Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Microsoft Businesses Apple

Mac Hebrew Soap Opera Continues 79

Posted by pudge from the i-thought-all-computer-users-spoke-English-anyway dept.
Dark Nexus writes "The Register has a response (actually FROM Microsoft this time) in the continuing soap opera surrounding support for Hebrew (and other right to left languages) in Microsoft products for the Mac."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Mac Hebrew Soap Opera Continues More

Mac Hebrew Soap Opera Continues

Comments Filter:

  • Wow! (Score:4, Funny)

    by vegetablespork ( 575101 ) <vegetablespork@gmail.com> on Tuesday July 02, 2002 @09:21AM (#3806813) Homepage
    Two posts already and no Godwin's law invocation. OK, here goes:

    Microsoft's obvious anti-Semitism, demonstrated clearly by their refusal to support Hebrew in Mac Office products, belies an obvious similarity to the Nazi party.

    In the interest of fairness, however, Office:Mac doesn't support Arabic, either.

  • It IS just good business (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spencerian ( 465343 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2002 @09:30AM (#3806852) Homepage Journal
    Otherwise, Microsoft would have to cater to other languages with smaller populations as well. Logically, if Apple doesn't provide support, adding support in the MS product doesn't make sense, either.

    I'm betting that there's a larger clientele than Hebrew out there. It's an artificial language, and is growing pretty fast, based on some stats (yes, yes, I know--lies, damned lies, and statistics).

    Klingon. It's not widespread as Esperanto, but much hotter.

    I bet the Cut/Copy/Paste commands in Klingonnase would be more proactive...like...

    SLASH/CLONE/SMASH
    • From your sig:

      You have good knowledge of UNIX and a girlfriend. Not many people can say that.

      Luckily, I can! And I can speak a little Klingon!
    • Actually, apple does provide support, and microsoft already has the code to be able to support this, they just refuse to release it or allow other people to implement it (the israeli government offered to pay for implementing it, but microsoft refused). You should read the article before commenting on it.

      .sig, what's that?
      • Thanks for clarifying. I did read the article, but I misstated what was there.

        I should have said that Microsoft's MBU head indicated that Apple had not made the Hebrew implementation a "top-tier" implementation, so they would not either.

        Again, it's good business sense not to go out of your way to support something that the OS would not handle. That's also a good tech decision--OS X is not OS 9, and trying to hack it will make a bad time for everyone. I'm pleased at the logic of MS's response, since this IS Microsoft we're talking about here--a company that is rarely slowed by most kinds of coding ethics. The MBU is a notable exception to this, I think.
      • no, microsoft has the hebrew code in the windows version of office. the mac and windows versions do not share the same codebase. they are feature-similar, and file-format-compatible, but that is it. It would take a greeat effort to add hebrew to the mix, and not just because of the different character set, but also the right to left thing.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I think we can all agree that Microsoft is one of the most successful examples of raw capitalism of the past half-century or so. Like them or not, agree with their practices or not, they've got this capitalism thing down pat. The interesting thing about capitalism is that it always descends the gradient - if there is money to be made doing something, somebody will do it. If it really was easy and profitable to include Hebrew language support, why wouldn't they do it? The answer: the would, of course. Is there any chance that these outsiders' data is better? The answer: probably not - we can safely assume that Microsoft Israel exists to a very large extent to do accurate market research in that country.


    The point is, there is no way Microsoft wouldn't include the support if it was profitable , almost by definition.

  • Intel has a big investment in Israel. Intel and Microsoft are in bed together.

    MS and Intel would rather have the Israelimarket to themselves.

    They probably will.

    --

    I love conspiracies :-)
  • I don't like Microsoft, but I can sort of see their point about the economics. After all, I would think that they'd have a hard time justifying adding Hebrew support but not Arabic. In the same way that they would face problems adding Arabic but not Hebrew.

    There are a lot of zealots that tend to look for the slightest excuse to accuse others of raging anti-semitism or pro-semitism [?]. Supporting one but not the other of these languages would provide that excuse.

    In the current global political climate, being seen to be fair sometimes means that both sides have to go without.
  • "Can anyone explain why IE:mac and Outlook Express:mac support Zulu and Portugeuse but not Russian or Hebrew?"

    Or incredibly, Arabic and Korean too.



    300 million people speak Portuguese
    200 million people speak Arabic
    65 million speak Korean
    8 million speak Zulu

    Only 3 million speak Hebrew, and my guess is most also speak English. As for the Russians, most who are wealthy enough to afford a computer speak/read English or another more common language. So I think it is simple economics. Sure Israel will pay to add Hebrew support, but will they pay for the ongoing costs in supporting the language for years to come?

    So all and all this is NOT a case of unfair competition (which I would prefer it to be, cause I don't like the beast that is Microsoft), nor is it a case of Anti-Semetism (which I am sure people are lead to belive it might be), it is a case of economics, plain and simple. Selling 2000 copies of some software program doesn't outway the issue of ongoing support over years and years. I am sure if Israel would agree to pay for the support forever then Microsoft/Apple would relent and take them up on the offer.
    • I could not agree more. Some would like to site that since it is in fact supported in windows that this is all moot. That is untrue the reason that it won't and can't be supported on macs is that the macintosh market in israel is almost nonexistent. If you want Office X to support Hebrew perhaps first you should build a mac/Hebrew market.
    • While I agree with your basic sentiment, I think that you're not using the correct numbers. It's not the number of native speakers per se that MS would be interested in -- it's the *likely* userbase. Additionally, I don't know where you got your figures from, but there are more like 5 or 6m Hebrew speakers than 3m. Still an order of magnitude less than Portuguese speakers, of course.
    • Actually, Israel population is over 6 millions, nearly all of them speaks hebrew, large numbers of them don't speak english, certainly not to any degree that would allow them to use a program in English.

      There is a Office in hebrew, and it's very good.
      The problem that there are very few Macs in Israel, so I would imagine that the market-share of Mac-owners that needs hebrew support is very few, especially considerring that those *would* likely to know english.
  • I'm glad to see that there's Arabic support coming in 10.2. One question though: does anyone know if IE properly displays Arabic encoded pages when run under 10.2? Also, anyone have an idea about mail apps that properly display, and allow Arabic input? I know that Mozilla Mail can handle it to a certain extent, but I'd prefer to stick with mail app.

    Correct me if I'm wrong, Word will still allow Arabic input and display Arabic documents correctly, but just will not be localized? If that's the only problem it's not a huge one.

    Interestingly enough, in the last update of Messenger the Arabic names in my contact list now display correctly, and I can even read Arabic messages properly, provided that the Arabic fonts are installed.

    Just for clarification, Apple supported Hebrew/Arabic long before Microsoft touched it, and did it better in my opinion. One of the things I like about the Arabic support in earlier versions of MacOS is that you could map the keys to their English equivalents, something Windows still won't let you do.
  • The register has posted another article [theregister.co.uk] on this saga. Here we read what some readers have said. One points out the fact that both the present and future cash flows must be calculated when looking at whether such a venture is possible. A few suggest that those complaining should just buy windows or get linux instead. I was rather shocked to see one mention that MS Office doesn't support Unicode! If this is true, then this is in no way Apple's fault. Nice try MS. My favorite was the mention of Koffice supporting it. If the open source community can do it, why can't you MS, or are you too busy making claims that open source software compromises security?

    As usual with all comments, there are some good ones, and there are some bad ones.
  • Hey-
    Yes, I was as quick as you guys to jump on microsoft about this... but then I thought about it a little bit. Here's a better plan:
    1) Wait until RTL languages are supported natively in Mac OS X (MWNY).
    2) THEN Email MBU @ microsoft and complain about lack of support.

    Honestly, how can you complain that microsoft doesn't support languages that apple hasn't yet included in the OS? [OS X, not 9].

Slashdot Top Deals

Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name. Thy programs run, thy syscalls done, In kernel as it is in user!

Close