In This case, it was "Jobs" who taketh away...
In order to implement Unicode support, Office 2004 had to switch from using
QuickDraw to draw the screen to Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging
(ATSUI).
Like anything else in life, you get nuttin' for nuttin'. ATSUI (see
http://developer.apple.com/intl/atsui.html) is a busy little beastie with a
ferocious appetite for CPU cycles.
QuickDraw is the old mechanism designed to be fast on much less powerful
computers. But it can't display the full range of characters.
So: The "reason" is that Word is now doing more work. Will it ever be
solved: Yeah, when Apple and Motorola bring us a 3GHz processor with an 800
MHz front side bus you can expect a big improvement
Seriously, this argument is all about "What do we want? A full version of
Word that does everything the modern user wants, or a cut-down version that
performs well on the Mac?"
Personally, I want a full version that is completely 100 per cent compatible
with PC Word, because I work cross-platform. And I will go out and buy a
bigger Mac to run it, if that's what it takes. I didn't get it...
Others want a fast Word processor that does "The stuff I want...". And they
have trivial and irrelevant "other" things to spend their money on, like
kids and mortgages. They didn't get exactly what they wanted either.
I was involved in the Word 2004 "debate" with the Microsoft Macintosh
Business Unit. We spent a whole day of "If you want this, then you can't
have that. If we do that, then we can't afford this. If we do that, it
will be slower than molasses in winter. If we don't do that, sure it will
run like the wind but it won't open half the documents out there..."
The debate raged. Late into the night. One or two thirsts were quenched.
And one or two folks at Microsoft think I'm not a very nice person. And
they're undoubtedly right...
At the end of the day, we -- all of us -- the folks at Microsoft, the MVPs,
the people who collect here in the news group, did the very best we could
for you with the money, time and people we had available. I want you to
take what I said thee seriously: during the making of Word 2004 a LOT of
people worked very very hard. They put their souls into this thing. More
than a few tears were shed (quite literally). People reached the very end
of their resources and quite literally burst into tears in their efforts to
bring you a better product. And some of them work for Microsoft...
We wish we had done better. We wish Word could be all that you want it to
be. We are determined to do better next time. But this is the very best we
could do for now.
The bottom line is that PC Office needs only to change the colour of their
damn dialogs and call it a new version and they sell 300 MILLION copies.
Guaranteed. Every time. That sort of jingling at the cash register buys a
hell of a development effort. They can afford to hire half of India to make
their next version.
We can't. Mac Word doesn't sell those numbers. But it costs slightly more
to make. 80 per cent of the code in PC Office is actually part of Windows,
or is functions provided by Windows. On the Mac, they have to find a new
way to do everything Windows does for them on the PC. That means they first
have to pay to make the PC version, then they have to do extra work to
replace all the Windows functions with their equivalent Mac OS X functions.
ATSUI is one of those functions. So each copy of Mac Office 2004 actually
costs a little more to make per copy than each copy of PC Office.
The answer, to me, is self-evident.
Start having kids...
Let's get FOUR hundred million Mac Office users out there. Then we can have
exactly what we damned well please. And those Windows weenies down the
passage can go begging and pleading to Steve Ballmer to "please sir can we
have some more money..." And THEY can burn the candle late at night to
figure out how WE made the best word processor in the world.
There oughtta be some justice in this world
Cheers
The reason is the corollary to Moore's Law ("Moore giveth, Gates taketh
away"). Computer programs get bigger and slower ("Gates taketh away");
they get faster when you buy a faster computer ("Moore giveth").
Perhaps I'm just not seeing the problem, though. I have a relatively
slow computer (G3, 500 Mhz) and I have no difficulty working comfortably
in Word. The only problem is that scrolling is prohibitively slow when
the "balloons" are turned on. m.
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <
[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
