Apple has really irked me with iCloud and iWork regarding OpenDocument
As you know, iWork for the Mac doesn't save in OpenDocument format and the .pages format is pretty much unreadable by anyone that doesn't have the software. If you happen to come across this format, you may get lucky if you open up the file as a .zip file and can extract a PDF preview. Of course that is a PDF and not like an actual editable document.
I was reading about iCloud the other day and how Apple's new cloud service will NOT support the importing or exporting of the OpenDocument format like the desktop software. Of course Microsoft Office and their proprietary formats are supported, but this really does irk me. Apple is currently the hottest tech company with iPhones and iPads selling REALLY well and people will stay within their walled garden. There are currently more Android phones than iPhones, but the iPad pretty much has a monopoly on tablets.
Google Docs does save in OpenDocument (even if its spotty) but there is real cause for concern with iCloud. The average consumer that owns an Apple product tends to use their services and with us entering a "post pc" era, Apple will keep users off of open formats and tied to theirs.
Don't get me wrong... Microsoft 2007/2010 formats are not completely open, but at least they are more open than the older binary .doc formats and they are still XML documents in a .zip file like with OpenDocument. I really don't know what the hell a .pages file is supposed to be.
Should we be scared of Apple being a much bigger influence on proprietary software and document formats than Microsoft was in the past? If so, what will happen when OpenDocument is pushed into obscurity in favor of .pages?
The Microsoft docx, xlsx, whateverx formats are not any better than their old formats, both are proprietary secrets, despite the new ones being ISO standardized, shame on you ISO!
OpenDocument is obscure to 99% of computer users, the situation can only get better. But this will require vigilance and trying to avoid disasters like the ooxml case.
Apple and Microsoft are equally open, i.e. hardly at all. And they're buddies, in it against free software.
I just read a story at http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-cisco-red-hat-sap-join-forces-to-combat-amazons-cloud-success-2012-1 about why Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are locking people into their cloud. They don't want you to easily switch to a competitor and in return make you locked into their service because of the file formats and the "all my stuff is already there" mentality.
So I guess the era of internet freedom of choice and open standards ended when the first iPhone came out. With smartphones, tablets, and now cloud services being super proprietary in our "post pc" future.
Everything seems to fall into a perpetual cycle and hopefully it doesn't end up like the 90s and early 2000s all over again with a single vendor (previously Microsoft) controlling everything. Sadly, people don't know any better and it will happen again.
What can people like Stallman do when Apple posts tens of billions of dollars in cash profit and/or influence standards bodies with money. Sadly, he may end up as the cranky old man telling people to get off his yard as the bulldozer comes by to tear down his house with him inside. :-(
Yeah,this kind of news is troublesome. That's why its so important to do what we can to support free software. Trisquel and the other libre distros are doing an awesome job in keeping the choice of free computing alive.
Stallman and others have done a lot. If it wasn't for Stallman, I likely wouldn't have even known there WAS an issue. There is no way I'm going back.
Walking the talk does wonders.
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I am an Apple convert - and I used iWork for quite some time. I have always been frustrated with the blatant incompatibility that the program has with anything other than iWork. At my school we are forced to use MS word for various statistical applications (Excel + Macros) because the professor is obsessed with preventing plagiarism so the formatting that he created gets messed up when you use it with either iWork or LibreOffice.
What I found even more frustrating than the fact that iWork is incompatible with everything -- even MS word for Apple seems to be incompatible with MS word for Windows - its the most frustrating thing in the world.
I think my experience has showed me the urgent need for an open standard. Because the last time I checked when you save a file in .odf, you can open it on BSD, Linux, Windows, Mac, and pretty much anything else -- and it will look exactly how you left it.
The situation you described about your professor shows that vendor lock-in starts at the schools. Microsoft and Apple know this and why they push so hard to give schools discounts with their software if money is an issue. Whether it is kindergarten or grad school, the staff is trained on the software and in return wants the student's work to use that same software. That is never going to change unless the school board mandates it. Of course they wouldn't as it would piss off their partnerships with Microsoft.
You know the drill... 12pt Times New Roman in MLA format with a certain page length and saved in the .doc format. If you print your work, the format isn't a problem but many courses have students upload their files to areas like Blackboard to share with others. Some teachers may take an ODF file as an unreadable file and could penalize the student's grades as a result. If they have Office 2007 SP2 and above, the student may be fine. Anything lower and they are screwed.
As I told many people... its not about learning Excel: it is about learning a spreadsheet program. Even if you do use Word or Excel, saving in OpenDocument is a good start. The implementation of ODF 1.1 in Office is spotty, but so is Windows 7's Wordpad and Mac OSX's TextEdit's support. Anything advanced with that format in those programs gets lost. At least the support is there at the OS level. It is too bad that iWork has to be the odd man out.
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I agree and its a real shame that this is the way things are. The sad thing is that the subject we are working on (Physics Lab) is interesting, and useful. We are using Excel in ways that I didn't even know existed. But there is absolutely no reason why this cannot be done in any other program. It's a shame because maybe some student will walk out of this class thinking that this is the norm, and when they become professors and have students of their own they will follow suit. We will be in this endless cycle forever.
If or when I ever become a professor - I will insist that my students have the opportunity to submit their work in any format that they choose, with any program that they choose to use. I think that having this sort of vendor lock in destroys innovation and creativity.
This is especially true in the sciences - and its terrible because in the U.S. that is what our current generation of students is lacking the most.
This quarter, I am being forced to use SO much proprietary software that no matter how hard I try there is no alternative. There are alternative programs that can do the same things that I am doing, but for some reason the professors insist that we use the proprietary versions.
Besides MS Office, there is Mathematica (similar to MATLAB) -- which can easily be replaced by Octave or SAGE. This would save students and the school a crapload of money (just look at the cost of one license). Also there are a bunch of proprietary plugins (Chem-Draw) which completely suck and are buggy beyond belief (can be replaced with several other programs, Kalzium or Avogadro), and then of course Flash, Flash, Flash and more Flash.
I am just glad that I have not been forced to "buy" an ebook from CourseSmart yet ... if that ever happened I would begin to look for a new University.
My university education was in English Lit, so I'm not too familiar with macros in Excel for Physics. On the other hand if I was a teacher, I would offer my students a copy of a free word processor (either LibreOffice or Abiword) to do their papers in if they didn't have Office. If I was a Physics professor, I would try to find a common ground with macros for LibreOffice Calc or Excel in the .ods format. Of course if neither worked, maybe I could create a custom Java or Python program.
I see a common complaint about people needing Flash to do their homework. Its interesting because I remember the early days of the web with Java applets being everywhere. It wasn't until years later that Flash took its place. Some people associate Java applets with "Web 1.0" and wouldn't have Java installed on Windows unless it was pre-installed.
Now that we have OpenJDK and its IcedTea browser plugin, it may be actually smarter to go back to Java instead of Flash for education. You can do a lot with a Java applet and Windows, Mac, and Linux (free and non-free) operating systems can get a unified experience like Flash.
We should indeed be worried by any proprietary format that becomes popular. However I do not think iWork's popularity is not anywhere near MS Office's popularity (remembering that most of the world cannot afford Apple's expensive products). The free world managed to reduce the use of MS formats despite the billion dollars backing them. If a cycle starts again with Apple, it will fight again. Hopefully, and as you write, these cycles will end at some point where free formats become overwhelmingly predominant.
@lembas: As far as I know the ISO OOXML is not implemented anywhere. Microsoft does not even follow the format that it very actively promoted for a standardization. The point is: Microsoft wanted the ISO label as a business argument. During the standardization process, the originally submitted format was significantly improved and Microsoft does not really want a better format (so no change to their Office suite). Only the label...
@levl: I am a professor and although I let the student use any software they wish to, I refuse any file from them unless it is a free and open format. I do not even try to open them (despite the fact that, for instance, LibreOffice now manages quite well MS formats). So, contrary to what you write, I do not let my students "submit their work in any format that they choose".
@levl: Mathematica cannot "be replaced by Octave". Mathematica performs symbolic computation. A free equivalent is Maxima (wxMawima for a good graphical interface), which is in Trisquel's repositories.
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@Magic Banana - Thank you for your reply - Sorry about the mix up - I am actually pretty new to Mathematica. I did try out Maxima before - it works well. And just to note that Mathematica is Available for Linux, but its not free software.
Also, I think its AWESOME that you only accept free and open formats - naturally I would promote that as well. I just don't know how much pushback that type of stance would get not only from the students but from the university faculty as well.
Thanks for your insight.
In more Apple news (different subject but still Apple), I just came across this story about Apple's Foxconn factory in China having issues with a quote:
"We've known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they're still going on,' former Apple executive says, 'Why? Because the system works for us'"
Really swell guys ey? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46143670/ns/business-us_business/
Oh and more on their profits: http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/25/apple-pwned/