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Office 365 is now on Mac App Store

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Re: Office 365 is now on Mac App Store

#81
post #26

I'm wondering if it's worth uninstalling Office and reinstalling. If it uses the App Store update mechanism instead of Microsoft Autoupdate I would prefer it. Autoupdate presents a window almost every time a launch an Office application.

You can disable autoupdate and manually check for updates occasionally.

Also, any time an application is available from both inside and outside the App Store I always prefer the outside one. The sandboxing that the App Store imposes is a massive pain. There's also no reason in my mind that Apple deserves a fat slice of my license payment.

Re: Office 365 is now on Mac App Store

#82
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which you have to imagine is something Apple wants in the years ahead as platforms converge on common software stack and UX I don't think we have to imagine that. Apple's been against that sort of thing for a long time, and I don't see that changing any time soon. They don't target the lowest common denominator. I suppose that the Marzipan project, of iOS frameworks on macOS, should prove me wrong but I still don't…

1. Go to Office365.com 2. Login 3. Do you want to stay logged in? 4. Is your information up to date? 5. Office / OneCloud homepage ("Good evening"). Press 'Install Office' (its a secondary/white button that blends into background, whereas 'New doc' is a blue button). (20 URL redirects) 6. Installs page. Press 'Install Office' again. 7. Still Installs page, now with banner that says 'Your Office 365 subscription info…

> Office365

There's your problem right there. Just buy a perpetual Office license. The awful Adobe-style subscription model for desktop software that barely ever changes is ridiculous.

Re: Office 365 is now on Mac App Store

#83
post #79
post #26

I'm wondering if it's worth uninstalling Office and reinstalling. If it uses the App Store update mechanism instead of Microsoft Autoupdate I would prefer it. Autoupdate presents a window almost every time a launch an Office application.

My favorite is when autoupdate is done updating, it runs a check to see if anything needs to be updated, and then it reports to me that there's nothing to update.

I thought it was just me...

Re: Office 365 is now on Mac App Store

#84
post #26

I'm wondering if it's worth uninstalling Office and reinstalling. If it uses the App Store update mechanism instead of Microsoft Autoupdate I would prefer it. Autoupdate presents a window almost every time a launch an Office application.

You can disable autoupdate and manually check for updates occasionally. Also, any time an application is available from both inside and outside the App Store I always prefer the outside one. The sandboxing that the App Store imposes is a massive pain. There's also no reason in my mind that Apple deserves a fat slice of my license payment.

Who ever manually checks for updates on the 20+ apps they have installed?

Re: Office 365 is now on Mac App Store

#85
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which you have to imagine is something Apple wants in the years ahead as platforms converge on common software stack and UX I don't think we have to imagine that. Apple's been against that sort of thing for a long time, and I don't see that changing any time soon. They don't target the lowest common denominator. I suppose that the Marzipan project, of iOS frameworks on macOS, should prove me wrong but I still don't…

1. Go to Office365.com 2. Login 3. Do you want to stay logged in? 4. Is your information up to date? 5. Office / OneCloud homepage ("Good evening"). Press 'Install Office' (its a secondary/white button that blends into background, whereas 'New doc' is a blue button). (20 URL redirects) 6. Installs page. Press 'Install Office' again. 7. Still Installs page, now with banner that says 'Your Office 365 subscription info…

> Just because Marzipan/UIKit today doesn't have good MacOS affordances doesn't mean it won't in the future, especially since it's not even being offered to developers right now. I don't see why it's difficult to see where the puck is going here.

It's not difficult to see where it's going. I just think people are believing it's going where they'd like to see it, where they think it's best for it to go; whereas Apple has their own ideas and always has. What we think is better for the ecosystem, they mightn't see it that way; what we see as the natural course of things, they might see as a passing fad.

Plus, we look at Microsoft's attempts at this very task with Windows 8 through 10. Seems to be a bit rough going. Apple famously accused Redmond of starting their photocopiers; I'm not sure Cupertino's Xeroxes are even close to warming up on this front.

Plus, it reads just a little too optimistic for me. We are already seeing that sharing user interface code between desktop and mobile results either in crippled experiences on both or each platform requiring its own platform-specific user interface code anyway. Instead of one amazing app on two platform, you get two crappy apps that feel like they belong on the other. In my mind, the poster child for this is Discord - it works well enough until you want to do some basic management, then the desktop version is pretty much mandatory.

If you're right about Marzipan having different UX affordances, I think Apple made a huge cock-up by demonstrating apps like Home. On a Mac, Home is an awful mess; the most basic operations are made unnecessarily difficult, what would be a long press or force touch now becomes an irritating secondary click (which is most annoying because I have a Force Touch trackpad not doing anything useful). Even the App Store is missing so many macOS features by virtue of being a Marzipan app.

I'm __hoping__ these are just examples of Apple eating their own dogfood, knowing it tastes terrible. But I'm just having terrible flashbacks to when Finder was a Carbon app and performed like a dog --- oh, that's where the dogfood analogy comes in, I guess!

That said, I still don't think Marzipan will be a convergence. I believe it's a stopgap. macOS is still the truck compared to iOS devices' cars; you just can't drive a truck using a car engine.

Re: Office 365 is now on Mac App Store

#86
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Go to Office365.com 2. Login 3. Do you want to stay logged in? 4. Is your information up to date? 5. Office / OneCloud homepage ("Good evening"). Press 'Install Office' (its a secondary/white button that blends into background, whereas 'New doc' is a blue button). (20 URL redirects) 6. Installs page. Press 'Install Office' again. 7. Still Installs page, now with banner that says 'Your Office 365 subscription info…

> Office365 There's your problem right there. Just buy a perpetual Office license. The awful Adobe-style subscription model for desktop software that barely ever changes is ridiculous .

There are other aspects to Office 365 that are quite valuable to people, like a huge increase in the size of their OneDrive storage quotas, the ability to install Office on multiple devices rather than just one (which is pretty common; people install Office apps connected to their 365 accounts on their mobiles, tablets, etc.), Skype airtime, technical support beyond the first 60 days of purchase, and with certain plans you can share these benefits with a certain number of people.

Aside from that, many businesses with specific Office 365 packages get a number of licences (sometimes unlimited) to assign to staff; so people don't have to buy Office, they get it "free" from work and can install it on something like five or ten devices. Same goes for educational institutions; I'm a teacher, so all the staff AND the students get free access to Office 365, and all the complicated businessy things like Active Directory profiles, SharePoint, Teams (MS' answer to Slack), and so on is included with the same account that I use to install Office on my home Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

So for plenty of people, benefitting from the subscription service in this way, Office is free - no need to buy a perpetual licence.

It's not ridiculous. It might be for your use case, but you can't make a blanket statement that covers everybody.

Re: Office 365 is now on Mac App Store

#87
post #72
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't target the lowest common denominator. Maybe not _technically_ yet, but certainly in spirit. For example, Apple removed a lot of features from their Photos (formerly iPhoto) and iMovie Mac apps to match the much more limited iOS versions.

They did an entire rewrite of iPhoto -> Photos, and slowly added features back. They did this same with the iWork suite and Final Cut Pro as well. It's not unique to iOS. iPhoto may be remembered fondly but it really needed a UX and technical overhaul to handle the order of magnitude increase in photos and videos people were taking.

It really did. It struggled with MobileMe photo streams; in the modern days of iCloud (being free) and Photo Library, iPhoto would have to be renamed to Beachball Simulator.

Re: Office 365 is now on Mac App Store

#88
post #26

I'm wondering if it's worth uninstalling Office and reinstalling. If it uses the App Store update mechanism instead of Microsoft Autoupdate I would prefer it. Autoupdate presents a window almost every time a launch an Office application.

You can disable autoupdate and manually check for updates occasionally. Also, any time an application is available from both inside and outside the App Store I always prefer the outside one. The sandboxing that the App Store imposes is a massive pain. There's also no reason in my mind that Apple deserves a fat slice of my license payment.

I automatically prefer the App Store one because: - I know it will be updated automatically - Sandboxing prevents many dark patterns that apps use to sell advertisers data

Re: Office 365 is now on Mac App Store

#89
post #34

Is it sandboxed?

Apparently, though it seems to have been granted quite a few exceptions:

  $ codesign -d --entitlements - /Applications/Microsoft\ Word.app/
  Executable=/Applications/Microsoft Word.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Word
  
  
  
  
  	com.apple.security.cs.disable-library-validation
  	
  	com.apple.developer.aps-environment
  	production
  	com.apple.security.assets.pictures.read-only
  	
  	com.apple.security.temporary-exception.sbpl
  	
  		(allow file-read* file-write*
  
  
  
  
  
       (require-all (vnode-type REGULAR-FILE) (regex #"(^|/)~\$[^/]+$"))
  
  
  
     )
  		(deny file-write*
       (subpath (string-append (param "_HOME") "/Library/Application Scripts"))
       (subpath (string-append (param "_HOME") "/Library/LaunchAgents"))
      )
  	
  	com.apple.security.app-sandbox
  	
  	keychain-access-groups
  	
  		UBF8T346G9.*
  	
  	com.apple.security.temporary-exception.apple-events
  	
  		com.microsoft.outlook
  		com.microsoft.lync
  		com.microsoft.skypeforbusiness
  		com.filemaker.client.pro12
  		com.thomsonresearchsoft.endnote
  		com.dessci.mathtype
  	
  	com.apple.security.assets.movies.read-only
  	
  	com.apple.security.automation.apple-events
  	
  	com.apple.security.temporary-exception.shared-preference.read-write
  	
  		com.microsoft.autoupdate2
  		com.microsoft.office
  		com.microsoft.shared
  	
  	com.apple.security.files.user-selected.read-write
  	
  	com.apple.security.application-groups
  	
  		UBF8T346G9.Office
  		UBF8T346G9.ms
  		UBF8T346G9.OfficeOsfWebHost
  		UBF8T346G9.OfficeOneDriveSyncIntegration
  	
  	com.apple.security.scripting-targets
  	
  		com.apple.mail
  		
  			com.apple.mail.compose
  		
  	
  	com.apple.security.print
  	
  	com.apple.application-identifier
  	UBF8T346G9.com.microsoft.Word
  	com.apple.security.temporary-exception.files.home-relative-path.read-only
  	
  		/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/
  	
  	com.apple.security.temporary-exception.mach-lookup.global-name
  	
  		com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.helper.port
  	
  	com.apple.security.temporary-exception.shared-preference.read-only
  	
  		com.ThomsonResearchSoft.EndNote
  	
  	com.apple.security.temporary-exception.files.absolute-path.read-only
  	
  		/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.plist
  		/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/
  	
  	com.apple.security.files.bookmarks.app-scope
  	
  	com.apple.developer.team-identifier
  	UBF8T346G9
  	com.apple.security.network.client
  	
  	com.apple.security.personal-information.addressbook
  	
  	com.apple.security.assets.music.read-only
  	
  	com.apple.security.cs.allow-unsigned-executable-memory
  	
  
  

Re: Office 365 is now on Mac App Store

#90
post #40
post #34

Is it sandboxed?

My question exactly: did MS change Office to get in the Mac App Store rules or did Apple change the MAS rules to get Office in?

Apple has allowed Microsoft Office quite a few exemptions that are not normally handed out.
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