Microsoft Increasing Price of Commercial 'Microsoft 365' Plans Next Year

[villagehiker]

For long letters and short reports, Word is okay. But for book length projects documents with graphs, images and equations, TeX and LaTeX provide a solid stability unmatched by Word or any other so-called WYSIWYG word processors. A better way to think about WYSIWYG is What-You-See-Is-All-You-Get. Your output never exceeds the quality of what you see on the screen and these days often falls short of the screen quality. Yep, you gotta learn to mark up your documents for TeX and LaTeX, but the increase in quality generated by TeX and friends makes the effort worthwhile. Word creates too much pain because of its built-in security flaws and structural instability, the latter especially with large and complex documents. Short of suffering from hardware failure, TeX and its children never cause the file corruption so common with Word. Word still suffers from the design flaws baked into Word 6 and before. Hard to believe corporations still bow before the Redmond idol.

 

[danielsutton]

LOL let's be real about this. I would love to see the iWork suite compete with M$365 but we both know that can't happen. Apple's suite requires a Mac. That eliminates a lot of customers since many have Windows machines. Even if Apple introduced iWork for Windows and it's a smash hit it won't put a dent in M$'s monopoly with Office, which is sad but true. M$ should not have a monopoly on an office suite but they do and people in the business world see Office as the defacto standard just because "everybody" uses it.

I hope you realize if you thought of it then so has Apple? It's just not something they want to do or feel worthy of putting a lot resources into. Apple's way of grabbing the market isn't just to do something the "simple" way of thinking. For example people said all Apple has to do to make their computers run cooler and have longer battery life is to simply make bigger laptops. Well that's the simple way of thinking and it's not efficient. Instead Apple has been working on their Apple Silicon chips which have proven to be far more efficient in running cooler than any other PC on the market in the same class as well as more than doubling the battery life of most laptop computers.

And Apple Silicon is precisely the kind of chip that can help Apple compete in the enterprise space. The perfect combination of energy efficiency and computing muscle. Plus it is less expensive to manufacture. We can be sure that Apple is building their own datacenter servers that they run big-time applications on, such as iCloud and the App Store. So all they would have to do is begin selling server-grade systems to other cloud providers as well as to businesses that use hybrid clouds, and serious professional users.

I do believe that Apple has considered this, and I do believe that there is time, and the will, for it to be brought to fruition. Apple is famous for changing its mind, and I am hopeful that they will bring something like the XServe back to market. After all, they did create an Intel-based Mac Pro that can be rack-mounted, although it is not as elegant as XServe was. This was Apple dipping its toes in the water, and they may have some more enterprise-type hardware in the works. I really hope that they do. They also need to develop FaceTime into a serious enterprise cloud videoconferencing platform, which can also be done fairly easily.

 

[KevinN206]

Interesting how there are some here in full force defending M$. Who defends a price hike? 🙄. There is no reason for a price hike. With 365 they don't have to package software on optical medium or package anything for that matter. No distribution is required since it's on a server and they don't have to pay Best Buy to sell it from their shelves. It's just a ripoff and middle finger to customers. The subscription model makes sure that people are even more forced than before to use Office. SMH.

Kinda reminds me of the 30% cut that someone gets for hosting just the app and not hosting anything else.

 

[Maconplasma]

I do believe that Apple has considered this, and I do believe that there is time, and the will, for it to be brought to fruition. Apple is famous for changing its mind, and I am hopeful that they will bring something like the XServe back to market.

Would you please elaborate on that? Aside from returning to the modular Mac Pro I don't know of Apple being famous for changing their mind. Please list what they have done?

 

[adib]

Microsoft cashing in on the COVID pandemic. The number of Office 365 installations must have doubled since everybody started working from home.

Citations please. Workers needing Office would already have a pre-existing licenses granted by their respective office — no increase there.

 

[MacRS4]

LOL let's be real about this. I would love to see the iWork suite compete with M$365 but we both know that can't happen. Apple's suite requires a Mac. That eliminates a lot of customers since many have Windows machines. Even if Apple introduced iWork for Windows and it's a smash hit it won't put a dent in M$'s monopoly with Office, which is sad but true. M$ should not have a monopoly on an office suite but they do and people in the business world see Office as the defacto standard just because "everybody" uses it.

I hope you realize if you thought of it then so has Apple? It's just not something they want to do or feel worthy of putting a lot resources into. Apple's way of grabbing the market isn't just to do something the "simple" way of thinking. For example people said all Apple has to do to make their computers run cooler and have longer battery life is to simply make bigger laptops. Well that's the simple way of thinking and it's not efficient. Instead Apple has been working on their Apple Silicon chips which have proven to be far more efficient in running cooler than any other PC on the market in the same class as well as more than doubling the battery life of most laptop computers.

The cost to change would be phenomenal. Why M$ still by the way? It comes across as a bit silly.

The whole Mac/Pages competing in the corp space is interesting. I'm not even sure it competes in the small space at the minute in a lot of industries. I work in tech for example - very small business but for larger clients, typically 4-10k seats. For my tiny business Apple Silicon & Pages isn't tenable, simply because it doesn't and won't run the software my clients use. Streaming Windows may help with that, but as of right now, we'll be replacing Intel Macs with non-Apple. We don't have a lot of choice. I'm not that bothered about that tbh. I like my Apple gear. I like my house and sports cars more however, and having an ability to pay for them.

Then I look at our average clients. Let's take 1 - law firm, about 4.5k seats. The value (or cost I suppose) per desk is very much in the software not the hardware. About 2k per seat from a recent report I've seen - with laptops about 700GBP per desk (Thinkpad i7/16GB units). Imagine having to replace all of that software suite and hardware just at the desk, forgetting about the back end infrastructure for now.

It's not just Windows & an office type app. It's management software, it's plug-ins specific for client comms management, it's some law specific stuff, it's end-point control and security.

The cost would be MASSIVE. Their Microsoft licensing has gone from a normal Enterprise Agreement with Micro$oft (dammit) to Office365 due to the enticements from Microsoft to do it. It's operationally cheaper and it means the software is evergreen. No having to buy and upgrade office every few years for example. From Microsoft's perspective they remove the Enterprise Agreement renewal risk (years 3-5 tend to be problematic for renewals, and often involves/involved Microsoft paying partners to deploy software into clients to ensure it's hard to leave the ecosystem).

It's going to be really interesting seeing how the whole ARM thing develops. Competition is good - it drives innovation doesn't it?

 

[jonnysods]

Gah, I should have bought more shares in MS when they are cheaper. They just massively increased revenue for their company!

 

[Solomani]

Let’s be honest, no-one else is buying any other Microsoft product, so they’ll milk the Office 365 cash cow until businesses see sense and it keels over.

In what Year do you think businesses will see sense?

 

[MJaP]

...gosh yes, how DARE Microsoft raise their prices, so presumably none of their employees want pay rises year after year, none of the landlords of their hundreds of offices have increased their lease prices, the price of consumables and raw materials that they use hasn't increased in price over the years? Get real people, Microsoft has to fund these increases somehow.

 

[colourfastt]

I much preferred WordPerfect but we were forced to switch to Word.

^^^^^^ This!!

 

[Sl4ck3r]

Baha! If it wasn't for the fact that Office is an industry standard, I would say the value has actually decreased compared to the likes of Google Workspace.

Have you used Google Workspace? Its absolute trash compared to Office. Office is the standard for a reason. Lets not pretend corporate America won't just shift an entire platform to save a buck if the difference in productivity is negligable. Office is the better platform by a long shot

 

[Sl4ck3r]

oh, they added Teams? The app that's free without a plan? The app that took them literally years to support native MacOS notificiations? The app that still doesn't run natively on the M1? Well that makes it all worth while then doesn't it?

Why is it Microsofts problem that Apple decided to shift away from an x86 based processor on a whim? The office suite is supported on the A series of chips so it will be supported natively on the M series in time. Dont expect MS to rush to cover up Apples stupid decisions

 

[Sl4ck3r]

Well they're not a charity 😂,..they have shareholders to appease! 🙄🤦‍♂️

All companies do this, including Apple!

These people are hilarious. They complain that MS increases the prices of a plan 2-4 a month yet happily pay Apple hundreds more for a few more gigs of storage on a device.

 

[Sl4ck3r]

For long letters and short reports, Word is okay. But for book length projects documents with graphs, images and equations, TeX and LaTeX provide a solid stability unmatched by Word or any other so-called WYSIWYG word processors. A better way to think about WYSIWYG is What-You-See-Is-All-You-Get. Your output never exceeds the quality of what you see on the screen and these days often falls short of the screen quality. Yep, you gotta learn to mark up your documents for TeX and LaTeX, but the increase in quality generated by TeX and friends makes the effort worthwhile. Word creates too much pain because of its built-in security flaws and structural instability, the latter especially with large and complex documents. Short of suffering from hardware failure, TeX and its children never cause the file corruption so common with Word. Word still suffers from the design flaws baked into Word 6 and before. Hard to believe corporations still bow before the Redmond idol.

You realize what you are doing is niche and requires specialized tools to do the job? You wouldn't head on down to Home Depot to pick up a set of plyers to go fix a 767, would you? Special applications require specialized tools. For the masses, word does everything they need it to do. No one is "bowing" before the Redmond idol. They are using an industry standard tool with an affordable price tag that has massive amounts of professional and community level support behind it.

 

[cashboxz02]

With that logic, your employer should only pay your salary one time, or maybe once every time you get certified of a new skill, since your other skills are likely to be the same year after year.

Subscription made software affordable. Back in the days, nobody in my country can afford the Office perpetual license as it costs hundreds of dollars. Most people would just pirate and risking their PCs with viruses and trojans.

Now, with Office 365, people can actually afford office as they can just pay for the month they’re going to use it.

And in reality, most people can do just fine with the free web version of Office or Google Docs. There’s really no reason to complain about cost anymore with so many free solutions available.

I have to keep working to get paid. Working doesn't mean changing the one line required for functionality with the new OS, a couple things with the UI, and demanding charging for that upgrade, while giving a finger to the people who don't buy the new version.

 

[cashboxz02]

Hmm OK comrade. In a free economy customers can choose not to pay and if enough do the software maker will react accordingly if they like to get paid.

Jokes on you. I primarily use open source software. I do buy app subscriptions which provide functionality over time. For example, I bought Parcel app because it allows me to track all my packages on all my device using servers provided for by the developer. I bought versions of office which cost $70 as a buy it and forget it, and used it for 4-5 years. Now they're charging you $70/year for a single user. Not many Mac users are too fond of the "cloud service" provided by ms office. I bought Transmit because it's one of the best apps, and each major version supports a series of OS updates. I'll even happily buy the next version of Transmit.

However, I'm talking about the greedy people like Microsoft who are literally exploiting the industry standard of ms office as well as retards who put up apps for $40-100/year for a basic app which doesn't even provide any services and doesn't get any meaningful updates. These people are ruining it for everyone.

 

[ian87w]

I have to keep working to get paid. Working doesn't mean changing the one line required for functionality with the new OS, a couple things with the UI, and demanding charging for that upgrade, while giving a finger to the people who don't buy the new version.

But your skill is the same, so your employer only need to pay you once. Same logic as yours.

Those programmers have other projects as well. So yes they're working as well, yet you dismiss their lifetime skills and experiences just because you don't want to pay for software

 

[ian87w]

Jokes on you. I primarily use open source software. I do buy app subscriptions which provide functionality over time. For example, I bought Parcel app because it allows me to track all my packages on all my device using servers provided for by the developer. I bought versions of office which cost $70 as a buy it and forget it, and used it for 4-5 years. Now they're charging you $70/year for a single user. Not many Mac users are too fond of the "cloud service" provided by ms office. I bought Transmit because it's one of the best apps, and each major version supports a series of OS updates. I'll even happily buy the next version of Transmit.

However, I'm talking about the greedy people like Microsoft who are literally exploiting the industry standard of ms office as well as retards who put up apps for $40-100/year for a basic app which doesn't even provide any services and doesn't get any meaningful updates. These people are ruining it for everyone.

Web version of Office is free, just like Google Docs. Microsoft is not exploiting anyone considering the choices for Office suite is aplenty. In fact, many businesses have migrated to alternatives like Google Workspace.

Your rant seems to be from the 90s.

 

[cashboxz02]

But your skill is the same, so your employer only need to pay you once. Same logic as yours.

Those programmers have other projects as well. So yes they're working as well, yet you dismiss their lifetime skills and experiences just because you don't want to pay for software

If you think updating a few lines of code is worth justifying $70 a year, then go for it bud. This is just the beginning of the abuse which will lead to in-app purchases. Not only are they going to charge you every month, but with a new version, they're going to lock out features which were available in the last version, charge you monthly subscriptions, and then charge you for unlocking every feature in MS office. And then that version will be deprecated, and you'll have to start from square with the next version. Enjoy paying that as well.

 

[cashboxz02]

Web version of Office is free, just like Google Docs. Microsoft is not exploiting anyone considering the choices for Office suite is aplenty. In fact, many businesses have migrated to alternatives like Google Workspace.

Your rant seems to be from the 90s.

Lmfao. Gimme a break. MS office is the same crap at its core since the 90's. I never paid over $100 for the software, and never will. If you think it's worth paying every year for, then you'd be one of the only people who think that way. Novice software users are too stupid to realize they're being ripped off.

 

[adib]

Baha! If it wasn't for the fact that Office is an industry standard, I would say the value has actually decreased compared to the likes of Google Workspace.

The "increased value" is the "network effect" being an "industry standard"...

It's like how Zoom became an industry standard for the education industry (both formal and informal) and not Microsoft Teams or even pre-Microsoft Skype.

 

[throAU]

Are people mad about a company charging other companies more? Not like the actual user notices the price. Hell, most companies won't notice if they are using it today (myself included).

bandwidth and compute drop in price over time
software if written properly doesn’t rot

 

[danielsutton]

Would you please elaborate on that? Aside from returning to the modular Mac Pro I don't know of Apple being famous for changing their mind. Please list what they have done?

Apple switched from MagSafe to USB-C charging for their portable computers only to switch back to MagSafe with their newest machines coming out later this year. Several years back, in Disk Utility in macOS, Apple removed the ability to create RAID disk arrays, only to return the feature in another version of macOS a a short while later. Apple also used Fusion Drives in some of their machines, only to realize that the Fusion Drives were not all that reliable, so they switched to SSDs. Apple released portable machines with Butterfly Keyboards only to renege and switch to a Scissor Switch mechanism a few generations later.

Apple has a long history of changing its mind...

 

[Maconplasma]

Apple switched from MagSafe to USB-C charging for their portable computers only to switch back to MagSafe with their newest machines coming out later this year.

Until the actual products officially hit the streets you're basing that off a rumor. Apple has not made any such announcement. I'm not saying that won't happen but you can't use that as an example of Apple changing their mind.

Several years back, in Disk Utility in macOS, Apple removed the ability to create RAID disk arrays, only to return the feature in another version of macOS a a short while later.

That's in software that most people won't even recognize in the OS as not everyone deals with RAID arrays. It's common for any company that creates software to go back and forth.

Apple also used Fusion Drives in some of their machines, only to realize that the Fusion Drives were not all that reliable, so they switched to SSDs.

And how does that have anything to do with Apple "Changing their Mind"? By that logic everything involving computers and tech made that decision. All a Fusion drive is is small flash storage coupled with a rotational hard disc drive. It was inevitable that Apple was going all SSD/Flash Storage in the future as every company has done away with rotational hard drives. That's not a proper example of what you stated because that's an example of evolution in computing. Even if Apple's Fusion drive proved to be successful they were going to do away with it eventually as they would be the only computing company with their class of computers still using rotational hard drives.

Besides that's not "Changing their Mind". That would mean Apple is going back to an older storage medium. Fusion was designed to keep the cost low while offering fast performance for commonly used apps. Other companies used this technology too and now they are full on SSD. That's just moving forward in technology as prices for storage come down.

Apple released portable machines with Butterfly Keyboards only to renege and switch to a Scissor Switch mechanism a few generations later.

Another bad example. The Butterfly keyboard had major defects and while Apple tried to improve the keyboard with small fixes they couldn't get it stable enough. They had no other choice but to use their current stable Magic keyboard which required them to make their MacBooks a bit thicker to accommodate it.

Apple has a long history of changing its mind...

You're very incorrect on everything you pointed out. Like I mentioned earlier about the Mac Pro that is an actual example of Apple changing their mind. They created a small cylindrical design Mac Pro that they thought would be the next generation in computing. It wasn't accepted very well by the buying public due to it's limitations and lack of modularity. There was nothing technically wrong with it in terms of defects it just wasn't the type of Pro machine that creative people needed and wanted. Under that respect Apple changed their mind and went back to the modular design.

You can't say Apple is famous for changing their minds when you're using examples from posted rumors of unreleased products, or small changes in software in the OS that will only matter to a niche group, or evolutions in storage medium, or using an example of defective keyboard design that was beyond repair.

 

[danielsutton]

Until the actual products officially hit the streets you're basing that off a rumor. Apple has not made any such announcement. I'm not saying that won't happen but you can't use that as an example of Apple changing their mind.

That's in software that most people won't even recognize in the OS as not everyone deals with RAID arrays. It's common for any company that creates software to go back and forth.

And how does that have anything to do with Apple "Changing their Mind"? By that logic everything involving computers and tech made that decision. All a Fusion drive is is small flash storage coupled with a rotational hard disc drive. It was inevitable that Apple was going all SSD/Flash Storage in the future as every company has done away with rotational hard drives. That's not a proper example of what you stated because that's an example of evolution in computing. Even if Apple's Fusion drive proved to be successful they were going to do away with it eventually as they would be the only computing company with their class of computers still using rotational hard drives.

Besides that's not "Changing their Mind". That would mean Apple is going back to an older storage medium. Fusion was designed to keep the cost low while offering fast performance for commonly used apps. Other companies used this technology too and now they are full on SSD. That's just moving forward in technology as prices for storage come down.

Another bad example. The Butterfly keyboard had major defects and while Apple tried to improve the keyboard with small fixes they couldn't get it stable enough. They had no other choice but to use their current stable Magic keyboard which required them to make their MacBooks a bit thicker to accommodate it.

You're very incorrect on everything you pointed out. Like I mentioned earlier about the Mac Pro that is an actual example of Apple changing their mind. They created a small cylindrical design Mac Pro that they thought would be the next generation in computing. It wasn't accepted very well by the buying public due to it's limitations and lack of modularity. There was nothing technically wrong with it in terms of defects it just wasn't the type of Pro machine that creative people needed and wanted. Under that respect Apple changed their mind and went back to the modular design.

You can't say Apple is famous for changing their minds when you're using examples from posted rumors of unreleased products, or small changes in software in the OS that will only matter to a niche group, or evolutions in storage medium, or using an example of defective keyboard design that was beyond repair.

Apple is a company that makes very good products, but sometimes their design team designs them into a corner and they see the limitations after they get a lot of customer complaints. The butterfly keyboard and MagSafe connectors are some of the best examples. The Butterfly mechanism was too shallow and too easily became jammed. The USB-C technology cannot charge computers as fast as MagSafe, and the added benefit is that the connector can unplug without dragging the whole machine onto the floor. So Apple does often experiment and does often change its mind. So I don't see anything different with their foray into the enterprise. They have much more powerful and more energy efficient chips now in the Apple Silicon M series, so they can have another try at it and this time might be the charm. As I noted in my earlier comments, Apple already uses M series chips in their data centers, so it would not be too much of a stretch to imagine them using them in commercial products that they sell to the masses.