Microsoft's refusal to provide Hebrew support in its Macintosh Internet Explorer browser or Office suite has prompted a complaint to Israel's antitrust department.
It's a fascinating story which raises as many cultural questions as does it does political - all the more so, as we discovered last week, since neither Apple nor Microsoft want to confront the issue.
Hebrew writers have long complained that Microsoft Office for the Mac doesn't support the script: even though it's drawn from the Windows codebase which does support Hebrew, and many other right-to-left scripts to boot. The lack of support wasn't fixed in Office 2001:mac, and despite rich language support for developers in Apple's Mac OS X, Microsoft says it has no plans to add Hebrew to Office v.X:mac.
Even though it wouldn't cost Microsoft a cent, says Dov Cohen, a law student who formed the National Academic Macintosh Administrators group to lobby for Hebrew support in Microsoft products.
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