John Carter has some good news. "In the past, NeoOffice (which contains a full featured word processor nearly identical to Word in MS Office) was available for a nominal fee of $10, which presumably had to be renewed every year. NeoOffice is now available in the App Store for $29.99, and presumably all future updates will be FREE. I would expect this to apply to minor updates, but major updates might come with a fee (and discounted if you own a previous version).
"If you decide to get the FREE version as indicated in the image, please note that you won’t be able to save changes — or save a new document. It is therefore a read-only version.
" If you already have NeoOffice installed, there is nothing for you to do. You will still receive notices when an update is available, but now you will no longer be bothered with having to login to get the update. I might expect that when the next major update comes along that you will be asked to pay for it — but you can continue using your current version.
" LibreOffice, and its precursor OpenOffice, works equally well on PCs as it does on a Mac, whereas NeoOffice runs only an a Mac. There is almost no difference between LibreOffice or OpenOffice and NeoOffice. Unlike LibreOffice or OpenOffice, NeoOffice runs natively on Mac OS X. Since it’s inception in 2003, the NeoOffice engineers - Patrick Luby and Ed Peterlin - have continually added improvements to NeoOffice that users will not find in OpenOffice or LibreOffice such as:
• The option to open Calc or Impress instead of Writer at launch
• Works with Mac OS X Gatekeeper
• Works with Mac OS X Versions
• Native Mac OS X text highlighting
• Native file locking support for local and networked volumes
• Mac OS X Services support
• Native floating tool windows
John has more info here: "If you find that some of the above features are not working in your current version of NeoOffice, then purchasing NeoOffice from the App Store will make those features available.
"LibreOffice does ask for a donation when you initially download it, but you can still get the app if you choose not to donate and nothing will be disabled.
"One word of caution about LibreOffice: Do NOT download it from anywhere other than www.libreoffice.org. If you do a Google search for libreoffice, be sure that the site you go to is the authentic place.
"One user has reported that NeoOffice has been acting up lately. Switching to LibreOffice resolved that issue, and there were no noticeable differences.
"How NeoOffice (or LibreOffice) differ from Pages is fairly significant. For one, Pages does not have a feature to include cross references in a document. That feature is only useful for serious authors. For two, it is much easier with greater flexibility to manage the properties of a picture or other object in NeoOffice/LibreOffice. Pages does have an extensive assortment of templates to work with whereas NeoOffice/LibreOffice have only a few.
"LibreOffice loads much faster than NeoOffice. Patience will be needed when downloading either one. If you download LibreOffice, you then have to install it and then remove (eject) its presence in the Devices section of Finder and then delete the .DMG file in your Downloads folder. If you purchase NeoOffice from the App Store, installation is automatic and there is no clean up to do.
"For as long as LibreOffice is free, that is the app that I will be recommending."
And John concludes with, "The choice is yours."