Will there be a Mac WordPerfect?
In fact, the company says it has already made up its mind but needs to settle a few issues before going public -- issues that seem to suggest new life for the venerable word processing software.
"The latest version of WordPerfect for the Mac, which is several years old, is 3.5e. We have to decide whether we would work from the code in that version or from the Windows version," said John Geleynse, Corel's Mac product marketing manager. "We have engineers in our Mac team on staff and can farm out the work if necessary" for WordPerfect's development.
"We will definitely announce our decision on WordPerfect for the Mac during the first quarter of this year," Geleynse said, adding that the announcement would include details on new features and a road map and timetable for future development so that users will know what to expect and when.Mac success
"It's clear that Apple is very healthy and that the iMac is very successful," he said. "The Mac is very strong at Corel now, and there will be more Mac products coming out from the company."
It's been more than two years since the company updated its Mac word processor.
The Mac version was last updated in October 1997, when the Corel Enhancement Pack for WordPerfect 3.5 for Mac OS added several new features and support for Mac OS 8. Meanwhile, the Windows version has enjoyed regular revisions.
Mac WordPerfect users have been calling for a new version since last summer, when the company closed its Utah engineering office -- longtime home of the WordPerfect division -- in a corporate consolidation and acknowledged that the Mac version's future was less than certain.
Promises, promises
The company promised a decision by November, and in August Corel received 1,000 e-mail petitions to keep WordPerfect for the Mac, followed by thousands more e-mail messages of support, even as the decision was delayed further. Geleynse said Corel continues to receive 10 to 15 e-mail messages every week on Mac WordPerfect's behalf, and, earlier this month at Macworld Expo in San Francisco, the company received 400 more requests for support.
The decision was delayed while Corel evaluated product development and figured out the features the product would require to be successful, Geleynse said. "I've had numerous meetings with executives to present information summaries and a business plan for the product."
He said the primary reason users want WordPerfect for the Mac is speed: "It can launch in an instant, which doesn't happen with [Microsoft] Word" -- WordPerfect's main competitor.
Thin products sold
Corel, which last week reported a profitable quarter and an upswing in its finances over the last year, sold its NetWinder line of thin-client, thin-server products to Hardware Canada Computing, a Unix and Windows NT hardware reseller.
With the sale of NetWinder, which gives Corel a 25 percent stake in HCC, Corel spokeswoman Susan Gauthier said the company will now focus on its CorelDRAW graphics program and business software such as WordPerfect.