Microsoft launches Office for iPad • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#161

Post by tanzam75 » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:37 PM UTC

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 "…

All Metro apps are launched in a hosting process. Thus, the Soluto software would simply look for that particular process EXE to determine if Metro apps are launched.

However, most OS features do not trigger a new hosting process. For example, connecting to a Wi-Fi network, or opening the charms. (Control Panel would get detected as a Metro app, but how many people open Control Panel every day?)

So while it's not perfect, it is possible to make a first stab at measurement.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#162

Post by oneeyedpigeon » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:37 PM UTC

lttlrck wrote: post #120

RyanZAG wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's expensive because it has competition that is charging less. The actual price doesn't matter that much given consumers are free to choose alternatives. That said, $100/yr is extremely expensive in most countries in the world.

Things are "expensive" because they cost a lot of money, not that because there are cheaper alternatives.

Try telling that to the app market.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#163

Post by gress » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:41 PM UTC

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.

That's because market share is a meaningless measure.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#164

Post by gress » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:44 PM UTC

plg wrote: post #123

If it means we will have an actual word processor on iOS, all the better. I for one am deeply disappointed with the direction Apple has taken with iWork. Not least of which is the (a) removal of features and (b) incompatibility with recent versions of their own software [this has rendered large portions of my documents unreadable]

They have put the removed features back in.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#165

Post by dasil003 » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:45 PM UTC

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.

It's not just marketing, people always say that about Apple because they have good marketing, but they have good numbers too. The fact that they have less than 10% marketshare in PCs is not all that significant when you consider the massive numbers of PCs that are sold for all kinds of tasks where a Mac wouldn't even qualify. If you were to look at marketshare of home computer purchases it would be drastically higher. And that is not even considering the effect of smart phones and tables on peoples usage patterns. My in-laws who are small town folk from the midwest, as far as you can possibly imagine from an urban hipster, had been using Dells for years and switched to an iPad last year and are getting much more out of it than they ever did their last aircraft carrier of a Win 7 Dell that was ostensibly much more powerful.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#166

Post by yskchu » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:50 PM UTC

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.

Their marketing is funded by their dominant profit margin; before, people think market share equates to higher earnings, but apple shows that even with a small market share you can have a dominant profit margin and earnings, which is what really matter.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#167

Post by batoure » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:51 PM UTC

migrantgeek wrote: post #159

batoure wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Yeah there is a fascinating income bias at play there. Think about it this way, if you are an engineer and you make over 75k a year gross you are in the top 15% of wage earners in the united states, if you make over 100k you are in the top 10% of wage earners.

So if you are in one of those brackets chances are your company is spending a good chunk of change on you and doesn't mind springing for a nice laptop to keep you happy. But from the other angle there are some 350 million people working in this country who aren't in that space. and considering that something like 76 to 80% of Americans own a PC/Mac that leaves a good chunk of people who lead a significantly different existence than most engineers.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#168

Post by codeulike » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:53 PM UTC

hrktb wrote: post #102

mikestew wrote: post #8

I wonder if they aren't a little late on this. I assume that I'm not the only one that found out I can get along just fine without Office on an iPad (or in my own personal case, get along just fine without Office at all). If the free Pages/Keynote/Numbers doesn't do it, I probably need a "real" computer anyway. That was always the real danger I saw for Microsoft as they delayed supporting iOS. Folks buy the devices a…

I have yet to see any iOS app doing a reliable job in even just displaying Excel and Word documents. A long time ago I thought that LibreOffice or Pages were close enough, good enough to not need Office, but in reality there is still some random document once in a while that has the history messed up, or the layout hides a part of the text, or images are not at the right place. It might be 98% OK, but you can't alway…

but in reality there is still some random document once in a while that has the history messed up, or the layout hides a part of the text, or images are not at the right place

We really should get a campaign going to persuade people to keep their Word and Powerpoint formats simple. Usually interop problems only happen when people do weird formatting things that look terrible anyway.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#169

Post by oneeyedpigeon » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:55 PM UTC

myko wrote: post #140

be5invis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm I'm waiting for this either. REALLY HD SUPER MARIO!

Super Mario 3D World is 1080p (I took your 'REALLY HD' to mean you didn't realize Mario was already in HD), it's also the best co-op multi-player experience I've ever had: http://www.yoyo.com/p/nintendo-super-mario-3d-world-934466

Unfortunately it's only available on a console that nobody has, which might explain why the OP wasn't aware of it.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#170

Post by codeulike » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:55 PM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #142

I think that it is cool for Microsoft to release Office 360 for OS X and iPad. I do a lot of writing (I am pretty much addicted to writing books). I use my iPad for lots of casual writing using a good text editor and markdown files in Dropbox (target is leanpub.com). For some writing I like having Pages on both iOS and OS X with iCloud storage. If Office 360 ends up being a compelling product for iPad and my MacBook…

Is Office 360 a version of Office 365 for the XBox 360?