Apple Briefs

It’s been a while since I posted. I have lots to say, but just not much time to say it. This couldn’t wait, though. Amazon is running a pretty good deal on Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition. Others are reporting that it will cost just $125 this Thursday and Friday (for comparison, the Apple store has it for $249). Right now it’s going for $139. If it’s worth an extra $14, you can get your copy a few days before everyone else.

This is the full version of Office, not the upgrade (which is going for $109). It looks like Microsoft is serious about getting people to move to Office 2008. Now, where’s that credit card? (hooray for one-click checkout).

OpenOffice 3.0 came out of beta last week. It’s been so popular that the traffic has brought the OpenOffice website to its knees. I was able to download it, though, and have a few initial thoughts.

Overview

The goal of OpenOffice seems to be to create a FREE office application suite that will be familiar to users of older versions of Microsoft Office. OpenOffice 3.0 is a milestone because it is the first version which was truly a native Mac OS X application. NeoOffice partially filled that role, but it wasn’t a very clean solution.

The first change since the beta that jumped out at me is the gorgeous new icon for OpenOffice. The new icon is prettier and much more “Web 2.0.”

OpenOffice 3.0 Beta Icon

OpenOffice 3.0 Release Icon

OpenOffice 3.0 has many benefits aside from its native Mac application status. OO3 has read and write support for Microsoft Office formats, including the new Office 2007 / Mac Office 2008 XML file formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx). For those who want to break free of Microsoft’s grasp, OO3 also supports ODF version 1.2 (OpenDocument Format – an open alternative to Microsoft Office file formats). OpenOffice 3.0 has lots of other new features and improvements.

Until HotDocs supports OpenOffice, totally eliminating Microsoft Office won’t be an option. But it’s nice to see a real competitor making steady improvements. I’ll keep testing OO3 over the next few months. And if I like what I see, I may just work it into the permanent rotation.

Apple unveiled new MacBook and MacBook Pro models today. A few things that caught my attention:

• The 13″ MacBook and 15″ MacBook Pros are all new. The 17″ MacBook Pro received a small bump, but is based on the old architecture. The MacBook Air was “refreshed” also.
• The appearance of the MacBook and MacBook Pro are now identical apart from the size difference. No longer do we have the plastic MacBooks and aluminum MacBook Pros.
• Ok, that’s not totally true. The white MacBook lives on as a sub-$1000 model. It’s not very compelling from a spec perspective (only 1GB RAM and an Intel GPU), but it does make Macs seem more affordable. I am curious to see how well it will sell.
• Apple spent a lot of time at the launch talking about the new production process. The new models are crafted from solid blocks of aluminum. I assume that means fewer screws.
• The new MacBook and MacBook Pro models have a larger glass trackpad that supports multi-touch.
• No more antiglare displays. The new models have glossy LED displays. This isn’t a big deal to me, but I know it is for many people.
• No more Firewire 400 on the MacBook Pros. It’s Firewire 800 only.
• No more Firewire on the MacBooks – at all. It’s USB only. Color me shocked. Apple always seems to find a way to differentiate their consumer models from their pro models. I guess this is one way they are doing it now.
• No Blu-ray. Steve said Blu-ray is a “bag of hurt.”

I am impressed with how large hard drives are getting in laptops. My first generation MacBook Pro isn’t that old, but these new laptops have 2-3 times the hard drive capacity. It’s getting to the point where a laptop is having enough storage to be a primary work computer for creative types (some would argue that has been the case for a while, but I have found the disk space lacking).

This time the “one more thing” from Steve came at the beginning. Apple also announced a new Cinema Display with built-in USB hub, iSight, microphone, and speakers. Most interesting is the combined cable with plugs for the display, USB, and (the surprise) MagSafe power to hook up your laptop. The MagSafe plug is a nice touch, meaning I wouldn’t have to crawl under my desk to plug in a power cord.

Update: Apple Insider has posted a photo set of a tear down of the new MacBooks. It’s amazing how few pieces there are when it’s all disassembled.

After much speculation and numerous rumors, Apple has confirmed that it will be announcing new laptops on October 14. To be fair, Apple didn’t exactly confirm that new laptops are coming, but the press invitation is highly suspicious. A lot of attention has been placed on the rumored new manufacturing process, but hopefully there will be more to the new MacBooks than a slight speed bump and fewer screws.

SmileOnMyMac just released the latest iteration of PDFpen, its PDF-editing software. PDFpen comes in regular and Pro versions. PDFpenPro adds the ability to create forms and tables of contents. Both versions come very close to the feature set of Acrobat. PDFpen could be a very attractive solution if it can duplicate the features of Acrobat at a tiny fraction of the price (PDFpenPro sells for $99.95, Acrobat Pro – the only version available for Mac OS X – sells for $385.99 on MacMall).

So how does PDFpen stack up? I like the interface. It’s clearly a Mac application rather than a transplant from Windows. Acrobat is pretty straightforward, but there is a little bit of culture shock when using it. Looks don’t matter, though, if it won’t get the job done. And thats where PDFpen still needs a little bit of polish.

Of the PDF features I use regularly, OCR and text highlighting are two of the biggest troublemakers. I’ll discuss Acrobat first, since it serves as the benchmark. I haven’t upgraded to Acrobat 9 yet, so it’s possible (but, in my opinion, unlikely) that some of this has changed. Acrobat Pro does a good job of recognizing the text. The first image below shows the text that was recognized via the OCR. I have highlighted a portion with my cursor to better see where Acrobat found the text. The second image below shows the results of using the Acrobat Highlight Text tool on the OCR text.

There are two problems with the way Acrobat handles OCR. Or maybe a better way to put it is that there are two symptoms of the same root problem. Acrobat OCR seems to revolve around finding lines of text. When I copy the text (after highlighting it as in the first image), it shows up in my word processor as separate paragraphs because each line is treated separately. Truly smart OCR would recognize paragraphs of text. This lack of understanding by Acrobat is also evident when using the Highlight Text tool. Notice the gaps in yellow highlighting between some of the words. Acrobat again seems not to have recognized that the words are part of a continuous block of text. Still, Acrobat is serviceable.

PDFpenPro begins well, asking me when I open the document if I want to OCR the page or the document.

Unfortunately, the goodness ends there. Large sections of the PDFpenPro OCR text were filled with garbage characters. I tried OCR on a few documents with a white background and the results were much better. Clearly PDFpenPro is having trouble with the ivory paper. That’s a troubling sign and makes me wonder how well PDFpenPro will OCR a brochure or presentation.

Sometimes we don’t care about the text, and OCR is just used as to be able to highlight the text for a presentation. I used PDFPenPro to highlight the same text as I highlighted in Acrobat. As you can see from the second image below, the resulting PDF was unusable. Note that, unlike with the OCR, the highlight text tool gave the same results for a white paper scan as with the ivory paper.

Acrobat’s not perfect. But PDFpen’s current problems are show-stoppers. PDFpenPro is missing some important features too. The comparison chart on SmileOnMyMac’s website shows a few of the advantages of Acrobat Pro. Conspicuously absent from that list is one of the most important features for attorneys – redaction. Until PDFpen gets reliable redaction tools, it won’t be able to replace Acrobat in my workflow.

So I am a little disappointed. As much as I like Acrobat, I was hoping that PDFpenPro would work as a drop-in replacement. Hey, I like competition! Maybe with a little more testing and a few additional features, it will finally get there.