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Microsoft hints at Office, voice recognition iPhone apps - Page 2

post #41 of 68
3/25/08 at 2:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by backtomac View Post

I don't know how you came up with that profit margin. No where in quote you referenced is there info on operating expenses.

Actually, what they are likely referring to is the "operating margin" (i.e., "EBIT," i.e., earnings before interest and taxes, i.e., Revenues minus Operating Expenses). To put that number into perspective, MSFT's "Business Services" segment (primarily MS Office) had 2007 revenues of $16.4B, and 2007 operating income of $10.7B, an operating margin of roughly 65%.

So the 57% for Mac-related stuff is, if anything, low. Probably because of the extra costs involved in the switchover to Office 2008.
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post #42 of 68
3/25/08 at 2:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by backtomac View Post

On second thought.. I think you are right. My bad.

With software, profits can be very high. The estimate is that MS makes ovr 75% profit on the OS's.

This is how they can afford to lose so much money on their other non software enterprises.
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post #43 of 68
3/25/08 at 3:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post

I think it requires breaking the total internal reflection of the glass. How about something like rubber tip?

No, it's a capacitance related requirement. There is one product, but I haven't actually found it for sale, and their pages seem to be gone. This is supposed to be from TapRight the people who make some iPhone games.

Here's another one. I don't know if it's for sale either.

http://www.tenonedesign.com/stylus.php

When I finally get my phone in late June (I hope), I'll see if one can be developed.
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post #44 of 68
3/25/08 at 3:14pm
What I find most interesting about this whole thing, is that MS might be coming out with products that will help to seriously damage the chances of their own phone product, a product they consider to be very important.
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post #45 of 68
3/25/08 at 4:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by EagerDragon View Post

I rather have iWorks or a scaled down OpenOffice on the iPhone, I have no need for Bloatware.

It would be nice if iWork apps are recognized on the iPhone at the very least. Excel can be viewed, but Numbers can't

Quote:
Originally Posted by ZTWatcher View Post

Is it just me or do people have strange expectations of the iPhone..

I don't see it as a desktop replacement, so why on earth would I want MS Office?

I can't understand wy you would want this type of software?????

is it just me ??

To fix the bosses excel sheets LOLOLOL

I would LOVE if the iPhone would support full video out like Jobs uses on stage. To be able to have what i see on my iPhone on a TV would be very useful.
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post #46 of 68
3/25/08 at 4:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

No, it's a capacitance related requirement. There is one product, but I haven't actually found it for sale, and their pages seem to be gone. This is supposed to be from TapRight the people who make some iPhone games.

Here's another one. I don't know if it's for sale either.

http://www.tenonedesign.com/stylus.php

When I finally get my phone in late June (I hope), I'll see if one can be developed.

I clicked "buy now" and it says shipping March 31.
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post #47 of 68
3/25/08 at 4:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by James Ahlschwede View Post

"[Microsoft] is already the largest software developer for Apple's Mac platform outside of the Mac maker itself" isn't accurate.

It's one of the biggest, but not the biggest - unless you're just counting revenues for Microsoft as a whole, which would be meaningless. (They'd also be the biggest video game maker, the biggest cable news channel, the biggest search engine etc.)

Adobe says they get 22-25% of their revenues from "Macintosh customers or software that runs on the Mac" - which, in those terms, makes them twice as large as Microsoft at ~$700M revenues from Mac software.

Maybe they mean biggest in terms of software units sold? Adobe may make more money but then they largely cost a whole lot more. Basic Photoshop CS3 is $650 and the whole Creative Suite is around $1800. The priciest piece of Mac software from Microsoft (and correct me if I'm wrong here) is the Standard Full Edition of Office which goes for $400.
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post #48 of 68
3/25/08 at 5:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

What I find most interesting about this whole thing, is that MS might be coming out with products that will help to seriously damage the chances of their own phone product, a product they consider to be very important.

Unless MS's intention is to sabotage the iPhone. Anything they touch tends to destroy the intended function.
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post #49 of 68
3/25/08 at 5:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZTWatcher View Post

Is it just me or do people have strange expectations of the iPhone..

I don't see it as a desktop replacement, so why on earth would I want MS Office?

I can't understand wy you would want this type of software?????

is it just me ??

Yes It's You!!!!

I have "Documents to Go" on my old Palm, and it's terrific being able to take your "to do lists", Excel and Word doc's, Filemaker Pro databases, Date Book, iPhoto library to show (or bore) friends, Solitaires, Sudoku games etc with you wherever you go, and have them all at your fingertips when you don't need to carry your laptop with you.

The drawback is having to carry your mobile with you as well, so I am waiting for the similar apps to be available on the iPhone and Touch. I think it would also be useful for a "Documents to Go" type of app to be available in the SDK.

If they can successfully integrate these crucial apps, then the Enterprise will fall over themselves to buy them.
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post #50 of 68
3/25/08 at 11:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by EagerDragon View Post

I rather have iWorks or a scaled down OpenOffice on the iPhone, I have no need for Bloatware.

i'll second that!
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post #51 of 68
3/26/08 at 6:11am
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

What I find most interesting about this whole thing, is that MS might be coming out with products that will help to seriously damage the chances of their own phone product, a product they consider to be very important.

MicroSoft is famous for F.U.D., can you provide any information other than YouTube jokes.... that MicroSoft has an effort in lauching a phone and that it is a product "they consider to be very important"?

I can't, so I'm interested in your source.....
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post #52 of 68
3/26/08 at 10:55am
Quote:
Originally Posted by iPeon View Post

Unless MS's intention is to sabotage the iPhone. Anything they touch tends to destroy the intended function.

Well, I know that you are making *joke* of sorts, but I would have to disagree anyway. If Office was THAT bad, it wouldn't be used. There are plenty of other office suites for PC's, and a number for Macs as well. none of them has made much of a dent. And some of them were around as long as Office itself, but their marketshare declined over the years.

I'm not big on office suites, though I buy it anyway, but most of those others are even worse than Office itself, and iwork simply isn't a competitor.

If MS comes out with software for the iPhone/iTouch, then it would have to compete. If it wasn't good, the reviews would say so, and it wouldn't sell. This is a new platform, and MS has little, if no advantage on it. Other programs can interface to MS's software at least as well as MS itself. For many years, software for Palm was much better working with MS's software than MSs own software was. Perhaps the same will be true here. We'll see.
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post #53 of 68
3/26/08 at 10:58am
Quote:
Originally Posted by wbrasington View Post

MicroSoft is famous for F.U.D., can you provide any information other than YouTube jokes.... that MicroSoft has an effort in lauching a phone and that it is a product "they consider to be very important"?

I can't, so I'm interested in your source.....

How about MS itself?

This isn't a guess. You might be familiar with Windows Mobile?
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post #54 of 68
3/26/08 at 7:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by nadyne View Post

We're definitely aware of the responses that we've had, both good and bad. We've already released an update (12.0.1) to fix some of the issues that our users reported, which has improved stability and performance across the suite. As we did with Office 2004, we plan to release updates that improve the experience for our users as we become aware of new issues, so keep your eyes open for those.

MacTech magazine has been doing benchmarking of our apps, and their tests show that Office 2008 generally performs better than Office 2004. The full article is in their March issue, but you can read their preview of it online here:
http://www.mactech.com/articles/mact...2008Benchmark/

Regards,
Nadyne.

--
Nadyne Mielke | user experience researcher
Microsoft Corporation | Macintosh Business Unit
http://blogs.msdn.com/nadyne/

I for one think Office 2008 is a nice upgrade from Office 2004. There are bugs, but overall I think the MacBu did a nice job especially with Word. There aren't a lot of new features, but the refinments are apprecaited. It is disappointing, however, that Microsoft dropped Macros support in Office 2008. Compatibility is the Suite's strongest selling feature. Moreover, Microsoft should have released the new format convertors for the older version of Office because this again makes the Suite less useful if people using different versions can't comunicate with one another. It makes me start relying on PDFs.

Truthfull, however, this is one of the few times in Microsoft's history that I like the Window's version slightely better then the Mac version. That is primarly because of the Ribbon interface on the Window's version. I also wish Microosft would incorporate some the Mac OS resources, like Apple's build in dictionaries.
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post #55 of 68
3/26/08 at 8:07pm
I like the new version of Office, but some Suite's like Word Perfect were around longer and in many ways are better. However, Microsoft leverages its power in the OS market to sell it's other products, like Word. For instance, buy this Windows based PC, and you can get Office at a substantial savings. It can afford to lower its margins on products like Office because it makes so much off Windows. Superior products can't compete on price because they don't often have other income sources to rely on. In addition, for most companies the best product means the one that gets the job done at the lowest price.

Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

Well, I know that you are making *joke* of sorts, but I would have to disagree anyway. If Office was THAT bad, it wouldn't be used. There are plenty of other office suites for PC's, and a number for Macs as well. none of them has made much of a dent. And some of them were around as long as Office itself, but their marketshare declined over the years.

I'm not big on office suites, though I buy it anyway, but most of those others are even worse than Office itself, and iwork simply isn't a competitor.

If MS comes out with software for the iPhone/iTouch, then it would have to compete. If it wasn't good, the reviews would say so, and it wouldn't sell. This is a new platform, and MS has little, if no advantage on it. Other programs can interface to MS's software at least as well as MS itself. For many years, software for Palm was much better working with MS's software than MSs own software was. Perhaps the same will be true here. We'll see.
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post #56 of 68
3/26/08 at 8:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by TBell View Post

I like the new version of Office, but some Suite's like Word Perfect were around longer and in many ways are better. However, Microsoft leverages its power in the OS market to sell it's other products, like Word. For instance, buy this Windows based PC, and you can get Office at a substantial savings. It can afford to lower its margins on products like Office because it makes so much off Windows. Superior products can't compete on price because they don't often have other income sources to rely on. In addition, for most companies the best product means the one that gets the job done at the lowest price.

Both the wordperfect and Lotus suites were somewhat better early on, but not so true today. Open Office, and the Sun suite that gave birth to it, StarOffice, aren't doing well.

All other office suites are far cheaper than MS Office. MS is very definitely not selling this at a discount relative to the other suites, esp. the free ones. The prices of the other suites are closer to $100 than the $400 that MS charges. All companies will discount if a manufacturer is willing to bundle the software, MS isn't unique there.

MS has more of a monopoly in Office than it does with its OS. This is well known, and has been commented on many times in the mags and sites. This is because not only do PC users buy it, but Mac users do as well. Linux doesn't matter because its marketshare is so very small so far.
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post #57 of 68
3/26/08 at 9:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

If Office was THAT bad, it wouldn't be used. There are plenty of other office suites for PC's, and a number for Macs as well. none of them has made much of a dent.

It is THAT bad. People are just use to it that's all. Office sucks. Look at Windows, are you saying that Windows has 95% market share because it's better? Yes, there are no other office suites for PCs because MS killed them with the monopoly they have (had). That IS the reason.

Quote:
If MS comes out with software for the iPhone/iTouch, then it would have to compete. If it wasn't good, the reviews would say so, and it wouldn't sell. This is a new platform, and MS has little, if no advantage on it.

Damn straight this is a different platform. However, however... if MS does come out with office for the iPhone, they have will a leg up for the simple reason that people will gravitate to it. It's what they use!
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post #58 of 68
3/26/08 at 9:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by iPeon View Post

It is THAT bad. People are just use to it that's all. Office sucks. Look at Windows, are you saying that Windows has 95% market share because it's better? Yes, there are no other office suites for PCs because MS killed them with the monopoly they have (had). That IS the reason.

You're one of those who will diss an MS product just because it is an MS product.

Office isn't perfect, what is?

But, no matter what, it wouldn't have 95% marketshare if business didn't like it, no matter what you may think.

There were other office suites, and they all had a chance. Office wasn't required with the computer as the OS is.

You're just giving a knee jerk response.

Quote:
Damn straight this is a different platform. However, however... if MS does come out with office for the iPhone, they have will a leg up for the simple reason that people will gravitate to it. It's what they use!

No one is suggesting Office for the iPhone. That is so ridiculous, it's hardly worth responding to.

Look at what's available on the other mobile phones and PDA's from MS. That's what we will see, plus TellMe, assuming Ballmer allows them to come out with this at all.
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post #59 of 68
3/26/08 at 9:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by iPeon View Post

It is THAT bad. People are just use to it that's all. Office sucks. Look at Windows, are you saying that Windows has 95% market share because it's better? Yes, there are no other office suites for PCs because MS killed them with the monopoly they have (had). That IS the reason.

There are other office suites. Corel and Lotus office suites are still maintained and still available. I think they both made big blunders, I don't remember what Lotus did wrong, but Corel rested on its laurels for too long.

There's Open Office. Despite being free, it's pretty hard to convince people to use it. It's actually not that bad if it weren't for about three somewhat irritating things that it does.
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post #60 of 68
3/27/08 at 5:29am
I would buy voice recognition from anyone.... I hope MicroSoft goes forward... It seems Apple is not listening on this solution so I think it is a good idea to get it wherever it is available. I view the iPhone as a computer I purchased and like other computers, I add applications which help my goals.

While I am a big supporter of things Apple, the iPhone needs more native apps to be business helpful and currently it is not. I like the phone but it has work to do.
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post #61 of 68
3/27/08 at 11:59am
Quote:
Originally Posted by tutumiles1 View Post

I would buy voice recognition from anyone.... I hope MicroSoft goes forward... It seems Apple is not listening on this solution so I think it is a good idea to get it wherever it is available. I view the iPhone as a computer I purchased and like other computers, I add applications which help my goals.

While I am a big supporter of things Apple, the iPhone needs more native apps to be business helpful and currently it is not. I like the phone but it has work to do.

I believe that there's already an app to do this, but it requires a Jailbroken phone.

It's possible that there will be several apps around, assuming that this isn't forbidden by the terms of the SDK.
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post #62 of 68
3/27/08 at 2:55pm
Well, to sell iPhone in China/Taiwan/HongKong, handwriting is a must-have. Without it, it's very hard to penetrate in the business circle.

Unfortunately the iPhone SDK is so restrictive, it's very hard for a third party company, like ours, to port handwriting apps to iPhone.

Does anyone know Apple's plan for handwriting recognition?

dp


Quote:
Originally Posted by mrjoec123 View Post

Using a stylus isn't going to work at all, since the iphone's screen requires the touch of a human body part. Tapping the screen with a plastic or metal object would produce nothing.

Handwriting recognition just isn't going to happen. Voice recognition is far more likely and practical for this sort of device. But even that has a long way to go.
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post #63 of 68
3/27/08 at 3:00pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dpdeng View Post

Well, to sell iPhone in China/Taiwan/HongKong, handwriting is a must-have. Without it, it's very hard to penetrate in the business circle.

Unfortunately the iPhone SDK is so restrictive, it's very hard for a third party company, like ours, to port handwriting apps to iPhone.

Does anyone know Apple's plan for handwriting recognition?

dp

Apple has had software for this purpose for years. It's called Ink.

http://developer.apple.com/documenta...section_3.html
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post #64 of 68
3/27/08 at 6:45pm
It is only working in Mac, and I don't think it's for Asian languages. Does it work on iPhone？ Is there any info about handwriting on iPhone?

Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

Apple has had software for this purpose for years. It's called Ink.

http://developer.apple.com/documenta...section_3.html
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post #65 of 68
3/27/08 at 10:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dpdeng View Post

It is only working in Mac, and I don't think it's for Asian languages. Does it work on iPhone？ Is there any info about handwriting on iPhone?

I don't know what Apple's plans are with this. But, it's there. Perhaps it's buried in the iPhone OS.

EDIT:

Well, I just went to the front page of AI, and guess what I found?

This should answer your questions:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...o_updates.html
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post #66 of 68
3/28/08 at 10:45am
Thank you for your info. It looks like that they are going in that direction.

BTW, our company Penpower has been marketing our handwriting recognition software on Mac from Mac OS 8, 9 to Mac OS X. We focus on Chinese/Japanese/Korean handwriting recognition.

dp


Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

I don't know what Apple's plans are with this. But, it's there. Perhaps it's buried in the iPhone OS.

EDIT:

Well, I just went to the front page of AI, and guess what I found?

This should answer your questions:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...o_updates.html
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post #67 of 68
3/28/08 at 7:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dpdeng View Post

Thank you for your info. It looks like that they are going in that direction.

BTW, our company Penpower has been marketing our handwriting recognition software on Mac from Mac OS 8, 9 to Mac OS X. We focus on Chinese/Japanese/Korean handwriting recognition.

dp

The name is familiar.

Good luck with this. I hope it doesn't put a crimp in your plans. possibly, it might even help, if they add some frameworks and API's, you can use.
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post #68 of 68
2/13/09 at 9:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by MsNly View Post

If it had some form of hand writing recognition, actually that from ANYBODY would be sweet...

Cough Apple Cough

somebody at apple needs to use the time that steve jobs is on hiatus to break into the hidden, buried, welded-shut vault that houses the remains of the newton and sneak the handwriting recognition to the ipod/iphone people (don't laugh! it worked, right around the time it got killed).

While they're in there, have a peek at how 'cut & paste should be done on a mobile device, take a look at apples integrated office package for the newton, global search (find elvis!) and familiarize themselves with the concept of an external keyboard to make serious typing usable.

oh... don't get too excited about the emate labeled devices you'll find. they are NOT apple's netbook prototypes...
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