[OS X TeX] Macintouch report on TeX versus Word

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On mercredi 21 janv. 09, at 10:13, Alain Schremmer wrote:

> Funny, I always thought I was an optimist … I still do not think you  
> are right. Macs are an infinitesimal part of the market to begin with.

Alain, they are not anymore.

Recent surveys indicate that Appel machines have about 10% of the  
computer market share (by checking web access data). I can't find the  
reference anymore but Apple laptop sales were simply huge compared to  
the other makes, on the US market.

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/01/02/apple-market-share-tops-10-windows-share-lowest-since-tracking/

> OpenOffice was so bad to begin with it sure couldn't get worse. And,  
> on the Mac, it still is clunky. Not to mention NeoOffice.

I use both for work. Clunky, but do we compare that to Word 2004 ? To  
me they compare very well (at least the 3.0 version of OOo and  
NeoOffice). I had to buy Office 2008 yesterday and it may be a  
different story here. But by the time a new version of Office is  
released, they will have catched up. I have no worry about that, their  
development model is so vastly different.

> I don't think LaTeX is going to die, just that it severely risks  
> becoming a quaint hobby for the very few. Like, say, polar bears.  
> They won't die. There will always be a few in zoos.

No, I think that markup languages are definitely not going to die,  
even if they are not XML dialects. They address a different kind of  
market.

People who buy (and use) "Office Suites", especially the modern ones à  
la iWorks, are not in need of LaTeX. What they want is nice looking  
templates, text placeholders and a print button. There is a huge  
market for that. The rest of them are cheated into using the suites  
and when they find LaTeX, either they take the dive and they are  
thankful, or they find a way to manage their frustrations...





Jean-Christophe Helary

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