Apple Briefs

There is a nice article over at Lifehacker on the top 10 Firefox 3 features. I still use an army of browsers at home, but I have been warming up to Firefox 3 (which I use almost exclusively at work). I can’t wait until some of these new Firefox features make it into Camino (I hope!).

The return of VBA

Microsoft announced this week that VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) will be making a return to Mac Office sometime in the future. Mac Office 2004 had VBA functionality, but when Microsoft rewrote Office as Cocoa applications for Mac Office 2008, VBA didn’t make the feature list. And, apparently, it will never make the feature list for Mac Office 2008. VBA support is slated for the never version of Mac Office, likely due in the next two or three years.

OpenOffice 3.0: So far, so good

I have been using OpenOffice 3.0 beta for a few days now, and I like what I see. I have been using it for what I do most – simple editing and formatting. The interface works quite well, although it’s still easy to see the non-Mac roots. The main interface looks sufficiently Mac-like, but many of the other elements, such as preferences panes and dialogs, just don’t feel right. Even so, I am pleased so far with the workflow and usability of the interface. I haven’t tried anything complicated yet, but I have to learn to walk before I can run.

Open Office is an attempt by the open source community to create a free and open alternative to Microsoft Office. A beta version of Open Office 3.0 has been made widely available. Version 3.0 brings with it a number of important features:

• Native Mac OS X interface (previous versions used X11 resulting in an unfamiliar environment and poor integration with OS X). NeoOffice was an alternative, but a native interface was always the goal.
• The ability to import Office 2007 and Mac Office 2008 documents (including .docx, .xslx, and .pptx). This is a welcome feature if, like me, you have suffered by receiving documents from Office 2007 users who are not well-versed in the differences between .doc and .docx.
• Support for the forthcoming standard OpenDocument Format (ODF). Unless you need to share documents with Office users, you may want to consider switching to ODF for your office needs (and even then it may still be a good idea).

The beta of OpenOffice 3.0 for Mac OS X can be downloaded from the OpenOffice website.

BusyMac released BusySync 2.0 on Friday. If you’re not familiar with it already, BusySync allows you to sync your iCal calendars with other Macs on your LAN. The headline feature for BusySync 2.0 is Google Calendar syncing. The full list of improvements includes:

• Ability to sync iCal with Google Calendar, including the ability to map iCal Message alarms to Google pop-up, SMS or Email alarms.
• Option to filter out Alarms and To-Dos from subscribed calendars on your LAN
• LAN/WAN synching improvements, VPN compatibility, IPv6 and Back to My Mac compatibility
• Improved performance
• Fewer Conflict Resolver disputes
• Auto-repair of damaged iCal databases
• Improved error logging
• BusySync 2.0 is backwards compatible with other BusySync 1.5 users on your network

My wife and I don’t use BusySync because we don’t need to sync our iCal calendars with each other or with anyone else. So while I can’t vouch for it personally, BusySync does come highly recommend from those who are running small offices (law firms or otherwise) and don’t want to get involved with Mac OS X Server.

Today saw the release of version 3.7.2 of Marketcircle Daylite. Notable additions in this release include a law template and the ability to merge letters with Word 2008 and Excel 2008. We had been holding back from buying Office 2008. AppleScript support in Office 2008 caught my attention recently, and now this! It looks like this might be the time to buy Office 2008. Full details of the release can be found in the Marketcircle knowledge base.