Microsoft Launches Office 365 Subscriptions Alongside Office 2013, But Macs Still Stuck on Office 2011

[BigMcGuire]

Well, I tried Office 365 customer preview for three months. I loaded my 50+ GB of data from Dropbox into Skydrive and gave it a try. I tried my best to like it but it just doesn't compare... Files got corrupted, files never got uploaded to Skydrive, ..... Skydrive just isn't there. Now for Office 2013 (365) - I love the new interface. But that's personal preference. I like the new Visual Studio 2012 / Office 2013 look - much more minimalistic, easier to focus on the text in my opinion. I hate how it makes saving to the hard drive more difficult - big negative imo.

So, 3 months ago I decided to go 100% Google. Having used Google Drive (Documents) back in the day extensively, I went there. Uploaded 80+GB of my data to Google and haven't looked back since. Having all my documents available, with no sync errors, online - without having to worry about files on my hard drive has been nice. I love the concurrent backups of Google Documents and how it's easy to share stuff to anyone. I even got myself a Chromebook and am enjoying mobility with all my data at a higher level - iPhone 5 tethering.

I don't see $99/year or $9.99/mo being a good thing for Office 2013. I'm not going to pay for it. I get everything for free with Google Drive - and I use Google Spreadsheets extensively (formulas, scripts, etc...). If the price was less, I'd go for it. Goodbye Microsoft.

[512ke]

The great advantage of this subscription system is that it allows me to pay $99 a year for something that I can do for free right now.

Of course, that advantage is for MS not for me lol.

I love it when companies think of new ways to make me pay for things I already have that work just fine.

The humor of this is that it's a fracking word processor and a spreadsheet.

It's not Netflix that has to pay a million dollars themselves per episode of Mad Men.

It's my own content that I create.

Meh. I've already paid for MS Office like three times for various flavors of Macs. I'm not paying by the month to rent something I already own.

Personally I'll use free solutions. Dropbox. Etc. Or cheap solutions.

[deconstruct60]

Originally Posted by nex4k

At some point you happen to no longer have enough money to keep your sub up. Poof, your applications are gone. So, if you earn your money by working with those, you're pretty much eff-ed at that point, obviously.

It can be a yearly not monthly payment. If out of cash for a whole year then there are larger systemic problems with your business than being in a subscription model.

Similarly, not paying the telephone, electric, and water bill on a monthly basis probably causes problems too for many businesses and yet they manage to muddle through.

A large number of business pay for services incrementally over time.

[RedCroissant]

Originally Posted by H2SO4

Without meaning to sound flippant, why can it not function as one?

It can only function as one on a very basic level but does not function as a proper enterprise database would operate, otherwise there wouldn't be a need for a separate program. This is another reason why I love and recommend LibreOffice because it comes with a database app as well.

[mankar4]

Office for Mac 2011 is not that bad, and a huge step up from the previous one, which was unusable in many ways.

[BigMcGuire]

Originally Posted by 512ke

Of course, that advantage is for MS not for me lol.

I love it when companies think of new ways to make me pay for things I already have that work just fine.

Meh. I've already paid for MS Office like three times for various flavors of Macs. I'm not paying by the month to rent something I already own.

Personally I'll use free solutions. Dropbox. Etc. Or cheap solutions.

THIS. ^^ This x10000. Why does Microsoft think we're going to pay for this. I know some of my university professors DEMAND Office documents but I just save as Office from Google Drive for Free - or Open Office. Most universities are requiring professors to allow PDF submission too. I think this is a big negative for Microsoft. The price point needed to go down a lot.

[johncrab]

I got tired of the bloatware, the non-intuitive interface, tons of functions I never used and the 29-click "drop your pants and do this NOW" software updates.

I'm using Pages and Numbers and I'm quite happy.

[nex4k]

Originally Posted by robanga

Fair point, but if you are earning a living from these tools won't you always have enough money for a $99 renewal? I think this is one reason why SaaS is compelling from a business model standpoint it gets people into your latest offering faster.

Times are rough, recession everywhere. And you never know if/when you get the next contract job.

[Breaking Good]

Originally Posted by spazzcat

A bigger issue is people use Excel as a database. Its not a database!

spazzcat, could you please explain your comment further?

I use Excel every day at work. However, I've seen Excel power users and I realize that I am by no means a power user of Excel.

We use Excel as the User Interface for our budgeting software, Hyperion Planner by Oracle.

I agree with what others say about Excel updates doing nothing but changing the UI.

I would really like to see Tim Cook invest some money into the iWorks suite of programs and drive a stake right into the heart of Microsoft's cash cow.

Once Microsoft loses the revenue stream from their office prodcutivity software, they will finally go the way of the dinosaur which is where they should have gone twenty years ago.

[johncrab]

Originally Posted by BigMcGuire

THIS. ^^ This x10000. Why does Microsoft think we're going to pay for this. I know some of my university professors DEMAND Office documents but I just save as Office from Google Drive for Free - or Open Office. Most universities are requiring professors to allow PDF submission too. I think this is a big negative for Microsoft. The price point needed to go down a lot.

I am so old that I remember blue books and using my state of the art IBM Executive typewriter (an early computer-like device for putting characters on paper) to write papers which I handed in. Wait. I'm not that old. Things have just changed and what numb-nuts wants Word documents handed in when PDFs are universal and so much easier to evaluate?

I swear, I'd still have students handing in paper so I could experience the joy or marking it up with a red pen and writing angry comments to the non-hacker who turned it in.

[Saladinos]

Originally Posted by Cynicalone

They need to make it for all platforms. This is the stupid thinking that is hurting Microsoft. They need to make software not hardware.

Read the name. Microsoft.

Even if the Surface could catch up to the iPad in sales that would take years. In the meantime you are throwing away millions, and possibly billions of dollars in sales. All because Ballmer is an idiot who has forgotten what Microsoft was founded on.

Indeed they are a software company. However, their biggest software product is an operating system.

Operating systems typically come bundled with the hardware and are rarely changed by the user (if they even can be changed by the user). That means Microsoft needs hardware with its OS on it, and if the partners won't do it they might as well try and do it themselves.

There is no obvious way to save's Microsoft business. The future is moving away from Windows, and they're going to be a shell of the company that they were when that happens. There are lots of problems that all relate to one thing: uncompetitive products. Customers today expect more both from the software and the hardware, and they expect a level of quality that is above what PC OEMs are creating today. One of the big problems is actually hardware-related: customers expect thin and light (i.e. ARM-based) devices, but they also want lots of apps. Microsoft has a large existing app catalogue, but that necessitates the thicker, heavier, more power hungry Intel processors. There's not one simple thing that Microsoft can do to fix this; it's a big collection of things.

They've decided that if they're going down, they're going down fighting.

They've smashed a lot of previous no-go areas by launching the Surface; Windows 8 is totally unrecognisable. They've realised that big changes are needed (and in a large, very corporate organisation like MS, these kind of changes are really hard to do). I think there's a feeling of having nothing to lose; hopefully that can inspire some courageous thinking. Microsoft is not a lemon; there are some really interesting parts of the business (I'm thinking of MSR in particular).

We could all argue about who is to blame for the current rot, but at the moment I wouldn't pretend to have a better idea for a strategy in their position.

[moderngamenewb]

Originally Posted by HarryKNN21

Who needs to keep their Office updated anyway? They will just have the same functions, just an different UI

The Office at my workplace's PC is still 2003

I used 2004 for the most part on a regular basis pretty much until it stopped working on Lion. Now I use 2011 on my MAC. I probably won't upgrade though, since I use pages and keynote more often these days than Office 2011

[Chupa Chupa]

Originally Posted by MacRumors

[url=http://www.macrumors.com/2013/01/29/microsoft-launches-office-365-subscriptions-alongside-office-2013-but-macs-still-stuck-on-office-2011/]

"Stuck" is a bit of a reach, no? Office became bloated a long time ago. I only upgrade because my previous versions became incompatible w/ the current OS X. I'm thinking until Mac underpinnings change again I'll be "happy" with 2011.

[TayHarley]

$99/annum for something that doesn't work and leaves the door open to rising fees ... no thank you!

MS for Mac is the only programme that crashes my iMAC/MBPro, especially Word. I am going to revisit Pages and learn how to use Numbers (even though is is so far behind Excel).

forever !!

[RedCroissant]

Originally Posted by johncrab

I am so old that I remember blue books and using my state of the art IBM Executive typewriter (an early computer-like device for putting characters on paper) to write papers which I handed in. Wait. I'm not that old. Things have just changed and what numb-nuts wants Word documents handed in when PDFs are universal and so much easier to evaluate?

I swear, I'd still have students handing in paper so I could experience the joy or marking it up with a red pen and writing angry comments to the non-hacker who turned it in.

HA!!! I still use the blue books in my university for handing in exams!

[BigMcGuire]

Originally Posted by johncrab

I am so old that I remember blue books and using my state of the art IBM Executive typewriter (an early computer-like device for putting characters on paper) to write papers which I handed in. Wait. I'm not that old. Things have just changed and what numb-nuts wants Word documents handed in when PDFs are universal and so much easier to evaluate?

I swear, I'd still have students handing in paper so I could experience the joy or marking it up with a red pen and writing angry comments to the non-hacker who turned it in.

I learned to type on a typewriter when I was a kid. I don't remember what brand but I just remember having a lot of fun typing for days.

lol @ red pen markings Glad to hear about PDFs - so much easier exporting to that from any program vs Office.

[Reason077]

Originally Posted by spazzcat

A bigger issue is people use Excel as a database. Its not a database!

When you've only got a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

[RedCroissant]

Originally Posted by Breaking Good

spazzcat, could you please explain your comment further?

I use Excel every day at work. However, I've seen Excel power users and I realize that I am by no means a power user of Excel.

We use Excel as the User Interface for our budgeting software, Hyperion Planner by Oracle.

I agree with what others say about Excel updates doing nothing but changing the UI.

Excel is a single-user application that does not allow for the use or individual IDs to relate to other IDs in the same database to differentiate between them. The use of IDs allows a database to distinguish between people hat happen to have the same name, or live at the same address, or people who have had the same phone number at certain times in their lives.

A database is also naturally a multi-user interface where multiple users can make changes and access information at the same time.

So while excel can be used as a pseudo database for basic things like inventories and budgets, these inventories and budgets, they do not compare to the types and amount of information that can be processed by a true database application.

[The Bulge]

No thank you.

[balamw]

Originally Posted by martygras9

Am I the only one that doesn't want to pay extra for cloud storage for things like SkyDrive, iCloud, and Creative Cloud?

In this case, it really looks like MS is using Office 365 to promote usage of both Skydrive and Skype. The cost of 20GB Skydrive bought separately is $10/year and 60 minutes/month of Skype is something like $15.

Google Drive is $30/year for 25GB extra and Dropbox doesn't offer anything under 100GB/$120/year.

If you actually have 5 devices to install it on, the Office 365 Home Premium subscription actually seems like a decent value, especially since Office 2013 Home and Student 2013 is for one PC only unlike the current 3 PC/3 Mac family versions. (You'd need to spend ~$300 per year for two family packs and would not get the full office suite, here you get Access and Outlook as part of the subscription for the same $300/3 years).

B

[BigMcGuire]

Originally Posted by balamw

If you actually have 5 devices to install it on, the Office 365 Home Premium subscription actually seems like a decent value, especially since Office 2013 Home and Student 2013 is for one PC only unlike the current 3 PC/3 Mac family versions. (You'd need to spend ~$300 per year for two family packs and would not get the full office suite, here you get Access and Outlook as part of the subscription for the same $300/3 years).

B

My big question is, say I buy this for myself, my wife who has her own live account and Hotmail --- can she use it with her Live account if I install one of the 5 licenses I have on her computer? I imagine not, so that means those of my family who have their own hotmail, if they want to use the whole experience, each one has to pay $99!

[dBeats]

I started using Numbers, Pages and Keynote last year instead of MS Office for my docs and exporting to Office or PDF if others needed to see it. I've found that not only is iWork better, people notice that the documents look different and always comment about how good it looks. Word is completely dead to me, Pages is better in literally every way. Numbers isn't fully Excel, but it's better when you use it like 95% of the people in this world use excel. Keynote is 150% better than Powerpoint once you 'get' its approach.

The irony is the Excel for Mac cannot edit Excel files made in Windows if there is worksheet protection on. But Number CAN! So when I get an XLSX with workbook protection on, I open it in Numbers, edit the document and send it back as an XLS. I haven't gotten a single email that anybody noticed anything out of the ordinary. They don't even realize the extension changed. LOL

(Free Office and Linux rant...)

OpenOffice, Star-Office, LibreOffice, GoogleDocs... you guys ALL suck so bad. The only reason I even touch googledocs is because my company uses it for collaboration docs. They ALWAYS look worse and have some issues. I tried for years to like OpenOffice and it never got any better. I think in general programs written by temporary out of work developers is a terrible way to make an "Office" product. Linux is the same way. I supported it for years, but even today Linux on a laptop is a total joke. It's an awesome server, but a terrible end user product. Good developers get hired and get paid good money, get families and a life. They don't program free software on the weekends for their health, and open source Office software is proof of this.

[anthony11]

Originally Posted by Badandy

Anyone who thinks iWork or any other office replacement is a viable alternative to MS Office simply isn't a power user of excel. That doesn't absolve MS of responsibility though, since the Mac version of Excel is awful.

How much of that is specific to the Mac version, and how much is inherent to MS Excel itself?

The former: selecting and cut/paste don't work like every other OSX app.

The latter: having to select a "print region" for printing to behave even vaguely reasonably

----------

Originally Posted by balamw

here you get Access and Outlook

You say that like it's a good thing

[RolyPolyBird]

Thanks and all but i'll keep pirating office. I only buy from publishers I respect.

I highly recommend Scrivener, its obviously missing a lot of stuff Word has but once you work out what its about then its awesome for most text applications, and the developers are awesome.

http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

I tried replacing MS office with Open Office but found it was too unreliable and not there yet, but most of my student friends use it and seem happy.

[BigMcGuire]

Originally Posted by dBeats

OpenOffice, Star-Office, LibreOffice, GoogleDocs... you guys ALL suck so bad. The only reason I even touch googledocs is because my company uses it for collaboration docs. They ALWAYS look worse and have some issues. I tried for years to like OpenOffice and it never got any better. I think in general programs written by temporary out of work developers is a terrible way to make an "Office" product. Linux is the same way. I supported it for years, but even today Linux on a laptop is a total joke. It's an awesome server, but a terrible end user product. Good developers get hired and get paid good money, get families and a life. They don't program free software on the weekends for their health, and open source Office software is proof of this.

I don't know - depending on what you're doing. For 99% of the people out there, Open Office, LibreOffice, and especially Google Drive (Docs) does what is needed just as nice. It writes papers, inserts images, has tables, can do headers, etc.... Now, if you're doing complicated stuff like inserting images with flowing text, or whatever other complicated document writing ---- Microsoft Word and Apple Page work well. But arguably so does the others - you just have to take the time to learn how to use them.

All the people I hear complaining about the free options don't take the time to learn how to use them - then bash them because they can't do the same stuff that Microsoft Office can.