Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Microsoft Losing Next Generation of Office Users by Delaying iOS Release
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
They were also the one who helped get Apple to a position where it needed saving...through monopolistic business practices.
I very much hope that Excel gets a boost: for starters, it's still single threaded on Mac OS X and the limit to 1 million rows (which I believe is also the case in the Windows version) doesn't seem appropriate in 2014.
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.
There is MSFT made hardware? iTunes works on Windows PCs.
----------
Not true. How do you explain the fact that none of the more open platforms were allowed to take off at all. Apple's platform is a nix, as were all the other nixes... The only reason people used Windows to begin with is they were forced to by their employer.
iTunes on Windows isn't great. It isn't horrible, but it still isn't great. It's good enough at best.
Kodak went out of business due to some very bad decisions, and an absolute refusal to change with the times. When the digital revolution came, they stuck by the standard, and ended up getting eaten up in the market because of it.
You can't really compare MS to Kodak because, for one, they're still very relevant, and are at the very least trying to change with the times. They have a great mobile platform that is growing (albeit very slowly), and their products are still selling. They're going through a rough change period, but it's hardly their death knell.
Their refusal to release one of their star applications on a competing platform won't kill them unless the iDevice line gains hegemony across the entire mobile market. And were that to happen, they'd just end up releasing Office for the iPad to compensate.
Probably not. But if it gets significantly better it could replace Excel for the vast majority of users. I do realize there will always be power users who need Excel because Numbers will never reach feature parity.
I would say most of the people who use Excel today are power users, to be honest.
I think for home uses, Numbers is fine. As much as I hate those "Office is doomed because of X and it sucks" arguments you see around here, even I think the entire suite is way too much for most people.
We'll always have Office for big business and education. Nothing compares to it, and it's not going anywhere. But for personal use, the iWork suite is fine.
Hell, I've started using Pages on my iPad to keep notes and do invoices on the go. It works perfectly fine for me. But I'm not going to say the heavier alternative is dead just because it does.
LOL, your information is 100% wrong. Dead wrong. Microsoft purchased $150 million of Apple stock and they did so because Microsoft offered to settle out of court with Apple due to an anti-trust suit that Microsoft was already losing.
You're totally out of place if you think money is what saved Apple, let alone Microsoft. You do realize they could've easily gotten some other company to purchase Apple stocks and still won the Anti-trust suit. What saved Apple was Steve Jobs and Apple's superior engineers and design team.
Now who's the hater??
LOL, your information is 100% wrong. Dead wrong. Microsoft purchased $150 million of Apple stock and they did so because Microsoft offered to settle out of court with Apple due to an anti-trust suit that Microsoft was already losing.
You're totally out of place if you think money is what saved Apple, let alone Microsoft. You do realize they could've easily gotten some other company to purchase Apple stocks and still won the Anti-trust suit. What saved Apple was Steve Jobs and Apple's superior engineers and design team.
Now who's the hater??
The only way it could be said that they "saved" would be that the focus on that allowed Steve Jobs to take a write-down on some other a bad product. That helped them out in the long run.
But even that is a HUGE stretch.
Man, I read your post over and over and either the grammar is incorrect or I'm just not getting what you're saying. Even so, could you be more clear? I'm not getting what you mean by "Steve Jobs to take a write-down on some other a bad product". Huh???
Alright.
There was a product that wasn't selling well when Steve Jobs came back to Apple (shocker, I know). It was one of their Mac lines. The write-down was part of the process of quickly getting rid of the remaining stock of the computers and then move onto something else.
A write down being when they end up going from a supposed value of a product (they'll say they have X$ of whatever) to something lower.
Edit: And I'm still not saying that it "saved Apple", by the way.
Hey Microsoft: FUD doesn't work unless you dominate a market.
And sometimes not even then.
2013 Poll on Office Suite Penetration:
2013 Poll on Cloud based Office Suite Integration:
where is this Quip thing??? I'm sure it's huge because a CEO at a startup I never heard of said so, but I just cannot find it.
2013 Poll on Cloud based Office Suite Integration:
where is this Quip thing??? I'm sure it's huge because a CEO at a startup I never heard of said so, but I just cannot find it.
Collapse
----------
Ms is very profitable
----------
LOL, your information is 100% wrong. Dead wrong. Microsoft purchased $150 million of Apple stock and they did so because Microsoft offered to settle out of court with Apple due to an anti-trust suit that Microsoft was already losing.
You're totally out of place if you think money is what saved Apple, let alone Microsoft. You do realize they could've easily gotten some other company to purchase Apple stocks and still won the Anti-trust suit. What saved Apple was Steve Jobs and Apple's superior engineers and design team.
Now who's the hater??
I have owned and still own several iPhones and iPads and read the Steve jobs book.
I also think that iOS 7 isn't very good
What does that have to do with anything I wrote other than the hater comment? You quoted my entire post.
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.
Apple isn't a software company. They make hardware and provide software for it, but they don't charge their customers for the software - Apple's income is all from their hardware and their virtual stores, which are full of content made by other people (IE, apps, music, movies, and books). If Apple made their apps available for Windows, what good would it do them? iLife and iWork for Windows? Apple doesn't make money off of either of them - all they would do is lose a selling point for their hardware, which they make money off of. OS X for HP or Dell? They'd be shooting themselves in the foot. They'd go through the extra effort of making it work for those platforms (costing more money) and end up reducing their revenue.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is a software company. Office costs $50+ and Windows costs quite a bit, too. Microsoft doesn't give them out for free like Apple does, because Microsoft doesn't make hardware (that people want, anyways).
While the cool kids think it's easy to disparage an eventual Office on iOS, I know plenty of IT departments are going to have to procure and support it to ensure document compatibility among their users.
We have adopted G-Apps for a lot of tasks, but when it comes to dox people are just embedded on MS Office (both Win and OSX).
We have adopted G-Apps for a lot of tasks, but when it comes to dox people are just embedded on MS Office (both Win and OSX).
losing -> lost
There's the rub. Software such as OS and Office is no longer the compelling lock-in it used to be.
In this particular case, Microsoft (== Steve B) has delayed so long with Office-for-iOS that it has lost its relevance. People who might be interested have waited and waited and have now found other solutions. So a possible "touchdown" has been transformed into a "safety" (or a goal into an own-goal).
I wonder how MS's UI folks will deal with ribbons on iPad. The whole UI thing is a cluster waiting to happen. And is maybe why it's taken them so long.
There's the rub. Software such as OS and Office is no longer the compelling lock-in it used to be.
In this particular case, Microsoft (== Steve B) has delayed so long with Office-for-iOS that it has lost its relevance. People who might be interested have waited and waited and have now found other solutions. So a possible "touchdown" has been transformed into a "safety" (or a goal into an own-goal).
I wonder how MS's UI folks will deal with ribbons on iPad. The whole UI thing is a cluster waiting to happen. And is maybe why it's taken them so long.
Never heard of quip, did the maker of quip write that piece?
Hancom Office is a MS Office replacement, seen the spreadsheet version on the Galaxy Note 12.2, very impressive. Excellent touch GUI, works with MS office file formats, etc. Take a look at it if you get the chance.
Think they have a iOS version as well, if anyone can comment on it?
Hancom Office is a MS Office replacement, seen the spreadsheet version on the Galaxy Note 12.2, very impressive. Excellent touch GUI, works with MS office file formats, etc. Take a look at it if you get the chance.
Think they have a iOS version as well, if anyone can comment on it?
Apple is behind in terms of functionality
I work for a huge company, Excel is where I seem to spend a lot of my time. PowerPoint and Word second. I tried really hard to use the iPad (Numbers, Keynote, and whatever the third one is called.
It just doesn't work. Those tools are fine for simple users, but complex spreadsheets and anything requiring formatting - it just doesn't work. I doubt office for the iPad is really going to fix this. The iPad isn't really a tool to get a lot of real work done, and even some of the tasks it should handle without a problem (displaying a PPT with a projector) - it struggles.
The truth of the matter is the iPad is perfect for the apps that are in the top 50 lists. Mostly video, games, and social. Productivity is not a strong point. I wish apple would come out with a Surface like device - best of both worlds, but they won't. For real business users trying to get stuff done (i.e. not spreadsheets where the most advanced formula is =SUM) apple doesn't do it, and even office on the mac is a compromise.
----------
Lets see what happens when they need to get a real job. Google docs is ok for school projects where it is just a method of recording thought. When required to leverage a tool to provide output, there will always be a place for MS Office, and for Files.
Files aren't going anywhere.
I work for a huge company, Excel is where I seem to spend a lot of my time. PowerPoint and Word second. I tried really hard to use the iPad (Numbers, Keynote, and whatever the third one is called.
It just doesn't work. Those tools are fine for simple users, but complex spreadsheets and anything requiring formatting - it just doesn't work. I doubt office for the iPad is really going to fix this. The iPad isn't really a tool to get a lot of real work done, and even some of the tasks it should handle without a problem (displaying a PPT with a projector) - it struggles.
The truth of the matter is the iPad is perfect for the apps that are in the top 50 lists. Mostly video, games, and social. Productivity is not a strong point. I wish apple would come out with a Surface like device - best of both worlds, but they won't. For real business users trying to get stuff done (i.e. not spreadsheets where the most advanced formula is =SUM) apple doesn't do it, and even office on the mac is a compromise.
----------
Lets see what happens when they need to get a real job. Google docs is ok for school projects where it is just a method of recording thought. When required to leverage a tool to provide output, there will always be a place for MS Office, and for Files.
Files aren't going anywhere.
Sure, if the world of business was nothing but billion dollar advertising agencies... in which case I'd love to see what they advertise...
Also, there is at least one advertising agency that makes a killing advertising Office 365.