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There doesn't appear to be an anonymous download option.

NeoOffice and OpenOffice allow for this.

If you're giving it away 'at no cost', then you don't need to harvest emails addresses.

Nov 06, 08 - 01:40 am Comment from: qka

So use a throw-away e-mail address. Everyone should have several such addresses ready just for cases like this.

Nov 06, 08 - 02:06 am Comment from: NickBob

Free Loyus Improv for OS X!

They don't even verify the email address.

You can make one up and still get a download...

Not that I generally approve of non-anonymous free downloads, it kinda makes sense for a free beta test.

Nov 06, 08 - 03:21 am Comment from: ken1w

Interesting...

There's only one application window when Symphony is running, and the documents are "tabs" inside that window. So you can have any combination and number of word processing, presentation, and/or spreadsheet tabs inside the overall Symphony window. One or more of the tabs can even be a web browser tab; I don't know which rendering engine it uses, but it seems competent.

When you close the overall Symphony window, the app quits, like with Disk Utility or System Preferences. Unusual for a productivity app to work this way, but not necessarily bad. The main limitation of this approach is that you can't view two documents side by side; there may be a way that I don't see.

isn't it amazing how everything has come full circle? IBM releasing office software, Apple doing really well etc etc

@anonID

simple, give it a fake address, i used and it accepted it.

looks pretty good - with ms office anyway pretty slow (2008 seems to run faster on an iMac G3 333Mhz than a MacBook) and annoying UI - very much a viable alternative

Why download the program anonymous? Those people at IBM have a right to know where their program is.

Signed,
John Doe

Nov 06, 08 - 07:57 am Comment from: Cubert

John Doe,
You made me crack a smile, even at this early hour.

Wouldn't it have been nice if Lotus had bothered to offer 1-2-3 or Symphony for the Mac when it would have mattered, back when Lotus had 90+% of the spreadsheet/integrated software market, rather than now when they have to give it away for free? Still better 23 years late than never I suppose.

(Yeah I remember Jazz™, but like everyone else, I just don't care.)

@ken1w: I just noticed that Symphony has support for "Plug-Ins". One such plugin is a document compare tool that will compare two documents side by side and highlight the differences.

Nov 06, 08 - 09:02 am Comment from: s

It is intel only.... :(

Nov 06, 08 - 10:04 am Comment from: MacintoshSoftwareList.com

No love for PPC

So are the new Macs.

Progress is good for you.

Without carbon dioxide, most life on earth would die out.

Buy a Hummer and live forever.

@Anon
This is a beta app meant to be used by people willing to provide feedback to the developer. This point is clearly made in the release. If you don't want to have that type of cooperative dialogue with the developer you should step away and not get involved. At the very least you shouldn't bitch about leaving your precious email address with the company that just allowed you to download free software.

Nov 06, 08 - 11:10 am Comment from: British Mac Head

Nice of them and all that but I just looked at the screenshots, pretty fugly. I think I'll stick with iWork.

I don't need to do crazy number crunching but I like good presentation of my spreadsheets. So Numbers is perfect for me. Keynote, well there is no presentation package better and Pages can make some pretty sweet docs.

Yeah there are a few things I would love to see added to iWork but most of the time it's great.

This product sucks. Its based off of the OpenOffice 1.1 code base. Why use this when you can run OpenOffice.org 3 now?

Nov 06, 08 - 11:37 am Comment from: s

OSX on PPC will be back. Look at the signs
1) Apple buys PAsemi(?)
2) Apple hires ex-IBM VP to lead hardware development of iPhone/iPod.
3) iPhone/iPod today use ARM core, but it could easily run on PPC core. It is after all, just a CPU. For Apple, the change will be just a flick of a compiler switch.
4) License fee for ARM. I believe AIM agreement gives Apple right to fabricate PPC without license fee.

@ Jeff - I believe it's due to licensing. OpenOffice 1 was dual-licensed to allow for proprietary changes that didn't have to be returned to the codebase. OpenOffice 2 switched to exclusively using the LGPL. Since Lotus Symphony is closed-source, they're sticking with the last version of the code from before the switch to LGPL.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openoffice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Industry_Standards_Source_License

Nov 06, 08 - 11:46 am Comment from: s

@ @S

"Progress is good for you."
Yes I agree, but my PB is only 4 years old.

"Without carbon dioxide, most life on earth would die out."
True for approx. 1/2 the species. Unfortunately for the other 1/2, which will die out with too much carbon dioxide.

"Buy a Hummer and live forever."
I already have a E-150 (now it is stationary most of the time), which is as bad or worse than Hummer, The gas price is forcing me to keep my PB for few more years (which brings me back to first item).

"OSX on PPC will be back."

I doubt it. PPC was fine for its time, but it hit a wall when it comes to power and heat.

I think it's more likely that the PASemi crew will be building embedded devices with the ARM architecture, and maybe, someday, coming up with a whole new CPU architecture. That doesn't happen often, but they do have all they money they'd need to try it, not to mention the lead designer of the DEC Alpha.

-jcr

Yeah, let's have a ppc iPhone. It'll weigh four pounds, and you will have to wear it on a holster b/c if you put it in your pants pocket you could suffer genital burns. Great idea there--hey, why not go whole hog into the past and use a 6502?

Fail. The installer asks for my password, and has no reason to require it.

Gee, I wonder if the app was any good?

-jcr

Nov 06, 08 - 01:58 pm Comment from: Mr. Reeee

Bob...

Lotus released a Mac version of Lotus 1-2-3 back in 1990 or 1991.

I bought a copy, instead of klunky and ugly Excel. It was quite nice and had a good clean interface that followed Apple's Interface guidelines. It also was the first spreadsheet that had in-cell editing, which was a BIG selling point for me.

I used it until it broke a few years later. It never went much past version 1.0. Excel probably killed it, which was a shame.

So, it's good to see it's ghost back on the Mac! I'll be curious to see how it stacks up against iWork '08.

Nov 06, 08 - 02:12 pm Comment from: Mr. Reeee

Guys,

The PowerPC processors were actually much cooler, faster and more efficient than the PlentyDumbs of the time. Remember the megahertz myth? It was REAL.

The SAME G3 and G4 processors that ran in the PowerMacs also drove the PowerBook G3s and G4s. Pretty impressive. Intel had to release a separate low power/low heat line specifically for laptops.

Unfortunately, neither IBM, nor Motorola were willing to devote the money for the research needed to bring the G5 to the next level.

That said, my 2.4Ghz Core2Duo MacBook Pro smoked a 2Ghz quad-core G5 GowerMac. Granted, my MBP had twice the RAM and twice the VRAM.

Downloaded it from MacUpdate; no precious email address — fake or real — were necessary.

Can we use this for everyday email?

Wait… you can't just drag the app into your Applications folder, you have to run an installer?

FAIL.

This is 2008. Nobody should be developing new apps for the Mac which require an installer, particularly for apps like this which don't need an installer at all. And closed-source = I don't trust what this installer might be doing, particularly when it thinks it needs an admin password. No dice, IBM.

MW: expected – this was not expected

Mr. Reeee...
By June 4th 1991 when Lotus 1-2-3 was introduced for the Mac, it no longer mattered. Lotus no longer had the dominant position on the Windows side. Previously (1984-1990) Lotus had steadfastly refused to produce decent software for the Mac, having drunk deeply of Microsoft's industry standard cool-aid. A repurposed version of OpenOffice is nice, but if Lotus had the foresight to develop for an alternative platform it the '80s then Symphony might be more than just another Microsoft Office 'alternative' today.

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