Arabic-L:GEN:Article on Arabic and Mac OSX.2

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1) Subject:Article on Arabic and Mac OSX.2

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1)
Date:  22 Oct  2002
From: Albrecht Hofheinz <Albrecht_Hofheinz at web.de> (also sent in by =20
George Hallak
Subject:Article on Arabic and Mac OSX.2

Apple seeks new market share with Arabic version of OSX.2

By David Cass
<mailto:david.cass at itp.net>


Apple Middle East hopes to further boost its growing market share
when it releases the full Arabicised version of its new OSX.2
"Jaguar" operating system.

It is being developed by a team at Arab Business Machine (ABM) who
represent Apple in the region.

The world-first sneak preview at GITEX shows the Arabic fonts already
rendering beautifully smoothed by Jaguar's Quartz Extreme graphics
system.

"It will be a fully Arabic operating system, including numerals,"
explains ABM's Product Development Manager, Ghassan Bendali.

"And it's easy to reboot back to English language at any time."

Jaguar represents a major step forward for Apple, with its stable,
UNIX core allowing easy networking with Windows systems.

ABM are also launching three other Arabic tools at GITEX: ArabiX,
Textra Freehand and Textra Illustrator.

ArabiX floats a window for Arabic text input above any non-Arabicised
application, which can then be cut and paste where desired.

Textra Freehand and Textra Illustrator are plug-ins for the leading
graphics applications from Macromedia and Adobe, both of whom gave
full cooperation to the Arabic project.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has no current plans to Arabicise its highly
successful Office X suite of Mac programs .

But ABM is in advanced talks with a rival office software developer
to Arabicise their Mac product and expects good news on this soon.

According to Bendali, Apple Middle East has been expanding rapidly
outside its traditional niche market of creative and education.

Bendali gives three reasons for the recent strong growth: firstly,
that Apple products have significantly dropped in price in recent
years.

"Secondly is because they=B9re much more mainstream now - you can
easily find compatible products and accessories in most computer
stores," he says.

Third is the fact that ABM's strong initiatives in the education
sector are bearing fruit, popularising Apple products amongst the
vital youth demographic.

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End of Arabic-L:  22 Oct  2002