Hangul for Mac: too little, too late?
Posted by Wesley on
Apple Store / Experience Center in Samseong-dong, Seoul had just stocked boxes of Hangul Word Processor (HWP) 2006 for Mac today, which was announced a week ago. HWP is one of the most popular word processor in Korea (it used to be THE most popular, but Microsoft Word has made headways), and many companies and most government agencies / education institutes use it as the standard document format. But Mac users have largely been left out cold since the last HWP version came out in 1997. Since that version, OS X came out, and then there was a CPU platform shift from PPC to Intel. In other words, Macs haven't been able to 'natively' run the application for half a decade.
But in 2005, rumours started circulating that Haansoft, maker of HWP, was developing the Mac version of HWP 2005, which was available exclusively for Windows. Mac users have been waiting with anticipation and frustration for the entire year, and was on the brink of casting aside the rumour as baseless. But in February 2006, a preview of the HWP for Mac appeared on a Mac magazine, confirming the rumour as truth.
And now HWP for Mac, with version number 2006, has appeared in real, physical shrink-wrapped boxes on the shelf of Apple Store. I would've gladly gotten a copy, but two problems made the deal sour for me. One, the application is not a universal binary. Since my main system is now an Intel Mac, this would mean I have to run it through Rosetta. In this case it's likely that I would experience faster performance using HWP 2005 for Windows inside Parallels Workstation's virtualized environment. Two, the price is set at 174,900 won (about $187), without any upgrade / crossgrade discount plans. I've been paying Haansoft for the new versions of HWP for several years in upgrade prices and I'm not about to start anew.
So despite the materialization of one of the most needed application for Mac, the end of the tunnel still remains elusive.