Microsoft Paying Apple 30-Percent Cut on In-App Office 365 Subscription Purchases

[dmccloud]

I picked up a one-year sub to Office 365 Home Premium on Black Friday for $50 at Office Max. That allows me to install it on all of my computers, and now my iPad as well. For my personal stuff I use iWork, but I have to use Office for work-related things, so it's a good deal for me.

 

[MisakixMikasa]

NZ$164.99 every year, just so that I have access to editing documents on my iPad? You’ve gotta be joking. Microsoft, I’m outta here. I’ve been a Mac user of MS Office since 1988, upgrading as and when new versions arrived. But as a small business enterprise, I’m not renting software. Not from you. Not from Adobe. Not from no-one. You’ve just lost a customer. You and Adobe have got a lot to learn. You’re no longer the only game in town. Thanks for the memories.

Goodbye... Microsoft won't miss you at all... So does Adobe

 

[wingsabre]

I'm surprised that people are looking at the $100 subscription like that's the best deal Microsoft is offering. In this day an age, anyone from a company or who went to college can get an .edu, .org, or any institutional email account. All of this means they qualify for the University pricing of the office suite. That's 4 years of subscription for $79.99 on two devices, and two tablets. You can also deactivate the subscription of one device from another device, so technically there are no real device limits.

Live hack: Register for some community college if you don't have access to an .edu email account. Then use the assigned email account to buy office 365. Most of the time, registering is free or less than $50. Total cost for 4 years will still be less than the $100 annual subscription.

 

[SgtPepper12]

$79.99 subscription for 2 computers, and 2 tablets for 4 years in formats that's universally used in institutions.

vs

"free" basic text editing program that may give you formatting errors when you submit them to your professor/boss/employer.

Sorry, but where I work (university) nobody uses MS Word for any kind of documents unless it's supposed to be some kind of joke. And if I look at what my colleagues at other institutions use, the only thing that I can say about MS Word is that it is universally ignored. But maybe that's just at university.

 

[tkermit]

It is franking 10 dollar per device for year (5 PC or Mac + 5 Mobile devices), if this is too much for you, then MacDonald is also too much for you. Seriously, just give up one pizza per month, then you have the money for the subscription

I'm still using Word 2008 on my Mac which I bought for ~$100 . Under this new model, I would have had to pay $700 for my usage over the years... that's just not going to happen. Either let me buy your software, or I'm out.

 

[ahbiteme]

Sorry, but where I work (university) nobody uses MS Word for any kind of documents unless it's supposed to be some kind of joke. And if I look at what my colleagues at other institutions use, the only thing that I can say about MS Word is that it is universally ignored. But maybe that's just at university.

That's not the case at either of my universities (in Australia). Word is what most of us use, although some use LaTex for certain things. Just depends on your need. Plus since our computers are supplied by the uni, which owns a volume license, it makes no difference to us - we don't pay for it.

 

[QCassidy352]

I'm surprised that people are looking at the $100 subscription like that's the best deal Microsoft is offering. In this day an age, anyone from a company or who went to college can get an .edu, .org, or any institutional email account. All of this means they qualify for the University pricing of the office suite. That's 4 years of subscription for $79.99 on two devices, and two tablets. You can also deactivate the subscription of one device from another device, so technically there are no real device limits.

Live hack: Register for some community college if you don't have access to an .edu email account. Then use the assigned email account to buy office 365. Most of the time, registering is free or less than $50. Total cost for 4 years will still be less than the $100 annual subscription.

But what grinds me is that I paid good money for a legit copy of Office 2011 for Mac. Now they want to charge me again for the same thing on the mac side if I want it on iOS. MS should either release an updated version of Office for Mac (which you'd get with a 365 subscription) or allow an a la carte purchase for iOS.

As things currently stand, it's BS that someone who bought a legal, fully functional copy of the desktop Office suite pays full price for a 365 subscription.

 

[zorinlynx]

I wonder if the old rivalry left with Ballmer. It'd be interesting to see MS and Apple working together, rather than as bitter enemies.

On the other hand, that sounds scary too.

 

[Stella]

Seems like a lot of users on this board are not microsoft's target market - Fair enough, nothing wrong with that - but still bitch regardless

Some also peddle the "iWork is free"... they seem to forget that iWork is *only* free with new hardware. If you want iWork ( that is, Pages, Keynote et al ) and don't buy hardware you still have to pay for it.

If iWork is good enough for you - great. Keynote is great, but most business rely on Microsoft Office - but over the past few years, this is shrinking, slowly - a fair number have gone to alternatives.

 

[Mtmspa]

Tim is laughing all th way to the bank. Apple gets 30% and MS gts out of the hardware business. Apple wins even more enterprise share. This hurts HP, Samduck, Dell, Google, etc. and helps Apple. Tim is elated.

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I wonder if the old rivalry left with Ballmer. It'd be interesting to see MS and Apple working together, rather than as bitter enemies.

On the other hand, that sounds scary too.

Ballmer was an idiot.

 

[rdlink]

This doesn't hold true for everyone. I just saved the two documents I was working on in Excel on my Mac and tried opening them in Numbers. The first one was truncated at 65,535 rows (There are approximately 750,000 rows in the spreadsheet), and the second one wouldn't open at all (password protected cells + unsupported features). These aren't files I created either, so I need them to work. Excel is the defacto standard, and unless you're doing basic things the iWorks apps aren't going to cut it.

Anyone who would put 750,000 rows in a spreadsheet should be fired immediately...

 

[MacOS10]

Ballmer was an idiot.

I feel bad calling an ex-CEO an idiot, but I have to agree.

 

[hiddenmarkov]

LiberOffice has roughly 10% of MS office functionalities

and based on my experience, most users don't even use that added 90% lol.


TBH outside of a few power users I have supported in the past, my company could install office product from years ago and they would not notice the difference performance wise (have to grant they look a lot different).

I'd put myself in that group. Just never had a desire/need to be an office suite guru. That effort was better put into gettting much better familiar with say text editors I have used over the years.

 

[Renzatic]

and based on my experience, most users don't even use that added 90% lol.

My biggest problem with Libreoffice isn't over features, or it's lack thereof. It's that it never seems to do quite what you want it to do, and when it does, the end result seems a little half-assed.

For pure text, it's a fine program. If you want to get a little fancy and design graphic layouts or something similar, it gets real clunky, real fast.

 

[MacOS10]

LiberOffice has roughly 10% of MS office functionalities

And it doesn't always have full compatibility. Plus it looks really ugly and, as Renzatic said, is clunky sometimes. The thing to use is either an older Office or iWork. Just don't be that guy who saves stuff as .docx; use .doc like a normal person.

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Anyone who would put 750,000 rows in a spreadsheet should be fired immediately...

Why?

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Some also peddle the "iWork is free"... they seem to forget that iWork is *only* free with new hardware. If you want iWork ( that is, Pages, Keynote et al ) and don't buy hardware you still have to pay for it.

Well, there IS the free online iWork on iCloud.com that's actually not bad. I'd say it's nicer than Google Docs but has pretty much no collaboration features and always complains about your web browser not being "supported" even though it works anyway. It also uses iCloud, which kinda sucks, but you can export from it.

 

[thelookingglass]

It's very surprising to me that Microsoft has agreed to this, if true. And it's a sign of just how far things have changed in the tech world, a little bit of desperation on Microsoft's part if you ask me.

 

[hiddenmarkov]

Why?

from a data analysis perspective this is asking for massive headaches down the road.

I have worked with some large test data sets in R in my studies that started life as spreadsheets. they can be quite fun to import, format/clean up then analyze at no where near this row size.

For some very large data sets they can break them down to smaller chunks.


data analysis purely excel....unless the "personal" computer is the master in a cluster (like say beowolf to go oldschool), I do not even want to imagine this task.

You also have to factor in 750K row size proabably entails a large number of columns as well. Here is where the data gets added dimensions to add to the headaches.

Data this size to be honest is better off getting devs involved to convert over to a sql database. It would get much better functionality in the long run. Analysis wise, hell even packup and recovery wise and other sys admin aspects.

 

[scaredpoet]

Your content won't go away.

Perhaps, but I'll no longer have access to the software to view or edit them.

OR, I could just buy a one-time license to use the software as long as I like, without any monthly fees... oh wait, you can't do that on an iPad.

Well, it is true. But after few years, your iPhone just as useless.

There are people believe it or not, who are rocking first-yen iPhones today. "Useless" is a subjective term, it would seem.

How is this money grabbing? I fail to understand that completely.

Then you are exactly the customer Microsoft and Adobe would like to disgorge of your money. Congratulations.

 

[haruhiko]

$99/year is such a steep price. But somehow I managed to get a student subscription $79 for 4 years!

 

[MisakixMikasa]

Perhaps, but I'll no longer have access to the software to view or edit them.

OR, I could just buy a one-time license to use the software as long as I like, without any monthly fees... oh wait, you can't do that on an iPad.



There are people believe it or not, who are rocking first-yen iPhones today. "Useless" is a subjective term, it would seem.




Then you are exactly the customer Microsoft and Adobe would like to disgorge of your money. Congratulations.

You can buy one license. But that only gives you one computer. If you need more than one computers and tablets, you need either pirate the software or you buy multiple copies of Microsoft Office or Photoshops or you can buy Officec 365.

I honstly feel $100 per year isn't that expensive. I pay it becuase I feel there is value for it and I do not feel i am being ripped off. Seriously, I haven't find any alternative that is remotely close to Microsoft Office.

 

[jm001]

I wonder if the old rivalry left with Ballmer. It'd be interesting to see MS and Apple working together, rather than as bitter enemies.

On the other hand, that sounds scary too.

Should be "working together AGAIN..." Office or at least Word was made for Mac way back in the day. I still have Word 4.0 that works great on my IIsi (came on a 3.5" floppy). Back then, MS wasn't the enemy, but a welcomed member of the Apple community.

 

[Will do good]

Actually if you keep your software upgraded (MS and Adobe both being great examples of people doing the Subscription Model now), it's actually cheaper to do the subscription. It's only more expensive if you're that guy still using Office 2003 because you refuse to upgrade.

Wow, you really believe that crap?

 

[AppleScruff1]

Am I going to do some serious office suite related work on my iPad or on my iMac / MacBook Pro?

Since I OWN the damn software on both Mac, do I really have a legit reason to be ripped off every month?
MS is simply out of their mind...

If you don't buy it, you won't be "ripped off".

 

[iSee]

This was previously a sticking point between the two companies, and was rumored to be a large part of why Microsoft wouldn't release Office on the iPad.

However, Microsoft's new CEO, Satya Nadella, is apparently more willing to work within Apple's requirements than ousted CEO Steve Ballmer. Year-long Office 365 subscriptions are available for in-app purchase for $100, with the subscription good for downloading Office on up to five tablets and five computers, Mac or PC computers, and Android, Windows or iOS tablets.

Seems like BS.
Look at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Office-Home-P...TF8&qid=1395977906&sr=8-2&keywords=Office+365

Isn't that an even bigger discount? Didn't MS gave Amazon a 33% cut even assuming Amazon is selling at cost?

So why would MS balk at giving Apple a measly 30%? It doesn't make sense. MS is well used to giving distribution channels more than 30% so I can't see why they would have treated Apple any differently.

Edit: the cost of the Amazon 365 subscription is $67.15 at this moment... which is about 33% off the retail price of $99.99

 

[Cmdrx3]

Sorry, but where I work (university) nobody uses MS Word for any kind of documents unless it's supposed to be some kind of joke. And if I look at what my colleagues at other institutions use, the only thing that I can say about MS Word is that it is universally ignored. But maybe that's just at university.

Not that I'm calling you a liar, but I find that very hard to believe.... actually no, I am going to call you a liar because I believe you are talking absolute bull***t. Even publishing companies that I've worked in where the vast majority of work is done on Macs they use MS Word, Powerpoint & Excel in the office areas, and I've never once been in a university where they where not used in one way or another.