Over at Resigned to the Bittersweet Truth, Bill points out that “PresentationZen has an article on using Simplicity to enhance your projected presentations. To illustrate, they compare slides typical of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.” Excellent comparison!
Archive | December 1, 2005
Microsoft’s Office 12 standards move draws mixed reactions
Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley reports that Pundits Give Microsoft’s Open XML Play Mixed Marks. “While the Massachusetts governor’s office (and attorney Larry Rosen, an open-source specialist) may be upbeat about Microsoft’s decision to push the Office 12 Open XML document format through the ECMA standards process, not everyone is equally bullish about Microsoft’s move.”
I was impressed with the positive tone of Larry Rosen’s review. A fair playing field benefits all, and it looks like Microsoft has taken some good first steps. However, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols’ column cites several serious concerns. The best point in that article is the last: When the O-12 standard is a legitimate standards-body-approved standard, only then should it be considered as a peer to competing standards at that level. Before that, it’s just another proprietary, encumbered under-documented binary file format.