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Microsoft launches Office for iPad

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Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#171

Post by Someone »

webjprgm wrote: post #93
Someone wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If it was free to edit, but $$$ to publish, Office 365 would be much more compelling." 1. How many documents do you never share with anybody else? 2. The same model seems to work fine for Adobe Acrobat. Especially w.r.t #2: if they get the editor on many, and the viewer on a large fraction of devices, this might hurt PDF a bit.

I generally consider PDF to be a static document, something meant to freeze the current appearance and layout as part of making it a final draft. Would I start to think this way about Word docs? Is that good for MS?

That's what I wonder, too, but I dare not give a definite answer.

Microsoft has tried to displace PDF before (with XPS), so I'm sure they will be happy if they could take something away from Adobe. One thing I'm willing to take a stab at: it won't happen overnight or even in a year.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#172

Post by codeulike »

While we're talking about Microsoft, it strikes me that of the big players in 2014, Microsoft are the most diversified, even if they're no longer in the lead in most areas. Will that diversification (Office, Windows, Enterprise, Azure, XBox, Phones) give them more longevity? Or are they really in danger of fading into insignificance?

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#173

Post by kyllo »

Touche wrote: post #125
kyllo wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that it's a good strategy for Microsoft to make its software run on other platforms. This isn't the 1990s anymore where Windows is the dominant platform. It's not even the early 2000's with the "I'm a Mac vs. I'm a PC" meme. Now there are multiple popular platforms (at least in the consumer market), none with clear dominance, and meanwhile Microsoft's software only works on their own platform. They have to co…

I can't think of any companies who sell software for other platforms that are making anywhere in the same neighborhood as companies that own the platform. Microsoft doesn't want to become another Adobe.

Well, capturing profit in tech is all about commoditizing your proprietary product's complements, without allowing others to commoditize your product.

Apple made their money selling proprietary hardware, first computers, then mobile devices.

Microsoft made their money selling proprietary operating systems while commoditizing hardware (PCs).

Google made their money selling proprietary advertising on commodity software on commodity devices. Browsers were already a commodity, they're commoditizing operating systems by doing everything through the web browser, and they're commoditizing mobile devices with Android.

Now Microsoft is trying to get into the mobile device market, after Google already commoditized it, a strategy that's doomed to failure.

They're also trying to get into the data center and IaaS/PaaS market, but that's already been somewhat commoditized by Amazon, Google, Heroku, DigitalOcean, etc.

The companies that are still making money off a proprietary platform, are doing it because they haven't allowed it to be commoditized yet. MS still makes most of their money from platform lock-in in the corporate market, but as soon as that product gets commoditized, their goose is cooked.

So sure, Microsoft doesn't want to become just a software shop like Adobe, but then, it doesn't look like they really have much of a choice in the matter.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#174

Post by codeulike »

webjprgm wrote: post #93
Someone wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If it was free to edit, but $$$ to publish, Office 365 would be much more compelling." 1. How many documents do you never share with anybody else? 2. The same model seems to work fine for Adobe Acrobat. Especially w.r.t #2: if they get the editor on many, and the viewer on a large fraction of devices, this might hurt PDF a bit.

I generally consider PDF to be a static document, something meant to freeze the current appearance and layout as part of making it a final draft. Would I start to think this way about Word docs? Is that good for MS?

.doc will never be seen as a static format - there's too many copies of normal Word lying around all over the planet.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#175

Post by batoure »

dasil003 wrote: post #165
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.

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…

There isn't really any useful information in your reply here. Apples "Consumer only" market share is still less than 20% and if you include Ipads..... as a PC replacement their market share is still only around 15% (though that data is a year old apple only had about 25% growth last year which makes it a wash in the over all market so those numbers are still pretty truthy-ish)

http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/14/2706292/apple-ipad-compute...

Part of the point of my post was to show how people assume statistics in their head without doing something as simple as a Google search. Saying that market share isn't a significant measure is silly because, well its a measure of how much of the market actually uses apple.

Which leads us back to the original point, the fact that you feel that the numbers must be significantly higher is only a representation of how apple has captured the minds and hearts of people around the world... Marketing

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#176

Post by Geee »

sliverstorm wrote: post #144
nakor wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"App store for Android," What does this mean? Looks interesting.

He's talking about one of these two things: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Microsoft+Co... http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/12/5404098/microsoft-consider...

Or, that Nokia has Android app store.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#177

Post by malandrew »

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 agree, but it still has a ways to go. They are embracing open-source more and more, but they need to spend time making it easy for open source developers to make their projects work well on windows. Usually with multi-platform development, vagrant is one of the best solutions out there, however the support for using Windows VMs with vagrant is horrific.

If anyone at Microsoft is reading this thread, please for the love of god spend some time on vagrant-windows, the WinRM gem and making it easy for us to make open-source projects available on windows. It's a nice gesture to make InternetExplorer VMs available for website testing, but if you can't easily automate the testing via tools like vagrant it's really only half a solution.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#178

Post by batoure »

yskchu wrote: post #166
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.

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.

A most truthful argument. However I think that in relation to the OP its important to ask Cui Bono. This is most definitely to the benefit of apple and its shareholder, and so reflects less value to the overall population of technology users.

Assuming you don't want to get into the hocus pocus circular math of trying to figure out the value of how Apples profitability is driving competitive innovations in the greater share of the market(i.e. there would be no Microsoft surface tablet today without the ipad)

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#179

Post by jpatel3 »

megablast wrote: post #156
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....)

Its better than closing the options by limiting stuff to yourself when you seeing that users are not where you think they are.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#180

Post by Silhouette »

ams6110 wrote: post #43
webjprgm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with XDes that corporations like MS should make money. My negative reaction is that I do not like the subscription model for software. Perhaps that's what amaks viscerally reacts to as well. Subscriptions bleed money from users continually, regardless of how often they use something. Paying for major upgrades only allows the user to upgrade based on whether they need certain features and potentially skip ever…

Exactly. Microsoft is after the business users who will throw the subscription on expenses without a second thought. Personal use for something like this is likely not a huge market; google docs is good enough, and free, for that.

Microsoft is after the business users who will throw the subscription on expenses without a second thought.

Maybe a few years ago. I'm not sure how many CIOs are still drinking that Kool-Aid today, though.

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