Excellent point! I hadn't even considered that! So, it isn't only Touch UI issues and missing features like maros -- inaccessable OS features like the File System, Document Sharing, etc. could be insurmountable hurdles to successful implementation on iDevices and possibly Android devices.
There's an issue that I keep bringing up in various sites that is mostly being ignored.
The Desktop for Win 8 isn't that much different from the Desktop in Win 7, or anything before, other than for the flattening (and amazingly boring, and cheap looking) of all UI elements in Win 8. Otherwise, except for the removal of the start button to the MUI, it's pretty much the same.
Now, for those who used them, or just remember what was written about them, those 13-15.4" convertables that were being sold as Windows tablets for all those years weren't very popular because of three things. One was the price, as they were expensive. More than a standard laptop. Two was because they were big and heavy. Hard to use a "tablet" that weighs 3.5-7 pounds on your arm.
And three was the real biggie! It's almost Impossible to use windows, and its software, with a stylus on a "small" 13-15.4" screen. Note those sizes.
So now what have they come up with? 10.6-11.6" screens! Hey! How are these going to be easier to use? Well, they obviously won't be. So every "tablet" will either come with a keyboard, or will have one available from the manufacturer. You pretty much HAVE to use a keyboard and touchpad with the Desktop. No choice, really. It's almost impossible to go about in any other way.
Anyone here want to use OS X on a 10" screen with your finger, or a stylus? They also need more screen accuracy, to use that stylus with the tiny touch points there are, so a lot of these things will have a resistive layer as well as a capacitive layer. Not because its a great feature the iPad doesn't have, but the extra accuracy of a resistive screen is a requirement.
People will just love all of this, I think.
Yeah... and I can put you into one of these little beauties for just $2,500...
There are ways around this. Office could come as one app, with tappable buttons for the other portions. Besides, what is meant by suites of apps? I have several apps that qualify as suites. You have a main menu, and from that you select which app in the suite you want. You can purchase more apps for the suite as you need.
I'm sure the developer could assign common memory storage for the suite so that figures from a spreadsheet could be used in a word processor or presentation app. Apple chose to not do it that way so that they could sell the suite one at a time. Microsoft may choose differently.
Look up AudioTools for one. That definitely qualifies as a suite.
Yeah, it comes down to "what is a suite?" of course, and depending on how you define it, a "suite" could certainly be fudged into iOS. It would likely not be workable with something as complex as Office is though and would require a rewrite of all the base apps anyway. I am 99% certain that at some point in the process of boiling down all that complexity, that someone would see the simpler, clearer solution of doing separate apps like Apple has instead.
Technically apps can now talk to each other and send things to each other also so the original "ban" on suites of inter-related apps is not quite moot but getting there.
I just don't see Microsoft doing this at all though. It makes no sense for them to make a "proper" touch-enabled Word app for iOS until they can make one for Metro and everything they have shown so far indicates that they are having no luck at all in doing that. As I said, I seriously doubt they have the talent to make a "post-PC" Office at all. Their phone software is capable, and their existing iOS apps are "ok" but there is no excitement there.
Microsoft hasn't made anything (software wise), that would make anyone go "wow" for decades now IMO. They still get the press when they make their announcements, but it's just been one PoS after another since almost Windows XP days.
I agree!
I guess it comes down to this:
Will the Windows RT tablet have enough appeal to wedge MS Office (and other apps?) into the real tablet, post-PC world.
Will the Windows 8 Surface have enough appeal sell a pseudo-tablet as an alternative to a Windows 8 Laptop.
Will Window 8 have enough appeal to replace Windows 7 on desktop and laptop PCs?
This is great news. I will be buy Office for iPad the day it comes out. The Apple office apps are good, especially Keynote & Pages, but Numbers is just not good enough for a lot of people. It's a very simplified version of Excel. I think that this is a pretty big deal & will result in a lot of sales for Microsoft. What company that is using iPads wouldn't equip their sales people (or whoever they are giving the iPads to) with mobile versions of office? This will be great for Microsoft on the softwre side & great for Apple on the hardware side.
I saw Excel running on a Samscum tablet and it was still relying on drop-down menus pretty heavily. I suspect that MS Office will be a better viewer of documents than a way of creating them because MS still has got a keyboard stuck crosswise in their brains. Also, when you touch a cell it opens for you to edit it... however it remains at the size it was in the screen view... not enlarging for editing. Therefore the operator had to poke at the tiny image several times to hit it in the right place to edit. I was shocked at the number of touches it took to get to a level of choices to accomplish most things.
If this rumor turns out to actually be true, Microsoft's tablet and phone sales are DOA. The only possible way they can get a foothold in the tablet market at this point is to leverage Office as a unique "advantage" on the platform. It's not a guaranty or success, but it's really their only chance right now. Throwing that away by producing versions for other mobile platforms, would be giving up the fight for Win 8 tablets and phones before it even starts.
They have had various mobile office suites tied to their mobile OS's for around a decade, they use it as a differentiator...
...it hasn't really worked, the results speak for themselves.
They had no choice.. LibreOffice is coming to IOS, too...
More precisely ...
LibreOffice, the project forked from OpenOffice.org, is moving into the modern era with developers working on versions that run in Web browsers and on iOS and Android devices.
The Document Foundation announced the moves today at the LibreOffice Conference, but the work isn't available yet for ordinary folks to try.
"These are not products available to end users, but advanced development projects which will become products sometimes in late 2012 or early 2013," the foundation said today.
Still, the work shows signs that the project, which never seriously threatened the strength ofMicrosoft Office, is working to remain modern in a computing industry no longer dominated just by personal computers.
The LibreOffice Online prototype uses the GTK+ software framework, HTML's new Canvas interface for 2D graphics, and the Web Socket interface for high-speed communications between a browser and a server. Michael Meeks of the Suse Linux project is leading the project, the foundation said.
Another Suse programmer, Tor Lillqvist, is working on versions for Android and iOS tablets with the hope that the software will arrive on smaller devices.
"The user interface work has yet to start in earnest but the bulk of the code is compiling," the foundation said of the work.
The foundation also announced that several French government agencies are switching 500,000 computers, mostly Windows machines, from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice. "This increases the Windows installed base of LibreOffice by 5 percent in a single move," the foundation said.
OpenOffice was an open-source Sun Microsystems project that hung in limbo for months after the Oracle acquisition. Some programmers, frustrated with the situation, struck off on their own with a new variation. Afterward, though, Oracle handed the OpenOffice.org project over to the Apache Software Foundation, a respected open-source oversight body, with the result being that programming, marketing, support, and other work is divided among two separate but similar projects.
LibreOffice, the project forked from OpenOffice.org, is moving into the modern era with developers working on versions that run in Web browsers and on iOS and Android devices.
The Document Foundation announced the moves today at the LibreOffice Conference, but the work isn't available yet for ordinary folks to try.
"These are not products available to end users, but advanced development projects which will become products sometimes in late 2012 or early 2013," the foundation said today.
Still, the work shows signs that the project, which never seriously threatened the strength ofMicrosoft Office, is working to remain modern in a computing industry no longer dominated just by personal computers.
The LibreOffice Online prototype uses the GTK+ software framework, HTML's new Canvas interface for 2D graphics, and the Web Socket interface for high-speed communications between a browser and a server. Michael Meeks of the Suse Linux project is leading the project, the foundation said.
Another Suse programmer, Tor Lillqvist, is working on versions for Android and iOS tablets with the hope that the software will arrive on smaller devices.
"The user interface work has yet to start in earnest but the bulk of the code is compiling," the foundation said of the work.
The foundation also announced that several French government agencies are switching 500,000 computers, mostly Windows machines, from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice. "This increases the Windows installed base of LibreOffice by 5 percent in a single move," the foundation said.
OpenOffice was an open-source Sun Microsystems project that hung in limbo for months after the Oracle acquisition. Some programmers, frustrated with the situation, struck off on their own with a new variation. Afterward, though, Oracle handed the OpenOffice.org project over to the Apache Software Foundation, a respected open-source oversight body, with the result being that programming, marketing, support, and other work is divided among two separate but similar projects.
That might meet the same fate as VLC on iOS, some "advocate" will whine about the source code not being available in order to meet licensing requirements and it will be withdrawn.
Another thing about open office was it's heavy reliance on Java, a known security risk.
... LibreOffice, the project forked from OpenOffice.org, is moving into the modern era with developers working on versions that run ... on iOS and Android devices. ...
This will basically never happen.
It has about as much chance of happening as desktop Linux has of "conquering the desktop" which also never happened after 15 years or so of it being "just around the corner," or "happening next year."
Yeah, it comes down to "what is a suite?" of course, and depending on how you define it, a "suite" could certainly be fudged into iOS. It would likely not be workable with something as complex as Office is though and would require a rewrite of all the base apps anyway. I am 99% certain that at some point in the process of boiling down all that complexity, that someone would see the simpler, clearer solution of doing separate apps like Apple has instead.
Technically apps can now talk to each other and send things to each other also so the original "ban" on suites of inter-related apps is not quite moot but getting there.
I just don't see Microsoft doing this at all though. It makes no sense for them to make a "proper" touch-enabled Word app for iOS until they can make one for Metro and everything they have shown so far indicates that they are having no luck at all in doing that. Their phone software is capable, and their existing iOS apps are "ok" but there is no excitement there. As I said, I seriously doubt they have the talent to make a "post-PC" Office at all.
Microsoft hasn't made anything (software wise), that would make anyone go "wow" for decades now IMO. They still get the press when they make their announcements, but it's just been one PoS after another since almost Windows XP days.
Well, saying that Microsoft can or can't do something is one thing. What they may come up with, assuming they do, will be something else. I think Microsoft is really torn over this. They obviously want to sell as many copies of Office as possible. But they do t want to harm Windows sales either. Even selling Office for the Mac hurts them in the long term. But they pretty much have to.
I just read that PC sales for 2012 will be down 1.1%, according to iSupply. They, and others, such as Gartner, are attributing that drop (as opposed to an earlier expected rise of 4.4%, the first drop in 11 years) mostly to sales of the iPad. I also read that it's expected that Apple will sell 350 million iPads in 2015. That could equal, or exceed, the number of PC's (including Macs) sold that year. I don't know if that estimate includes sales of an 8" model, notice for which we were expecting, and so far, at the time of this writing, has not been announced.
So that would be a lot of lost Office sales.
But Office for the iPad would also likely cost much less than their other SKU's. so it could also take a lot of sales away from the much more expensive versions. This wouldn't be good for Microsoft.
More Office sales for the iPad would also mean less PC sales, in addition to making life very difficult for Win 8 based tablets.
So there are a lot of competing interests Microsoft has to balance. What they're doing now has got to be the most difficult move the company ever had to make. And the results are also the least certain of anything they had to decide before. It is truly a bet the company move.
I am sure you remember when Word and Excel were introduced on the Original Mac in the mid 1980s -- each app came on a 400 KB (yes, folks that is 400 thousand Bytes) microfloppy disk
Both were well-designed, powerful and efficient apps that set the standard for their time...
Excel, especially, in the hands of an expert, could make the computer sing (and dance)... In those days it was pretty easy to become an expert!
I no-longer use either Word or Excel -- nor do I have dealings with the "power users" who exploit the more esoteric features of these apps.
I suspect that your 80-20 assessment is correct! I guess my questions are:
what real * capabilities has MS added to the basic apps from 1980s?
which of these are capabilities are needed in a Touch Tablet interface?
can they be implemented without destroying the advantages of the Touch Tablet user UX?
* I don't consider nice-to-have feature creep and half/full-screen toolbars as capabilities.
Your point: that the Mac implementation of Office lacked many features of the Windows implementation... but was still an important product -- is a valid point!
It is also likely that iWork on the Mac and the iPad can satisfy many of the needs of Mac Office users.
And, Apple could/should identify and implement the most-needed features in iWork for OS X and iOS. I suspect that Apple has already done this and was/is holding off to "encourage" MS to improve the Mac versions and release iPad versions.
Finally, do you think that MS can provide workable-enough versions of these apps on the iPad... by March 2013?
From what I read, and have seen, I do not think they can -- it may already be too late!
I remember the original versions. I have them up in my attic, in my personal computer museum.
Companies have no choice but to give us feature cheap. Think about it. If they didn't, they would go out of business. One reason why Microsoft started software subscriptions, which other companies have copied, such as Adobe now, was because companies didn't need all those new features, and so weren't buying all the upgrades. With subs, they force upgrades. Businesses hated it when it first came out. Now they are resigned to it.
So, one way or the other, we pay.
But businesses buy Office in a very high volume. A lot of those uses require some features that Apple either hasn't bothered to implement, or hasn't implemented in a compatible fashion. Apple hasn't seen fit to give a real upgrade to iWork components for some time. Why? They own the business tablet market right now, and could make the grip a lot tighter if they came out with a suite that was more robust. I don't know their thinking here, but they really should get cracking on this.
It's possible that the business unit of Microsoft has looked at Office for the iPad for some time. There's really no way to know. But politics in Microsoft is stronger than their good sense, oftentimes.
How about Microsoft goes all the way and splits the company apart to unlock value for the shareholders?
-Tablet/phone/PC OS
-Server OS/SQL Server/Sharepoint (or maybe server OS with the first company)
-Bing
-Xbox
-Office
Not quite to that extent, but the financial industry has spoken about it for years. The government almost got to the point of breaking it up, but the Bush administration stopped the case, after Bush promised, during the campaign, to keep hands off.
<p style="margin-top:10px;border:0px;font-size:15px;font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;line-height:20px;">LibreOffice, the project forked from OpenOffice.org, is moving into the modern era with developers working on versions that run in Web browsers and on iOS and <a href="http://www.cnet.com/android-atlas/" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-size:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(41,100,191);" target="_blank">Android</a>
devices.</p>
<p style="margin-top:10px;border:0px;font-size:15px;font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;line-height:20px;">The Document Foundation announced the moves today at the LibreOffice Conference, but the work isn't available yet for ordinary folks to try.</p>
<p style="margin-top:10px;border:0px;font-size:15px;font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;line-height:20px;">"These are not products available to end users, but advanced development projects which will become products sometimes in late 2012 or early 2013," the foundation said today.</p>
<p style="margin-top:10px;border:0px;font-size:15px;font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;line-height:20px;">Still, the work shows signs that the project, which never seriously threatened the strength of<a href="http://www.cnet.com/microsoft-office/" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-size:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(41,100,191);" target="_blank">Microsoft Office</a>
, is working to remain modern in a computing industry no longer dominated just by personal computers.</p>
<p style="margin-top:10px;border:0px;font-size:15px;font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;line-height:20px;">The LibreOffice Online prototype uses the GTK+ software framework, HTML's new Canvas interface for 2D graphics, and the Web Socket interface for high-speed communications between a browser and a server. Michael Meeks of the Suse Linux project is leading the project, the foundation said.</p>
<p style="margin-top:10px;border:0px;font-size:15px;font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;line-height:20px;">Another Suse programmer, Tor Lillqvist, is working on versions for Android and iOS <a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-size:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(41,100,191);" target="_blank">tablets</a>
with the hope that the software will arrive on smaller devices.</p>
<p style="margin-top:10px;border:0px;font-size:15px;font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;line-height:20px;">"The user interface work has yet to start in earnest but the bulk of the code is compiling," the foundation said of the work.</p>
<p style="margin-top:10px;border:0px;font-size:15px;font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;line-height:20px;">The foundation also announced that several French government agencies are switching 500,000 computers, mostly Windows machines, from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice. "This increases the Windows installed base of LibreOffice by 5 percent in a single move," the foundation said.</p>
<p style="margin-top:10px;border:0px;font-size:15px;font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;line-height:20px;">OpenOffice was an open-source Sun Microsystems project that hung in limbo for months after the Oracle acquisition. Some programmers, frustrated with the situation, struck off on their own with a new variation. Afterward, though, Oracle handed the OpenOffice.org project over to the Apache Software Foundation, a respected open-source oversight body, with the result being that programming, marketing, support, and other work is divided among two separate but similar projects.</p>
<p style="margin-top:10px;border:0px;font-size:15px;font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;line-height:20px;">Linux sellers including Red Hat, Suse, and Ubuntu have thrown their support behind LibreOffice, for example, but <a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/34638.wss" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-size:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(41,100,191);" target="_blank">IBM decided to contribute to OpenOffice.org</a>
.</p>
Whatever they do with this, it had better look like a great iOS app. If it doesn't, then no matter what it does, no one will care. One reason why OO for the Mac was not successful was because it looked, and worked, like a Microsoft application. That just doesn't fly. It's also one reason why Linux never became successful on the desktop. Microsoft's own Office suite for the Mac looked, and worked better than OO.
I agree. Despite those here who think anything Microsoft is a waste of time, Office really is a pretty important piece of software. But they had better do this soon. March is fine. But a lot of users are finding that they don't need office on their tablets because of the apps that give compatability in some way. If they wait too long, those users will find that maybe they don't need Office at all.
After all, most word processing, spreadsheet work, and presentations can be done with Apple's apps now. Remember the old saying about Office, 80% of the users only use 20% of the features. If Apple, or some other company can get those 20% nailed, then those 80% won't need Office (assuming, of course, that they all need that same 20%). So to cover most people, all it really needs is perhaps 30% of the features.
So Office will be great, but not if they wait too long.
I disagree.
Office perpetuates Microsofts strangulation of openness. You really need to do some research and understand their philosophy.
Its all about control. That is why Office was pushed so hard so that everyone can only exchange .doc and now .docx word files.
This is so wrong.
Unless you are a boring accountant type who needs Excel, there are many alternatives out there for the majority of the people.
I am now Microsoft-free and loving it. If someone wants me to send a .doc or .xls file, I will tell them accept my PDF or get lost.
The Surface "tables" will be the start of the end of Microsoft (and about time).
There will be 2 "tablets", one ARM and one Intel, the later will be heavier and higher specifications.
As I understand it, both will accept input via: touch, mouse, stylus, keyboard (physical/virtual) and touch pad.
How in the heck will this work ? Windows has enough trouble as it is, how will it differentiate from the various input modes ?
How fluent will it be (in the cross over from input modes) ?
To be able to run Office on a tablet efficiently a mouse will be required. So by definition these are not tablets, but miniature Netbooks. Seriously, it even has a kick-stand
and fold away keyboard. IT IS NOT A TABLET.
Come on people, lets stop describing the Surface as a tablet, it not, and if you do, you are simply perpetuating this hoax.
What about Mr & Mrs Consumer, those that are not so tech-savvy, how in the world will they know which one to buy ?
I speculated on a hypothetical situation on a site ages ago, so don't feel like repeating myself, but basically will say this, the average consumer will be hoodwinked to the nth degree and I feel sorry for them. It will be a disaster for everyone.
I'm going to love this, as yet again Microsoft screw up, but this time it will Vista look like a walk in the park. I can't wait.
The Surface "tables" will be the start of the end of Microsoft (and about time).
There will be 2 "tablets", one ARM and one Intel, the later will be heavier and higher specifications.
As I understand it, both will accept input via: touch, mouse, stylus, keyboard (physical/virtual) and touch pad.
How in the heck will this work ? Windows has enough trouble as it is, how will it differentiate from the various input modes ?
How fluent will it be (in the cross over from input modes) ?
To be able to run Office on a tablet efficiently a mouse will be required. So by definition these are not tablets, but miniature Netbooks. Seriously, it even has a kick-stand
and fold away keyboard. IT IS NOT A TABLET.
Come on people, lets stop describing the Surface as a tablet, it not, and if you do, you are simply perpetuating this hoax.
What about Mr & Mrs Consumer, those that are not so tech-savvy, how in the world will they know which one to buy ?
I speculated on a hypothetical situation on a site ages ago, so don't feel like repeating myself, but basically will say this, the average consumer will be hoodwinked to the nth degree and I feel sorry for them. It will be a disaster for everyone.
I'm going to love this, as yet again Microsoft screw up, but this time it will Vista look like a walk in the park. I can't wait.
I disagree.
Office perpetuates Microsofts strangulation of openness. You really need to do some research and understand their philosophy.
Its all about control. That is why Office was pushed so hard so that everyone can only exchange .doc and now .docx word files.
This is so wrong.
Unless you are a boring accountant type who needs Excel, there are many alternatives out there for the majority of the people.
I am now Microsoft-free and loving it. If someone wants me to send a .doc or .xls file, I will tell them accept my PDF or get lost.
I know all about Microsoft. I've been dealing with them back in the late 1970‘s. I even knew these guys back in the mid 1970's. You're being a bit paranoid here. These are computer programs. They have no armies. They aren't taking the world over.
Whatever they do with this, it had better look like a great iOS app. If it doesn't, then no matter what it does, no one will care. One reason why OO for the Mac was not successful was because it looked, and worked, like a Microsoft application. That just doesn't fly. It's also one reason why Linux never became successful on the desktop. Microsoft's own Office suite for the Mac looked, and worked better than OO.
I have been using OpenOffice on my Mac(s), before I moved to Libre Office. the LibreOffice version I have is capable of processing .xlsx, .docx and .pptx files. it is even capable of processing Microsoft VBA code (from .xlsm files ), if the correct option is selected, with minor problems, which I am currently investigating (programming style issues), but I already had anyhow such problems when moving from Windows 98 to XP, when I was still in the Pc world...).
To be totally honest, LibreOffice has a few bugs here and there, but again, not more, not less than the Microsoft Office suite ...
From user interface point of view, it is just as good, and therefore just as bad, as the original Microsoft Office suite, so I do not see this as a counterargument against LibreOffice : it is designed for people, who, for whatever reason DO want a Microsoft Office style, or Microsoft Office compatible (including the User Interface aspects, for the best, and for the worst) suite.
The ones who adapt to Apple products (Pages, Numbers ..) admitedly find a much better interface, but this is another story ...
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum
Excellent point! I hadn't even considered that! So, it isn't only Touch UI issues and missing features like maros -- inaccessable OS features like the File System, Document Sharing, etc. could be insurmountable hurdles to successful implementation on iDevices and possibly Android devices.
There's an issue that I keep bringing up in various sites that is mostly being ignored.
The Desktop for Win 8 isn't that much different from the Desktop in Win 7, or anything before, other than for the flattening (and amazingly boring, and cheap looking) of all UI elements in Win 8. Otherwise, except for the removal of the start button to the MUI, it's pretty much the same.
Now, for those who used them, or just remember what was written about them, those 13-15.4" convertables that were being sold as Windows tablets for all those years weren't very popular because of three things. One was the price, as they were expensive. More than a standard laptop. Two was because they were big and heavy. Hard to use a "tablet" that weighs 3.5-7 pounds on your arm.
And three was the real biggie! It's almost Impossible to use windows, and its software, with a stylus on a "small" 13-15.4" screen. Note those sizes.
So now what have they come up with? 10.6-11.6" screens! Hey! How are these going to be easier to use? Well, they obviously won't be. So every "tablet" will either come with a keyboard, or will have one available from the manufacturer. You pretty much HAVE to use a keyboard and touchpad with the Desktop. No choice, really. It's almost impossible to go about in any other way.
Anyone here want to use OS X on a 10" screen with your finger, or a stylus? They also need more screen accuracy, to use that stylus with the tiny touch points there are, so a lot of these things will have a resistive layer as well as a capacitive layer. Not because its a great feature the iPad doesn't have, but the extra accuracy of a resistive screen is a requirement.
People will just love all of this, I think.
Yeah... and I can put you into one of these little beauties for just $2,500...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
There are ways around this. Office could come as one app, with tappable buttons for the other portions. Besides, what is meant by suites of apps? I have several apps that qualify as suites. You have a main menu, and from that you select which app in the suite you want. You can purchase more apps for the suite as you need.
I'm sure the developer could assign common memory storage for the suite so that figures from a spreadsheet could be used in a word processor or presentation app. Apple chose to not do it that way so that they could sell the suite one at a time. Microsoft may choose differently.
Look up AudioTools for one. That definitely qualifies as a suite.
Yeah, it comes down to "what is a suite?" of course, and depending on how you define it, a "suite" could certainly be fudged into iOS. It would likely not be workable with something as complex as Office is though and would require a rewrite of all the base apps anyway. I am 99% certain that at some point in the process of boiling down all that complexity, that someone would see the simpler, clearer solution of doing separate apps like Apple has instead.
Technically apps can now talk to each other and send things to each other also so the original "ban" on suites of inter-related apps is not quite moot but getting there.
I just don't see Microsoft doing this at all though. It makes no sense for them to make a "proper" touch-enabled Word app for iOS until they can make one for Metro and everything they have shown so far indicates that they are having no luck at all in doing that. As I said, I seriously doubt they have the talent to make a "post-PC" Office at all. Their phone software is capable, and their existing iOS apps are "ok" but there is no excitement there.
Microsoft hasn't made anything (software wise), that would make anyone go "wow" for decades now IMO. They still get the press when they make their announcements, but it's just been one PoS after another since almost Windows XP days.
I agree!
I guess it comes down to this:
Will the Windows RT tablet have enough appeal to wedge MS Office (and other apps?) into the real tablet, post-PC world.
Will the Windows 8 Surface have enough appeal sell a pseudo-tablet as an alternative to a Windows 8 Laptop.
Will Window 8 have enough appeal to replace Windows 7 on desktop and laptop PCs?
Will all of this be DOA?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum
I agree!
I guess it comes down to this:
Will the Windows RT tablet have enough appeal to wedge MS Office (and other apps?) into the real tablet, post-PC world.
Will the Windows 8 Surface have enough appeal sell a pseudo-tablet as an alternative to a Windows 8 Laptop.
Will Window 8 have enough appeal to replace Windows 7 on desktop and laptop PCs?
Will all of this be DOA?
Tune in next week, same Bat-channel, same Bat-time to find out. :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by mkral
This is great news. I will be buy Office for iPad the day it comes out. The Apple office apps are good, especially Keynote & Pages, but Numbers is just not good enough for a lot of people. It's a very simplified version of Excel. I think that this is a pretty big deal & will result in a lot of sales for Microsoft. What company that is using iPads wouldn't equip their sales people (or whoever they are giving the iPads to) with mobile versions of office? This will be great for Microsoft on the softwre side & great for Apple on the hardware side.
I saw Excel running on a Samscum tablet and it was still relying on drop-down menus pretty heavily. I suspect that MS Office will be a better viewer of documents than a way of creating them because MS still has got a keyboard stuck crosswise in their brains. Also, when you touch a cell it opens for you to edit it... however it remains at the size it was in the screen view... not enlarging for editing. Therefore the operator had to poke at the tiny image several times to hit it in the right place to edit. I was shocked at the number of touches it took to get to a level of choices to accomplish most things.
How about Microsoft goes all the way and splits the company apart to unlock value for the shareholders?
-Tablet/phone/PC OS
-Server OS/SQL Server/Sharepoint (or maybe server OS with the first company)
-Bing
-Xbox
-Office
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
Actually, it is impossible for Office to be on iOS. Unless I missed the change, suites of apps are specifically disallowed.
Huh, since when?
I've got both QuickOffice and DocstoGo which are both office suites.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quickoffice-pro/id310723177
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/documents-to-go-premium-office/id317107309
AppBox is also a bundle of apps
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/appbox-pro-swiss-army-knife/id318404385
Quote:
Originally Posted by anonymouse
If this rumor turns out to actually be true, Microsoft's tablet and phone sales are DOA. The only possible way they can get a foothold in the tablet market at this point is to leverage Office as a unique "advantage" on the platform. It's not a guaranty or success, but it's really their only chance right now. Throwing that away by producing versions for other mobile platforms, would be giving up the fight for Win 8 tablets and phones before it even starts.
They have had various mobile office suites tied to their mobile OS's for around a decade, they use it as a differentiator...
...it hasn't really worked, the results speak for themselves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Macky the Macky
Even Microsoft isn't betting that heavy on Office RT with the ARM processor
Rock
Arm with 4G
Intel Atom without 4G
Hard place
Quote:
Originally Posted by umrk_lab
They had no choice.. LibreOffice is coming to IOS, too...
More precisely ...
LibreOffice, the project forked from OpenOffice.org, is moving into the modern era with developers working on versions that run in Web browsers and on iOS and Android devices.
The Document Foundation announced the moves today at the LibreOffice Conference, but the work isn't available yet for ordinary folks to try.
"These are not products available to end users, but advanced development projects which will become products sometimes in late 2012 or early 2013," the foundation said today.
Still, the work shows signs that the project, which never seriously threatened the strength ofMicrosoft Office, is working to remain modern in a computing industry no longer dominated just by personal computers.
The LibreOffice Online prototype uses the GTK+ software framework, HTML's new Canvas interface for 2D graphics, and the Web Socket interface for high-speed communications between a browser and a server. Michael Meeks of the Suse Linux project is leading the project, the foundation said.
Another Suse programmer, Tor Lillqvist, is working on versions for Android and iOS tablets with the hope that the software will arrive on smaller devices.
"The user interface work has yet to start in earnest but the bulk of the code is compiling," the foundation said of the work.
The foundation also announced that several French government agencies are switching 500,000 computers, mostly Windows machines, from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice. "This increases the Windows installed base of LibreOffice by 5 percent in a single move," the foundation said.
OpenOffice was an open-source Sun Microsystems project that hung in limbo for months after the Oracle acquisition. Some programmers, frustrated with the situation, struck off on their own with a new variation. Afterward, though, Oracle handed the OpenOffice.org project over to the Apache Software Foundation, a respected open-source oversight body, with the result being that programming, marketing, support, and other work is divided among two separate but similar projects.
Linux sellers including Red Hat, Suse, and Ubuntu have thrown their support behind LibreOffice, for example, but IBM decided to contribute to OpenOffice.org.
Quote:
Originally Posted by umrk_lab
More precisely ...
LibreOffice, the project forked from OpenOffice.org, is moving into the modern era with developers working on versions that run in Web browsers and on iOS and Android devices.
The Document Foundation announced the moves today at the LibreOffice Conference, but the work isn't available yet for ordinary folks to try.
"These are not products available to end users, but advanced development projects which will become products sometimes in late 2012 or early 2013," the foundation said today.
Still, the work shows signs that the project, which never seriously threatened the strength ofMicrosoft Office, is working to remain modern in a computing industry no longer dominated just by personal computers.
The LibreOffice Online prototype uses the GTK+ software framework, HTML's new Canvas interface for 2D graphics, and the Web Socket interface for high-speed communications between a browser and a server. Michael Meeks of the Suse Linux project is leading the project, the foundation said.
Another Suse programmer, Tor Lillqvist, is working on versions for Android and iOS tablets with the hope that the software will arrive on smaller devices.
"The user interface work has yet to start in earnest but the bulk of the code is compiling," the foundation said of the work.
The foundation also announced that several French government agencies are switching 500,000 computers, mostly Windows machines, from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice. "This increases the Windows installed base of LibreOffice by 5 percent in a single move," the foundation said.
OpenOffice was an open-source Sun Microsystems project that hung in limbo for months after the Oracle acquisition. Some programmers, frustrated with the situation, struck off on their own with a new variation. Afterward, though, Oracle handed the OpenOffice.org project over to the Apache Software Foundation, a respected open-source oversight body, with the result being that programming, marketing, support, and other work is divided among two separate but similar projects.
Linux sellers including Red Hat, Suse, and Ubuntu have thrown their support behind LibreOffice, for example, but IBM decided to contribute to OpenOffice.org.
That might meet the same fate as VLC on iOS, some "advocate" will whine about the source code not being available in order to meet licensing requirements and it will be withdrawn.
Another thing about open office was it's heavy reliance on Java, a known security risk.
Quote:
Originally Posted by umrk_lab
... LibreOffice, the project forked from OpenOffice.org, is moving into the modern era with developers working on versions that run ... on iOS and Android devices. ...
This will basically never happen.
It has about as much chance of happening as desktop Linux has of "conquering the desktop" which also never happened after 15 years or so of it being "just around the corner," or "happening next year."
Well, saying that Microsoft can or can't do something is one thing. What they may come up with, assuming they do, will be something else. I think Microsoft is really torn over this. They obviously want to sell as many copies of Office as possible. But they do t want to harm Windows sales either. Even selling Office for the Mac hurts them in the long term. But they pretty much have to.
I just read that PC sales for 2012 will be down 1.1%, according to iSupply. They, and others, such as Gartner, are attributing that drop (as opposed to an earlier expected rise of 4.4%, the first drop in 11 years) mostly to sales of the iPad. I also read that it's expected that Apple will sell 350 million iPads in 2015. That could equal, or exceed, the number of PC's (including Macs) sold that year. I don't know if that estimate includes sales of an 8" model, notice for which we were expecting, and so far, at the time of this writing, has not been announced.
So that would be a lot of lost Office sales.
But Office for the iPad would also likely cost much less than their other SKU's. so it could also take a lot of sales away from the much more expensive versions. This wouldn't be good for Microsoft.
More Office sales for the iPad would also mean less PC sales, in addition to making life very difficult for Win 8 based tablets.
So there are a lot of competing interests Microsoft has to balance. What they're doing now has got to be the most difficult move the company ever had to make. And the results are also the least certain of anything they had to decide before. It is truly a bet the company move.
I remember the original versions. I have them up in my attic, in my personal computer museum.
Companies have no choice but to give us feature cheap. Think about it. If they didn't, they would go out of business. One reason why Microsoft started software subscriptions, which other companies have copied, such as Adobe now, was because companies didn't need all those new features, and so weren't buying all the upgrades. With subs, they force upgrades. Businesses hated it when it first came out. Now they are resigned to it.
So, one way or the other, we pay.
But businesses buy Office in a very high volume. A lot of those uses require some features that Apple either hasn't bothered to implement, or hasn't implemented in a compatible fashion. Apple hasn't seen fit to give a real upgrade to iWork components for some time. Why? They own the business tablet market right now, and could make the grip a lot tighter if they came out with a suite that was more robust. I don't know their thinking here, but they really should get cracking on this.
It's possible that the business unit of Microsoft has looked at Office for the iPad for some time. There's really no way to know. But politics in Microsoft is stronger than their good sense, oftentimes.
Not quite to that extent, but the financial industry has spoken about it for years. The government almost got to the point of breaking it up, but the Bush administration stopped the case, after Bush promised, during the campaign, to keep hands off.
Whatever they do with this, it had better look like a great iOS app. If it doesn't, then no matter what it does, no one will care. One reason why OO for the Mac was not successful was because it looked, and worked, like a Microsoft application. That just doesn't fly. It's also one reason why Linux never became successful on the desktop. Microsoft's own Office suite for the Mac looked, and worked better than OO.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
I agree. Despite those here who think anything Microsoft is a waste of time, Office really is a pretty important piece of software. But they had better do this soon. March is fine. But a lot of users are finding that they don't need office on their tablets because of the apps that give compatability in some way. If they wait too long, those users will find that maybe they don't need Office at all.
After all, most word processing, spreadsheet work, and presentations can be done with Apple's apps now. Remember the old saying about Office, 80% of the users only use 20% of the features. If Apple, or some other company can get those 20% nailed, then those 80% won't need Office (assuming, of course, that they all need that same 20%). So to cover most people, all it really needs is perhaps 30% of the features.
So Office will be great, but not if they wait too long.
I disagree.
Office perpetuates Microsofts strangulation of openness. You really need to do some research and understand their philosophy.
Its all about control. That is why Office was pushed so hard so that everyone can only exchange .doc and now .docx word files.
This is so wrong.
Unless you are a boring accountant type who needs Excel, there are many alternatives out there for the majority of the people.
I am now Microsoft-free and loving it. If someone wants me to send a .doc or .xls file, I will tell them accept my PDF or get lost.
The Surface "tables" will be the start of the end of Microsoft (and about time).
There will be 2 "tablets", one ARM and one Intel, the later will be heavier and higher specifications.
As I understand it, both will accept input via: touch, mouse, stylus, keyboard (physical/virtual) and touch pad.
How in the heck will this work ? Windows has enough trouble as it is, how will it differentiate from the various input modes ?
How fluent will it be (in the cross over from input modes) ?
To be able to run Office on a tablet efficiently a mouse will be required. So by definition these are not tablets, but miniature Netbooks. Seriously, it even has a kick-stand
and fold away keyboard. IT IS NOT A TABLET.
Come on people, lets stop describing the Surface as a tablet, it not, and if you do, you are simply perpetuating this hoax.
What about Mr & Mrs Consumer, those that are not so tech-savvy, how in the world will they know which one to buy ?
I speculated on a hypothetical situation on a site ages ago, so don't feel like repeating myself, but basically will say this, the average consumer will be hoodwinked to the nth degree and I feel sorry for them. It will be a disaster for everyone.
I'm going to love this, as yet again Microsoft screw up, but this time it will Vista look like a walk in the park. I can't wait.
The world runs on Google, Microsoft and Apple.
I know all about Microsoft. I've been dealing with them back in the late 1970‘s. I even knew these guys back in the mid 1970's. You're being a bit paranoid here. These are computer programs. They have no armies. They aren't taking the world over.
I have been using OpenOffice on my Mac(s), before I moved to Libre Office. the LibreOffice version I have is capable of processing .xlsx, .docx and .pptx files. it is even capable of processing Microsoft VBA code (from .xlsm files ), if the correct option is selected, with minor problems, which I am currently investigating (programming style issues), but I already had anyhow such problems when moving from Windows 98 to XP, when I was still in the Pc world...).
To be totally honest, LibreOffice has a few bugs here and there, but again, not more, not less than the Microsoft Office suite ...
From user interface point of view, it is just as good, and therefore just as bad, as the original Microsoft Office suite, so I do not see this as a counterargument against LibreOffice : it is designed for people, who, for whatever reason DO want a Microsoft Office style, or Microsoft Office compatible (including the User Interface aspects, for the best, and for the worst) suite.
The ones who adapt to Apple products (Pages, Numbers ..) admitedly find a much better interface, but this is another story ...