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Microsoft Office Mobile arrives for iOS

arstechnica.com

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Re: Microsoft Office Mobile arrives for iOS

#41

Post by nostromo »

I wish Microsoft had decided to separate into several companies way back during the US v. Microsoft case.

Office is actually a great product and Excel in particular still is the best available spreadsheet around. But Office has been hamstrung by being part of Microsoft; in particular by not supporting iOS or Android or online (until being forced to). If Office was its own company, I'm sure these platforms would have been supported years ago.

I feel like Microsoft is one of the rare cases where the whole is actually less than the sum of its parts.

Re: Microsoft Office Mobile arrives for iOS

#42

Post by Spooky23 »

nwh wrote: post #6

I struggle with the move towards everything being subscription based. Very quickly it becomes difficult to quantify just how much it is costing to own, and maintain ownership of a license for a piece of software. If I see an application that is $50, I can quickly quantify that into hours I need to work for this to be paid off. I can compare the value I am getting to the amount of currency that I expend on it. I know…

A great example for me was Boxcryptor, a solution to encrypt files in your Dropbox with encFS.

It used to be software. You buy it for $50 or whatever and use it. Now they are transitioning to a service model where you pay $40/year/user forever.

Their reasoning was transparent: they aren't selling enough perpetual licenses. I get that, but it's annoying to me

Re: Microsoft Office Mobile arrives for iOS

#45

Post by zuppy »

josteink wrote: post #5

Hm. Clever strategy releasing only for Office 365 customers first. Microsoft is clearly aware that most people with a tablet already have something by Apple or an Android device and that trying to use Office to sell them a Windows RT device isn't going to work. However enticing organizations to "upgrade" to Office 365 (which comes with a regular subscription fee and better long term profits) to get a version for the…

I understood that it's only for iPhone. I hope they're not sacrificing office sales, just to force you to buy RT. It's not yet available for me so I can't check that.

Re: Microsoft Office Mobile arrives for iOS

#46

Post by Ologn »

With regards to the mentions of Office and Excel on Android...

Android spreadsheets which are Excel compatible are something I am interested in. There's a few options - Documents To Go, Quickoffice, Olive Office...

Two years ago I started to write a spreadsheet which could handle Excel format on Android without network access. I used the Apache POI libraries. I could handle pre-2007 Excel files OK (XLS), but post-2007 (XLSX) was more of a challenge. I learned the hard way of Android's famous 2^16 methods per Dalvik executable file limit while doing the project, and discovery of the existence of that limitation put the project on an indefinite hiatus. I tried to get around the problem - I pulled a lot out of the schema but it was still over the 65536 method limit. One option available would be custom class loading of multiple Dex files, which would be a pain. Another possibility is some kind of cloud solution where XLSX files would be uploaded to a server - something I have little interest in.

The remnants of my project are here - http://bit.ly/1abDbhK - although there is not much there, just a very, very bare skeleton of a spreadsheet which can handle XLS (pre-2007 Excel) files. I have to update the README though since the API of the Apache POI libraries have changed - it still works with the archived and still downloadable, circa-June-2011 POI libraries though.

Re: Microsoft Office Mobile arrives for iOS

#47

Post by bornhuetter »

nostromo wrote: post #41

I wish Microsoft had decided to separate into several companies way back during the US v. Microsoft case. Office is actually a great product and Excel in particular still is the best available spreadsheet around. But Office has been hamstrung by being part of Microsoft; in particular by not supporting iOS or Android or online (until being forced to). If Office was its own company, I'm sure these platforms would have…

Office would do well without the rest of Microsoft (in fact possibly even better), but I'm not sure the rest of Microsoft would do well without Office. Office is a huge stable cash-cow that allows Microsoft to experiment on things like Kinect without having to worry if they aren't always profitable.

You could argue the same thing with Apple and iOS. iOS would be better if it weren't so tied to OS X, but I'm not sure the rest of Apple would be in anywhere near the same position (or even still around) if it weren't for the big iOS and iPod cashcows.

Re: Microsoft Office Mobile arrives for iOS

#48

Post by bornhuetter »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #38
bornhuetter wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love it if that were true, but I'm not sure how much has really changed. They have always allowed Windows to run in a VM on Linux - it's just the special free VM packages that didn't run on Linux before. They have also always had Office on Mac - it's the best way to make sure no other office suite can get off the ground, and makes Office documents more industry standard. If they were to release Office for Linux,…

Doesn't Libre Office do pretty well in the Linux space?

It does do well, and for personal use it's fine (far better than Open Office ever was), but it's just not on the same level as MS Office. When you start getting into document tracking or Macros things start to break down, and the general usability is not as good - especially for Excel vs Calc.

I'm happy with Gimp for image manipulation and indie games (I've got a 3DS and a Windows partition on my desktop for that), but I still boot into Windows or fire up a VM on my laptop to run MS Office (or watch Netflix).

Re: Microsoft Office Mobile arrives for iOS

#49

Post by hrktb »

nostromo wrote: post #41

I wish Microsoft had decided to separate into several companies way back during the US v. Microsoft case. Office is actually a great product and Excel in particular still is the best available spreadsheet around. But Office has been hamstrung by being part of Microsoft; in particular by not supporting iOS or Android or online (until being forced to). If Office was its own company, I'm sure these platforms would have…

Very true. A similar case would be Adobe, who relied way too much on flash for so much time and started working on html5 tools only once iOS got entranched.
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