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Microsoft launches Office for iPad

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Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#151

Post by sytelus »

jmspring wrote: post #15
chrisdevereux wrote: post #12

The pricing structure is interesting: Free to view, requires an expensive Office 365 subscription to edit. Seems like they're missing an opportunity to drive adoption of Office as an online platform. Why would I want to publish using Office instead of Google Docs when I can't assume that people I send the Office doc to will be able to edit it? Sure, Office is better, but not better enough to overcome that. If it was…

There is a trend towards the "subscription model". We've seen it with Adobe's suite of apps, Microsoft has done that with Office recently -- Office 365 subscription is access to the native apps during the subscription period as well as access to the online versions -- it has been around awhile.

The trend toward subscription model is generally misguided. When you buy software, you are pre-paying the whole amount upfront. Plus your chance of defecting to competitor in near future (aka subscriptio "churn") is almost zero. Plus when you get new product with new features out, customer has a good justification to repeat the whole cycle again.

Subscriptions are good for utility type services which are stable, has continuous consumption, has very low margins of profit and has much less competition.

Adobe's subscription model is dumb. They are purely thriving on consumer mindshare but these prices are going to start hurting. Adobe's core business is ripe for breaking in.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#152

Post by andyzweb »

adventured wrote: post #146
sz4kerto wrote: post #4

MS is changing, and make no mistake, this has started with Ballmer. If you watch(ed) the press conf, it's quite apparent. App store for Android, Office for iPad, AD for Azure.. quite nice stuff, that's what we expect from a software giant: just release stuff for everything, everywhere, and make things be able to work with each other nicely. Good to see that, competition is always good for the users, and Apple, Google…

I know it's not a huge deal, but I was always impressed they offered Linux for Azure.

embrace, extend, extinguish

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#153

Post by mpyne »

Livven wrote: post #106
chrisdevereux wrote: post #12

The pricing structure is interesting: Free to view, requires an expensive Office 365 subscription to edit. Seems like they're missing an opportunity to drive adoption of Office as an online platform. Why would I want to publish using Office instead of Google Docs when I can't assume that people I send the Office doc to will be able to edit it? Sure, Office is better, but not better enough to overcome that. If it was…

Apparently lots of people (still) don't know about it but there have been free browser versions of Word/Excel/PowerPoint/OneNote since 2010. They were recently rebranded from Office Web Apps to Office Online, along with easier access directly from office.com. Here's the relevant HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7302221 If you publish/upload the document to OneDrive (7 GB is free) you can send the link t…

Facebook will even auto-link Office documents that you send via the Messages interface to the online web viewer (from the "See Full Conversation" pane, that is).

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#154

Post by k-mcgrady »

pionar wrote: post #116
bdcravens wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you listen to recent interviews, he still holds to the view that Microsoft has always been the true innovator with regard to tablets, and that's where serious business computing takes place.

Yes, Microsoft put out the first tablet computers (with Toshiba's help, I believe) in the early 2000s. The problem was that they got it very wrong.

>> "The problem was that they got it very wrong."

I think that's a little unfair. The technology just wasn't ready yet. The one place they got it really wrong was with the OS but we didn't have WiFi yet (well most people didn't), we didn't have the kind of touch displays we have now, flash storage wasn't cost effective so they probably used HDD's. They had the general idea right but were too early. Unfortunately when the tech was ready MS was too slow.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#155

Post by throwawaymsft »

batoure wrote: post #145
throwawaymsft wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what is a Windows 8 PC? Just because a PC is sold with Win8 (because prior versions aren't available) doesn't mean people are using it as such. They had to bring back "boot to desktop" as a configuration option, and 60% of win8 machines launch metro less than once a day ( https://www.soluto.com/reports ).

so case and point, metro is a pretty cool in function but lacks the apps to make it truly useful... So maybe the company trying to push it should make some. also you cited a link to a 404 page.... and additionally only someone not on windows 8 would believe a statistic like that its not possible to use many of the features of the OS without going into the metro interface... I am hoping that maybe your quote is that "…

Updated the link. Soluto manages PCs so they collect metrics on that type of thing. There's probably some sample bias, but it shows the general trend (along with the damning evidence that Microsoft is making it easier than ever to avoid Windows8).

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#156

Post by megablast »

sz4kerto wrote: post #4

MS is changing, and make no mistake, this has started with Ballmer. If you watch(ed) the press conf, it's quite apparent. App store for Android, Office for iPad, AD for Azure.. quite nice stuff, that's what we expect from a software giant: just release stuff for everything, everywhere, and make things be able to work with each other nicely. Good to see that, competition is always good for the users, and Apple, Google…

Is this good to see? They are changing because they had to, or they risk becoming irrelevant. Windows Mobile is not taking off as fast as you would expect, so if they don't move to iOS or Android, someone else will fill that void.

And office is becoming worse, merging is awful, online editing is completely broken (saving.... saving.... saving....)

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#157

Post by Locke1689 »

alistairSH wrote: post #42
cobalt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't exactly call office 365 that expensive. It's $100/4yrs for students (university) and $100/yr for 5 users. That's hardly expensive. (Sure if you live alone it's more expensive, but you could probably just pair up with friends/family to split the cost)

$100/year for subscription. OR $139 one-time for Office Home. Sure sounds expensive to me. I'll stick to the Apple office suite for now.

Sounds more expensive to me if I had to include Mac version + Windows version + iPad version + iPhone version.

Subscription just bundles everything together.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#158

Post by selectodude »

kyllo wrote: post #130
jamesbritt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't Office always been available for the Mac?

In a limited way. Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, and Communicator (i/o Lync) are available for Mac, but they are not even close to the Windows versions in terms of feature parity. VBA support has been on-and-off. Access, Infopath, and Publisher are not available at all. They're written in Cocoa and on a different release cycle. There is no Office for Mac 2013, current version is 2011.

OneNote for Mac just came out, and it's really good. So they're obviously doing something in the MacBU.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#159

Post by migrantgeek »

batoure wrote: post #148
rodgerd wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't the 1990s anymore where Windows is the dominant platform. It's always easy to see who's in the bubble.

it speaks to the amazing power of marketing. People are always blown away when they find out that apple has less than a 10% market share and that their market share has actually gone down over the last 10 years.

I'm not sure it's marketing but being in the bubble like was previously mentioned.

Apple has nearly 100% market share with fellow engineers at work.

Sometimes I forget PCs exist until I'm forced to use one (internet cafe, friends home, etc)

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#160

Post by jbrooksuk »

kyllo wrote: post #130
jamesbritt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't Office always been available for the Mac?

In a limited way. Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, and Communicator (i/o Lync) are available for Mac, but they are not even close to the Windows versions in terms of feature parity. VBA support has been on-and-off. Access, Infopath, and Publisher are not available at all. They're written in Cocoa and on a different release cycle. There is no Office for Mac 2013, current version is 2011.

With One Note for Mac and now this, I'm actually excited for the next release of Office for Mac, it's looking like it's going to be really good!

I'm sick of Outlook on OSX (it's the only Office app I use), I can add rules, but I can't add notifications so I miss all of my emails. Now I've turned it off I have to manually order things.

On top of that I'm stuck with Calibri as the default font. The default can't be changed.

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