Electric Pencil had a following. Ami Pro was the first Windows word processor that showed some promise. Some people used applications with names like Breeze and XyWrite.

Word Perfect looks a lot like it has for the past several years (above). The spelling checker is disagreeing with the way I've spelled "Wordperfect" and is suggesting "WordPerfect" and other options. Below, a closer view of the words being offered as well as the "reveal codes" panel. Microsoft has attempted several times to create a similar function, but hasn't succeeded.

But the Wordperfect corporation had put its bet on OS2. By the time it became clear that OS/2 was going to be a non-starter, Microsoft had improved Word to the point that it was functional. Wordperfect, with competition from a dozen or more strong competitors, continued to hold a 65% market share as users waited and hoped for a Windows version.

But the first Windows version of Wordperfect convinced the faithful that Wordperfect had become Wordawful. The first Windows 9x version was an OS/2 port. Then Wordperfect tried to re-create Windows in DOS. The product was bad. Microsoft was gaining fast. The owner of Novell thought he could use Wordperfect to teach Microsoft a lesson. But nobody at Novell appeared to have a clue about how to market an application. Finally Corel bought Wordperfect at a fire-sale price. (Corel had already bought WordStar and had plans to create an office suite to rival Microsoft Office. If you ever wondered what happened to WordStar, now you know.

By the time a decent Wordperfect for Windows version shipped (around version 7), its user base had dropped to "also-ran" status and Microsoft has owned the market (with the exception of legal offices since then). Every new version of Wordperfect is better than the previous version, but Corel hasn't been able to push the application back into a position from which it looks like a contender.

Maybe the current version 11 (and version 12 that's in development now) will change that a bit. While it's unlikely that Wordperfect will ever be able to unseat Word, it could make significant inroads in some markets. Wordperfect is as good as Word in most comparisons and better than Word in several. Dell and some of the other big computer makers are bundling Wordperfect Office with their computers, which gives Corel some operating capital and some exposure.
You may have heard that Corel has been acquired by a California company called Vector. Vector typically purchases public companies that are having trouble, takes them private, makes them profitable, and then eventually takes the company public again or sells it at a profit. My first question to the Wordperfect product manager, Cindy Howard, is how she feels about the change ...

REAL AUDIO: Cindy Howard 6:09 q-the full version (Prophet 52520-cut 2)

Technology corner rating

NINE CATS! The latest suite from Corel has everything you need and works well. There's a substantial cost advantage compared to Microsoft products, particularly considering that it's bundled with some systems. Wordperfect continues to use its "special" typefaces for some characters and this can make sharing files with some applications a little harder than it should be, and that's the only thing that kept the suite from earning 10 cats.

sudo rm -R * (do not do this at home)

Apple's command line -- a view from the other side. "After 20 years without any kind of command line, Apple has now given its users the world's most complex and arcane command line." That may not be a direct quotation, but I know that I've said something a lot like that when Apple announced that it would base a new operating system on Unix. What I said was the truth, but it's not the whole story.

Apple's OS X (Ten) is based on several different versions of Unix (BSD 4.4 Lite, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and the Mach microkernel). The graphical user environment sits on top of that. A lot of Mac OS X users (maybe most of them) have never looked at the command line because they don't have to look at it. A Mac user could be happy with OS X and never, ever see the command line just as some motorists might be happy with Lamborghinis that they never shifted out of first gear because they didn't know how the clutch worked.

The Mac has plenty of power to get you where you're going even if you never get out of first gear, but I prefer to use the entire computer -- not just the easy part. The fact that I learned a little about mainframe computers (the IBM 360 was hot in those days) and then about minicomputers (DEC PDP 11/xx systems running RSTS) in the days before PCs helped. Having every DOS command from "attrib" to "xcopy" burned into my memory served me well in the early days of Windows and I still occasionally use those commands at the Windows XP command line.

Some long-time Apple faithful feel that the company has sold out by abandoning the old operating system, but nothing could be further from the truth. Apple's dated operating system was so far behind Windows in many regards that something had to change. Even OS 9 offered precious little support for multi-threading and multi-tasking. Memory management was laughable. Security was nonexistent. All of that changes under OS X. Pre-emptive multi-tasking, multi-threading, and strong memory management make it possible to run dozens of applications without having the machine fall on its face. Security (developed over more than 30 years) is "robust" and that is an understatement of mythic proportions.

Why is this little computer smiling?

In 2001, to see what the Mac was all about, I bought an iBook that had System 9 and the first release of OS X. I was appalled by the shortcomings of System 9 when compared to Windows XP and that first release of OS X wasn't much to get excited about, either; but I could see where Apple was going with it. I'm now running OS X 10.2.6, which still has a "Classic" mode, but I don't have any "Classic" apps. In that regard, I think I'm lucky. I can't pine for the "good old days" because I never knew them. Instead, I've watched OS X become stronger and more robust with ever new release.

I still miss things like a real Start Menu. The fact that at least a dozen companies make utilities to emulate the Windows Start Menu should tell Apple something: The ways provided by the operating system to locate and start applications is dumb. But that problem is easily resolved with applications like Launch Bar (my favorite) or by dragging files full of shortcuts to the Dock.

Still, the most exciting feature to me is that command line. I'm no Unix geek (I'm limited to knowing that "ls" will show me my files and that "pwd" has nothing to do with a password) but I'm learning. I'll never be a Mac-only computer user because some of the applications I must have run only under Windows (but Windows can be made to run on a Mac.)

Conventional wisdom says that the Mac will never really be able to compete with Microsoft for market share until it has a "killer app" -- something that most people want but that is available only on the Mac. What are the chances of that happening? Let's look at some of the market areas:

Graphic design and publishing: Ad agency are about 95% Mac-based, but some have noticed that Windows PCs can do anything a Mac can do. This market is still solidly in Apple's camp, but it faces some long-term erosion. (It's also not a very big market.)

Word processing, spreadsheet, database management: Windows has the undeserved lead here. Just as some people think that only a Mac can be used for graphics, others think that only a PC running Windows can be used for business applications. The Mac could compete here, but there's little reason for a PC shop to switch.

Games: Even art schools know this market is a PC market. Games, when they're made available for the Mac, are almost always released as an afterthought.

Audio or video editing: It's probably a toss-up for audio, but my experience suggests that the Mac handles video editing better. Not better by enough for most regular users to pick the Mac over the PC, particularly because the PC is catching up. This isn't exactly a killer app.

So the Mac is in a position of being able to do everything a Windows PC can do, of being able to do some things better than a PC could, but not being in a position to do anything so much better that it could become a selling point. Except ...

Security. When Microsoft told the world what it was doing to make computers easier to use (leaving ports open and running a host of services most people don't need just in case somebody might need one) the security community howled. "Disaster" was commonly used to describe Windows and the summer of 2003 has proved the security folks right: while Microsoft has released security patches with distressing frequency, worms and viruses have swept through Windows-based networks. The result has been millions of dollars worth of lost time and lost data. Billions, perhaps.

Apple could capitalize on the legendary strength, stability, and security of Unix. Those who have seen their company invaded by a worm or a virus might be willing to consider a different operating system -- one that comes with more than 30 years worth of security designed by Bell Labs, UC Berkeley, and the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Apple -- if you're listening -- seize the opportunity.

As for sudo rm -R * -- well, that's a command-line "super user do" request do delete all files in all directories, starting with the root. This is a good way to get a lot of extra space, but tends to make the computer somewhat less than functional. (The command is pronounced like "Sue do" because it's short for "super user do" but a good logical case can be made for pronouncing it like "pseudo".)

Nerdly News

The Bat flies with version 2.0

My favorite e-mail program, The Bat from RIT Labs in Moldova (formerly part of the Soviet Union) has finally been upgraded to version 2.0 and, at first glance, it looks exactly like version 1.6, which looked a lot like the numerous iterations of version 1.5. In fact, if you go all the way back to pre-version 1 days you see an application that doesn't look a lot different from version 2.0. But the new application consists of something like 70% new code and there are lots of small improvements here and there.

RIT Labs says that only a few new features were implemented with the initial release of version 2 because the primary emphasis was on building a solid foundation for new features. The Bat still doesn't handle IMAP accounts very well, but that should improve soon. HTML e-mail is handled better than in the past, but for security reasons, The Bat will still not display graphics that are on a remote server instead of being included in the e-mail.

The Bat reminds me a lot of Unix. People say that Unix is hard to use. The same charge has been leveled against The Bat. I'm not sure that's the case, though. I think it's more of a "user friendly" system than most people realize. A co-worker once told me that Unix is a friendly operating system. "It just chooses its friends carefully," she said.

More security alerts from Microsoft

FIVE NEW SECURITY ALERTS arrived from Microsoft on Thursday -- a total of 15 pages worth of text. Five! Some apply only to Access, while others affect the security of every Office product from 97 through 2002 and several additional applications. One affects mainly server users.

If you don't have Windows Update turned on, you should at least visit Microsoft's update website regularly unless you like the idea of someone you don't know being able to run programs you don't know anything about on your computer. If you're OK with that, then you can relax.

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