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Microsoft Losing Next Generation of Office Users by Delaying iOS Release
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I've made a few valiant attempts over the years to switch from desktop/laptop-based office applications to iPad-based alternatives, but it's always a short-lived experiment. For me the iPad just isn't nearly as efficient in so many use cases.
So I don't know that I buy this article. I'm sure there are examples of people who have made the switch to touch-based office applications and maybe Microsoft has missed that segment by not porting to iOS. But I personally don't know a single person in my office who uses their iPad for more than note-taking and light emailing (in the context of productivity apps). I'm sure the OneNote app is taking a beating, but the rest of the Office suite is still safe IMO. At least from any touch-based competition.
So I don't know that I buy this article. I'm sure there are examples of people who have made the switch to touch-based office applications and maybe Microsoft has missed that segment by not porting to iOS. But I personally don't know a single person in my office who uses their iPad for more than note-taking and light emailing (in the context of productivity apps). I'm sure the OneNote app is taking a beating, but the rest of the Office suite is still safe IMO. At least from any touch-based competition.
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MS would go a long way towards getting a lot of former Office users back (including this one) if they brought back Entourage. The project manager that was built into that was awesome, and I really miss it. They could bring that back and maybe offer plugins to boost it's user base, stuff like import/export compatibility with MS Project, gantt charts, etc. Apple doesn't offer anything that integrated. Mail, Calendar, and Contacts, that's it - and they don't even offer a project manager. Now I use Thunderbird and OpenOffice. Good products, but I would bail in a heartbeat if MS brought Entourage back.
MS would go a long way towards getting a lot of former Office users back (including this one) if they brought back Entourage. The project manager that was built into that was awesome, and I really miss it. They could bring that back and maybe offer plugins to boost it's user base, stuff like import/export compatibility with MS Project, gantt charts, etc. Apple doesn't offer anything that integrated. Mail, Calendar, and Contacts, that's it - and they don't even offer a project manager. Now I use Thunderbird and OpenOffice. Good products, but I would bail in a heartbeat if MS brought Entourage back.
Something seems to be missing from most people's statements... I totally agree that there are some terrific alternatives to MS Word. However, what about MS Excel? This seems to be the only thing that I know that keeps most business from leaving MS Office. Word is an easy replacement with PDF, Google Docs, etc... Powerpoint? Please!! LOL But Excel? Especially for very powerful spreadsheets, there is just no one that can compete. Simple budget? Use Google or Numbers or whatnot. But complicated analysis spreadsheets that bring in data from CSV files or the myriad of other things that Excel is fantastic at....
I am glad for so many people all you need is Word and that there are so many great alternatives. But for powerful business needs, Excel is seems to be a standalone product that MS has a monopoly on and so Office will continue to be relevant until this changes. And it will continue to demand the attention of mobile users probably for a good many years to come since many need the Excel ability while mobile.
I am glad for so many people all you need is Word and that there are so many great alternatives. But for powerful business needs, Excel is seems to be a standalone product that MS has a monopoly on and so Office will continue to be relevant until this changes. And it will continue to demand the attention of mobile users probably for a good many years to come since many need the Excel ability while mobile.
I agree
Yes, for all the talk about how tablets are replacing laptops, they are in reality a poor substitute. Greasy finder smudges, keyboards that obscure screens, and no USB ports.
Yes, for all the talk about how tablets are replacing laptops, they are in reality a poor substitute. Greasy finder smudges, keyboards that obscure screens, and no USB ports.
"There are no more Microsoft Word documents being circulated. If someone emails me a Word document, I'll tell them to put it in Quip," said Artivest Chief Investment Officer David Levine."
Uh huh. I am sure the CIO of a investment startup is refusing to accept emails containing Office documents from investors and potential clients.
Uh huh. I am sure the CIO of a investment startup is refusing to accept emails containing Office documents from investors and potential clients.
But what percentage of spreadsheet users create "very powerful spreadsheets"?
I'd bet Numbers and Google Spreadsheets fall well within the 80/20 rule. (80% of users only use 20% of features.)
Yes, for all the talk about how tablets are replacing laptops, they are in reality a poor substitute. Greasy finder smudges, keyboards that obscure screens, and no USB ports.
Of course everyone's mileage will vary! =) I have been on both sides of the fence on this. In one of my businesses it wasn't all that helpful. Now in the business I am in now, the iPad is a fantastic work tool that has easily replaced laptops. As with any new tech, it will slowly replace the old one and become more and more usable as things adapt around the new tech.
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The number of people who can create those vs the number of people that USE them....
For example, in our industry many of the public utilities use incentive calculators that are made in Excel. Thousands upon thousands of people use these spreadsheets without the ability to create them. In my last industry, the government did the same thing with many of the customs calculators. It is just embedded into so many areas of business. So, I would agree from a creation standpoint but not from a usage standpoint.
Also, worth noting that using those calculators outside of MS Excel most often causes the spreadsheet to not function properly. And not knowing whether or not it is going to function properly is not worth the risk to the business, especially if you are making business decisions based on the numbers shown on the spreadsheet. Why would you take the chance when you can just purchase and use MS Excel and never have to worry about it? The reasons to continue to use Excel unfortunately currently still outweigh the reasons to use something else and "fidget" with it to get it to work. Works great for a home user or small business, but for a multi-million dollar company it is not worth the hassle. =)
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Do we not realize that the very same kind of article could be written the other way… such as how Apple is leaving all kinds of money on the table by not making OS X (and OS X-only software) run on hardware other than Apple's own hardware.
And that would be true.
And that would probably have more money in it for Apple than MS would get by releasing Office on iDevices.
And most of these jabs and bashes at MS would fit just about as well at Apple reserving it's "crown jewel" software to only run on Apple-made hardware.
Etc.
But if that article was posted, we'd get 500 posts calling out the author as completely insane, how locking desirable software to exclusive hardware is crucial to the success of Apple (even "genius!") and on and on. Funny how that works.
And that would be true.
And that would probably have more money in it for Apple than MS would get by releasing Office on iDevices.
And most of these jabs and bashes at MS would fit just about as well at Apple reserving it's "crown jewel" software to only run on Apple-made hardware.
Etc.
But if that article was posted, we'd get 500 posts calling out the author as completely insane, how locking desirable software to exclusive hardware is crucial to the success of Apple (even "genius!") and on and on. Funny how that works.
What the hell do all you people do where Office is no longer used ?
Almost everyone I collaborate with do not know things other than Office exist.
Almost everyone I collaborate with do not know things other than Office exist.
John Case, the top Office marketing executive: When they (customers) want to do real work, they are going to want to use Office."
Actually, sir, when I want to do real work, I want the application to fade into the background. I want the functions I need to stop getting moved around. I want to just get the information written and be done. Instead, with every friggin' update I lose hours of my time just trying to find the commands' new locations.
Seriously, if the changes were ever made to <cough cough> improve performance, then what is the point to making access to said commands and so-called features so difficult?
Nothing has changed at my end. I still use the same features and commands I used 15 years ago but every successive release just moves them and hides them and I curse more and more while I try to figure out the damn interface. Do you actually use your own product, Mr Case? How much time do you waste "learning" how to do so? Word stands between the info and the page. It is not helping me get it there. It is standing in the way.
Actually, sir, when I want to do real work, I want the application to fade into the background. I want the functions I need to stop getting moved around. I want to just get the information written and be done. Instead, with every friggin' update I lose hours of my time just trying to find the commands' new locations.
Seriously, if the changes were ever made to <cough cough> improve performance, then what is the point to making access to said commands and so-called features so difficult?
Nothing has changed at my end. I still use the same features and commands I used 15 years ago but every successive release just moves them and hides them and I curse more and more while I try to figure out the damn interface. Do you actually use your own product, Mr Case? How much time do you waste "learning" how to do so? Word stands between the info and the page. It is not helping me get it there. It is standing in the way.
Companies pay good money for Excel. And in every company, there are a few people who get ten times their money worth out of Excel, and it is unbeatable.
But in every company there are ten times more people who buy Excel and pay exactly the same money for it as the Excel heroes, but who would be absolutely fine with Numbers which comes for free if you use it on a Mac, iPad, or anywhere with a browser. Having ten million customers who could never switch away from Excel, and 90 million customers who could replace it with something cheap and easy to use, that's very bad for Microsoft.
I have started using Pages seriously, and compared to Word it is just very, very nice. There aren't that many features. But I don't want many features. I want to type text, and I want to control what it looks like. I have that in Pages. Actually, the Word version that I used used to drive me mad by changing the layout on me all the time. A line of text would be sometimes on this page, sometimes move to another page. Pages has all the fonts, styles, paragraph styles, layout rules (avoiding orphans and widows, keeping paragraphs on a page or with the next paragraph) that I need to create nice looking documents, and it is consistent.
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Do we not realize that the very same kind of article could be written the other way such as how Apple is leaving all kinds of money on the table by not making OS X (and OS X-only software) run on hardware other than Apple's own hardware.
And that would be true.
And that would probably have more money in it for Apple than MS would get by releasing Office on iDevices.
And most of these jabs and bashes at MS would fit just about as well at Apple reserving it's "crown jewel" software to only run on Apple-made hardware.
Etc.
But if that article was posted, we'd get 500 posts calling out the author as completely insane, how locking desirable software to exclusive hardware is crucial to the success of Apple (even "genius!") and on and on. Funny how that works.
LOL, absolutely! The emotional responses would probably be exactly what you said they would be. However, your last paragraph says why it is not an apple to apple
comparison. Apple focuses on the eco-system and therefore their business model is to NOT stray from the hardware/software marriage. It is what they have built the company on, the "full experience" for better or worse. However, MS has built their whole company on putting their software on ANYTHING......but Office for iOS. So this is where this particular article has it's own ground. It if MS not being consistent. So while I don't disagree which how people would respond, it is not really a fair comparison to make about the content of the article. =)
A great many folks don't need the power stuff from Office so yeah, iWork etc work just fine. Even for 'real work'
there are a few things like some of the advance functions in Excel, Endnote and MathType that are better supported by Office but Apple could probably add them even to the iOS version with a little work and then that is off the table as arguments for most folks.
And with iWork apps being free with new hardware, many schools are using that instead of paying for Office. Especially schools that use iPads (and use iCloud online if they have PCs).
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Real work?
Someone needs to tell all the businesses and organizations using iPads that they're not doing real work.
Someone needs to tell all the businesses and organizations using iPads that they're not doing real work.
I will certainly admit that my experience is not nearly as broad as it could be. But I have been at the executive level in three multi-million dollar companies and so far in each one our "regular joe" office staff have had to USE spreadsheets that are quite complicated in nature. They don't create them, nor even have the skills to understand what it is that they are using. However, they do USE them. And we are talking everyone from a truck driver to a clerical staff person. Again, having only been in three industries doesn't make me an expert, but if it has been consistent across transportation, manufacturing and technology, it seems reasonable that other industries use complicated spreadsheets as well. But maybe it is only when the companies are large? My experience certainly doesn't extend to small businesses.
My company doesn't. Most of our work is basically internal and when we need to send something to another company they generally use Macs anyway. But we can export to doc etc if we aren't sure.
And since you asked what kind of company we are a major VFX and stunt filming production company
How were they being a hater in that post? The parallel they drew seemed like a perfectly reasonable one to me. And its not like IBM or Microsoft have failed as companies or anything like that They do well for themselves. Just not in consumer-land.
Someone needs to tell folks that say that that they are wrong. Because 'real work' doesn't mean one thing. Despite Ballmer trying to say differently
Word documents are about .5% of my companies very real work.
They'll be back.
While the whole export as PDF, .DOC, etc thing is much faster than it used to be, I doubt folks that deal with Office docs on a daily and consistent basis will want to do so just to share finished work.
Collaborative work will still need to be addressed in alternatives like iWork and Libre Office.
Google Drive is wonderful, but it's not as feature filled as Office.
In the end, I think the possible lose of future users will be based on the lack of a need for a serious word processor on devices that don't really handle serious word processing very well, and the viable alternatives to MS Office in environments that don't need full collaboration or consistency of file formats.
While the whole export as PDF, .DOC, etc thing is much faster than it used to be, I doubt folks that deal with Office docs on a daily and consistent basis will want to do so just to share finished work.
Collaborative work will still need to be addressed in alternatives like iWork and Libre Office.
Google Drive is wonderful, but it's not as feature filled as Office.
In the end, I think the possible lose of future users will be based on the lack of a need for a serious word processor on devices that don't really handle serious word processing very well, and the viable alternatives to MS Office in environments that don't need full collaboration or consistency of file formats.
They aren't bad. They even have some useful features that suites like iWork don't have. On the other hand, I much prefer the clean feel of iWork: the refined transitions of Keynote for example and uncluttered layout of Pages (though why they insist on putting the word count *in* the document is beyond me). I wouldn't mind using MS Office so much if it didn't chop the top off of my document with a ribbon and cram so many features into the default menus. Options are nice. Having too many in your face is confusing.