Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft launches Office for iPad

thenextweb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 284 posts

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#241

Post by robomartin »

As a long time MS customer their pricing strategies and product segmentation still bother the heck out of me. I get it, but I don't. I wish they'd flatten the offering to one OS and one Office suite and be done with it. Here's what's happening with the tablet versions of Office:

    A qualifying Office 365 subscription is required to edit and create documents. 
    Qualifying plans include:

    Office 365 Home     
      $99.99 PER YEAR

    Office 365 Small Business Premium
       $150.00 per user per year

    Office 365 Midsize Business
       $180.00 per user per year

    Office 365 E3 and E4 (Enterprise and Government)
       $264.00 per user per year

    Office 365 Education A3 and A4
       Students: $36.00 per user per year
       Teachers: $72.00 per user per year

    Office 365 Pro Plus     
       $?????

    Office 365 University
       Same as educational license?
Not sure how to think about this. If I had to pay for my Office 2003 and 2007 Office Pro legal licenses every year it'd amount to a large pile of money. I don't have any issues licensing software at all. You could buy a couple of top of the line German cars with the various licenses for engineering and office software we have.

That said, monthly subscriptions I avoid like the plague. Why? All is fine while business is good. When things aren't great subscriptions bleed much-needed capital. If cancelling your subscriptions means taking away such things as Office and email you are screwed and have to take money from some other part of the business to keep them going.

That's why I've always run our own email servers and always purchased licenses of software like Office Pro. We don't have to update the software every year. When things are good --and if it makes sense-- you upgrade. During lean times you have the option to not spend any money on upgrades and still have full usage of your software. Having experienced this a couple of times over the years I don't like the idea of any mission critical service being tied to a monthly per-user licence, it's a bad idea.

Beyond that, I wish MS would stop this nonsense of having so many layers to their products. One Windows and one Office, none of this "Home", "Home Premium", "Pro", "Pro Plus", "Really Really Pro Premium Plus", etc.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#242

Post by chmars »

Why does Microsoft offer not only the single apps but also one app with all single apps included? That seems to be rather unusual for iOS apps.

As a side note, App Store search is still lacking: Looking for 'microsoft office' did not result in a single hit related to actual apps from Microsoft. Googling for App Store links to the four new apps was easier in the end …

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#243

Post by nikanj »

kyllo wrote: post #236
jodrellblank wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose a fringe benefit of open-sourcing .NET would be an eventual reduction in this phenomenon. Why do you think that would be the case? When I think "open-source" I think "fragmented, lots of utterly terrible things, lots of half-finished false-starts".

Sure, but you can feel free to never use or support the false starts. In open source they are allowed to die. In a closed ecosystem they have a tendency to live on as deprecated zombies.

Which is really good, because at Microsoft's size, there's often a non-trivial number of companies who drank the kool-aid and invest hundreds of man-years to building a system using those false starts.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#244

Post by com2kid »

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.

Actually, early 90s, and they were second!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_for_Pen_Computing

(Watch some of the youtube demos, really cool)

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#245

Post by adamlett »

batoure wrote: post #186
gress wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because market share is a meaningless measure.

Nope its actually a totally real and meaningful measure. it measures how much of the market market -> all the people encompasses your share share -> using your stuff Apple has shown time and again that it isn't a good measure of Profitability, but your statement seemed to imply a more general connotation that I can't help with disagree with.

Market share != Usage share

If more people are buying product A, but product B has a longer useful life, then it conceivable for product B to have a higher usage share.

The problem is that usage share is a lot harder to measure than market share. But ultimately it's the more important number when it comes to things like network effect and developer and consumer mindshare.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#246

Post by nobodyshere »

webjprgm wrote: post #98
nobodyshere wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if I'm alone using it, that's not 5 users. That will be $100/yr for 1 user. And that appears to be expensive in general. A cracked version will come with editing capabilities, make no mistake. I'd gladly once pay a fair amount of money for a version with edit and without subscription.

A cracked version of an iOS app? You must be jailbroken. Most users are not.

Or just a re-signed ipa file if you have a developer account. I guess there are such solutions out there.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#247

Post by ksk »

Tenhundfeld wrote: post #224
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.

rodgerd, this comment really annoys me. It comes across so smug and, IMO, so wrong. Windows is not the dominant computing platform, because PCs are not the dominant computing platform. Smartphones have been outselling PCs since 2011 – not even considering tablets. Windows is obviously still the dominant PC OS, but unlike the 1990's, that doesn't make it the dominant platform. This is an article about Microsoft releas…

Windows is the dominant computing platform. Smartphone sales are irrelevant. Most of the top selling apps on either app stores are entertainment apps and other tiny apps that are mildly relevant. The majority of non-web businesses in the world could survive a temporary internet shutdown but not if windows went away tomorrow. There is nothing dominant (yet) about iOS or Android in the way that Windows was and is.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#248

Post by ksk »

ekianjo wrote: post #218
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…

That will be interesting to see if they actually release Office on Linux distros should the Linux desktop become more popular (and that's kind of expected).

They'll go where the money is. But its not been established that Linux is anything other than a services sector. So far nobody has managed to sell consumer software on Linux in a big way. Maybe some tiny games and whatnot here and there, but, Microsoft will (and probably should) ignore any market that won't bring in atleast a hundred million in revenue.

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#249

Post by Chronic26 »

chrisBob wrote: post #185
mortenjorck wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office 365 is downright cheap compared to Adobe's subscription offerings: $600/year or $75/month. Granted, that gives you access to a huge suite of applications. But if you only need, say, three of them, you can subscribe individually, which at $20/app/month, would cost you a mere $720/year! And unlike Office, which is still available as a desktop app without a subscription, Adobe has discontinued its entire non-subs…

Office 365 may be a bargain for some people, but that is much more than I have been sending to MS over the last few years. As a student this will make me start paying more and its looking a lot more like a cell phone bill than a one time purchase.

Get a job?

Re: Microsoft launches Office for iPad

#250

Post by veidr »

jasonlotito wrote: post #107
jmspring wrote: post #3

A review comparing the Apple apps (native and cloud), MSFT Office (native and cloud), and Google Docs compare would be interesting. Specifically usability (touch as well as external keyboard attached), on and offline modes. Playing up the ribbon in the presentation? Curious as ribbon really has triggered a love it or hate it reaction.

Considering Apple's Cloud apps are still in beta, that would be unfair. I can't edit my KeyNote presentation in the cloud at the moment, so yeah.

I don't think it would be unfair. If we're competing in the same space and you have a solid, mature app and all I have is a buggy beta, that means you're winning.
Post reply on HN