Apple en Sun zijn samen een concurrent aan het ontwikkelen voor Office X , Microsofts officepakket voor het apple-platform.
Een eerste versie van OppenOffice (De gratis versie van StarOffice) zou eind dit jaar moeten verschijnen. Staroffice zelf staat gepland voor 2003.
Dit wordt dan ook meteen Microsofts Office grootste concurrent , aangezien Corel Wordperfect een aantal jaar terug stopte met support voor de mac.
One of the biggest challenges facing Sun is supporting Mac OS X's Aqua interface and Quartz 2D rendering engine.
The first issue is logistical. StarOffice uses a consistent interface across all operating systems, something Sun would have to consider changing for Mac OS X. But completing the task would be daunting, and is not something the company may complete before a first release, Siress said.
Supporting Quartz is a separate problem. OpenOffice uses different graphics, called x11, which isn't supported on OS X without special software.
"The current release of OpenOffice for Mac OS X requires x11," Siress said. "I've got my Hamburg (Germany) team working on eliminating that requirement right now and using Java."
As development teams from the two companies work more closely together, they've learned the task ahead may mean compromises if there is to be a Java-version of OpenOffice by the end of the year
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