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Microsoft Bashes Apple's iWork Software, New iPads

Didn't Microsoft have a trade-in program trading customers out of their IPads for a Surface? That tells you that the Surface is a bust.

Dear Microsoft,
Please stick with developing XBox. Leave phones, tablets, and innovative consumer products to professionals.
 
Renzatic said:
I'll admit you obviously have more experience with both of them than I do, but my time with both showed me that there's more you can do with Office than you can Pages.

Even among the simple, expected things, like layout and formatting, images borders, drop shadows, effects, you have more options and more control over the end result in Office than you do in Pages. Granted, Pages gives you nicer results with less effort, which makes it the better for your average home user/college student. But if I were designing something for publishing, and I wanted that extra something to make it stand out from the rest, I'd probably go with Office.

I won't say Pages is better because it's more elegant and streamlined than Word, and I won't say Word is better because it allows for a finer level of control. Much like anything, it all depends on what you need and what you want.
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I've pushed Pages closer to its limits than most, I suspect. I wrote and designed a 200 page book entirely in Pages. I think it turned out pretty well, and the printer didn't have any complaints about the PDFs I sent them. Pretty sure I would not have attempted the same thing in Word. I might have liked a few more line styles to choose from, and I'd like a larger pallet of graphical frames in general, but I don't know that Word would have given me any better choices. Vertical justification would be welcomed. Maybe that's in the new version?

I don't see books for print being designed in Word, but maybe I'm missing something. I think mostly they come out of Quark or InDesign. In any event this was one instance where the Pages hybrid of word processing and page layout really paid off. Once I got the page templates designed the rest wasn't difficult.

In any case, I also produce all of our reports in Pages. They look good, a lot better than nearly everything I see our competitors producing in Word. A lot faster and easier, too, very likely.
 
aerok said:
Doesn't really matter if it's better, I haven't met a single College professor that accepted .pages documents. Nor have I been requested to send an iWork documents working in 2 different important international corporations.
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I irritated a handful professors by attempting to switch to pdf a couple years ago.

After insisting I send it in doc or docx, they graded the paper by printing it out and writing on it.
 
I don't see iWork ever coming close to replacing office in the business world which is where it really matters.

There is too much vested systems that are integrated and people trained and experts in Excel. Also the business world moves super slow. I work for a large intl company and we are still using XP.


itguy06 said:
Sounds like he's scared....

I've opened a few formatting heavy Word docs in the new Pages and they opened flawlessly.

Same with some formatting heavy Excel docs I've got.

I'm VERY impressed with this new iWork - iWork '09 missed a lot of things and this is a very good start.

MS is scared as every day that goes by without Office on the platforms of choice (iOS and Android), people will realize they don't need Office. And then it's game over for MS.
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badams002 said:
Didn't Microsoft have a trade-in program trading customers out of their IPads for a Surface? That tells you that the Surface is a bust.

Dear Microsoft,
Please stick with developing XBox. Leave phones, tablets, and innovative consumer products to professionals.
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Yeah, Nokia was THE phone company that ruled the world. Until...

The Nokia buy was a reflex motion. I don't think Nokia will save Microsoft or vice versa...
 
PinkyMacGodess said:
Why wouldn't Apple think of buying Microsoft? I realize that it's not at all likely to pass, but it would be interesting. I was surprised that Oracle bought Sun. It made no sense. Did Oracle want hardware? It looks like they don't with all of the BS they make Sun owners go through to get updates. Do they want Java? I imagine that Oracle keeps a crew of Java software engineers locked in a darkened room with a food slot somewhere in the wall, but does Oracle really want Java? Did they want Solaris? Why? The Oracle database software runs on other operating systems. Would anyone buy the Oracle database software if they started dictating the operating system, and requiring their own OS? Would Oracle want to require their development staff to support a complicated OS AND a complicated software system? Sure Sun had MySQL (afaik), but I really can't see where that was a showstopper for Oracle to buy them... Did they buy Sun to stop MySQL? Hmm...

I wonder if AOL bought Netscape to stop the browser for Microsoft...

It's a weird world. Would Microsoft have bought Apple if they could. An interesting question. What if Sony had bought Apple at its lowest (Apple's lowest, not Sony's :D )...

Apple could leverage Microsoft's developers to get back into the 'Business Market'... But them Microsoft could end Apple like Compaq almost did for HP...
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Apple doesn't have the money. -_-

Renzatic said:
The only way DirectX would continue its dominance is if MS is willing to lose its exclusive hold on it, and even then it all depends on if the other platform vendors are willing to pick it up. But that would lead to a competition between APIs, and would only go so far to secure Windows place as the go-to OS for gaming. It'd help strengthen MS' position in the new tech world that's coming soon, but wouldn't secure it outright. At least as solidly as it has been.



Yeah, there are a ton of "ifs" to account for, but there's a ton of promise out there to make it worth the attempt. If you want an example, Paradox Interactive released one game for Linux and said that if it sold well, they'd continue making games for the platform. Now? Just about every game they make has a Linux port. That's enough to assume they saw enough of a return to make it worth their while. I'm sure they won't be the only success story out there once Steam Machines starts hitting the shelves.

Though even if it is a resounding success beyond everyone's wildest dreams, it won't be the death of MS. They're too entrenched and have too much legacy support for that to happen anytime soon. But it will lead to a situation where you can switch to whatever platform without feeling like you have to sacrifice access to something in the transition. It'll end up being a more competitive, equally split market.
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I hope you're right, we need more cross-platform gaming. Seriously, competition is king, and MS hasn't had enough of it on the computer gaming front.
 
Renzatic said:
DirectX? It's used exclusively only by the Xbox line and the SurfaceRT. It's becoming the odd API out. Pretty soon, it'll be easier for developers to port to literally everything else and hit a bigger audience than it would be for them to work with Windows first, and everything else second like it's been in the past.
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DirectX is used by Windows as well, which combined with Xbox gives it the highest user base by far.

After John Carmack got to DirectX it became a lot more like OpenGL than you might think. It's now trivial to program a game for both OpenGL and DirectX at the same time.

I think what is more important is whether a developer believes they can monetise a particular platform or not.
 
Yes, just like Microsoft understands how to make a new operating system that nobody wants to use forcing them to release an update that still doesn't make it any better.
 
No USB port... Give me a break. That's like whining that an Audi doesn't have a crank-starter.

And I have yet to see a single Surface on the streets. Not even one.
 
Nahaz said:
Probably had something to do with the Anti-Competition laws.
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Apple wasn't breathing fumes, it was practically breathing DIRT! Apple could have been bankrupt in weeks, if not days... Steve was brought back because no one thought he could save it. And he did...

But if Apple was bankrupt, Microsoft could just easily bid on the carcass of Apple. No anti-competition issues then...
 
Non-cross-platform...

Ever try to toss a complicated document from Mac office to windows office and back again?

Whenever this software company can make their own programs work with each other, then we will talk
 
My long time complaint with Apple has been the paltry effort they put into iWork on the Mac despite their vast resources. Pages is less than professional strength and Numbers is little more than a toy. It might just save Microsoft where Windows 8 is otherwise going down.
 
Bibbler said:
No, it's not 100% compatible - I have personally had excel worksheets and word documents open improperly formatted. Speaking for myself, I would never risk sending a file that doesn't open properly in industry standard software to a client....

Others like you don't seem to care and that's certainly your right and prerogative. I tend to be a little more professional and take a little more pride in my work than to use a non-standard, cheap imitation.....
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MOST of us don't create word documents, etc. and send them to clients. All I ever create are documents internal to the company, and 95% of our employees do too. So, in 95% of our cases, Pages and Numbers are good enough.

For those cases where we need to send the files to a client, we have Windows boxes, and a few copies of Office - we test the files on there to double check before sending them out.

A lot cheaper than being 100% in the Microsoft world. The Office Suite costs half what a laptop would cost. You know where the company dollars are going instead.
 
JGIGS said:
I don't see iWork ever coming close to replacing office in the business world which is where it really matters.

There is too much vested systems that are integrated and people trained and experts in Excel. Also the business world moves super slow. I work for a large intl company and we are still using XP.
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Trust me when I say your copy is asking to be HACKED! Also trust me when I say this your companies IT staff will disappear to only a couple of senior people when they finally upgrade to modern equipment after this depression is over.

IMHO your company is still on the old IT equipment because it's to expensive to go forward and since Microsoft up the service subscriptions so high companies are jumping over to Linux servers & Bring your own computer systems.

So a warning to all you kids wanting to get into IT. It's a dying industry and year by year just pure Microsoft Service knowledge will not cut it. Learn and get certified in Linux servers and proficient & certified Linux servers and Mac computers.
 
Liquorpuki said:
I plug an APC40 into my Surface and run Ableton on it

you can't do that on an iPad
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Well...
Considering the fact that the recommendation for good performance on Ableton (via their own message boards on official site) is a system with an i7 processor and 8gb of ram..... & the fact that Ableton Suite with sounds installed requires 55gb free space... (none of which the Surface has) I wouldn't say that you're "running" Ableton.... more like- you merely installed it.
 
dwarnecke11 said:
No USB port... Give me a break. That's like whining that an Audi doesn't have a crank-starter.

And I have yet to see a single Surface on the streets. Not even one.
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USB will bring nothing but problems. This leaves it up to hardware providers to author USB drivers for IOS which would be a disaster in its self. Microsoft has a long history of learning the hard way. They will quickly loose control and have legacy USB issues to deal with on top of that. Apple has maintained control over their hardware. This is why everything always works.
 
I actually wish the surface was better. I would love to buy one for my Apple hating aunt.
I guess I will end up picking up a Kindle instead for much less cash.

This is what M$ doesn't get. It can't price like Apple because M$ does not have the brand equity that Apple does.
M$ needs to price like ASUS or ACER to move those Surface tablets.
 
Because we all know that when a company starts to slash prices, the product is selling like hotcakes, everyone wants one, and there is not enough product to go around. Yes, MS is in that very position with their tablet offerings and superior software. Reality Distortion Field projection much?
 
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