how important is MS Office for computer shoppers?...because iOS doesn't do MS Office. Or is MS Office a non-issue?
I'd say roughly zero percent. The iPad isn't suffering for lack thereof; it has iWork. The Surface isn't succeeding (by anyone's definition!) because it has Office; it's just terrible.
Let's just say you're completely out of touch with reality.
A laptop without Office would be seriously hindered. That doesn't mean that it's useless or that no one would buy it, but pretending that a laptop that didn't run Office has zero disadvantage is just plain absurd.
Probably one factor is that a number of users are waiting to upgrade to a retina MBP. It represents the greatest leap in laptop tech for Apple since the Intel transition, at least if you use your laptop for anything photography related (including pr0n).
Whereas I didn't really have anything new to conclude in the original article (Atom Z2760 is faster and more power efficient than Tegra 3), there's a lot to talk about here. We already know that Atom is faster than Krait, but from a power standpoint the two SoCs are extremely competitive. At the platform level Intel (at least in the Acer W510) generally leads in power efficiency. Note that this advantage could just as easily be due to display and other power advantages in the W510 itself and not necessarily indicative of an SoC advantage. Looking at the CPU cores themselves, Qualcomm tends to do better but it's unclear how things would change if we could include L2 cache power consumption for Qualcomm as we do for Intel (see page 2 for an explanation). I suspect that Qualcomm does maintain the power advantage here though, even with the L2 cache included.
Keep in mind this is with a 5 year old CPU design from Intel on a last gen process node. And to add insult to injury, they aren't even measuring the power draw of the L2 cache for Qualcomm.
I'd say roughly zero percent. The iPad isn't suffering for lack thereof; it has iWork. The Surface isn't succeeding (by anyone's definition!) because it has Office; it's just terrible.
And if you're talking all iOS devices, that's even more readily apparent. All Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone (is it still phone when phone, or is it just "Windows") 8 devices never took off, despite having access to Office.
I mean, iWork exports to DOC. Even in environments where Office still has a greater presence than iWork, that exporting is apparently all that is needed.
One of my biggest dreams right now is that the DOC format is dead in the first world by January 1, 2020. By extension, all of Microsoft Office. That'll require a push by Apple on two fronts: first into business as a whole and second to make iOS iWork and OS X (XI) iWork have absolute feature parity. They'll need to be identical applications, simply with different UI and UX.
Quote:
Originally Posted by antkm1
That might happen, but I doubt it. Unless Apple can make their current iWork Suite of Apps just as capable as Office Apps, it will still be around for another 7 years or more.
The current complaint i hear A LOT is that iWork is just not as capable as Office. Sure Pages reads and writes to .doc format (i might also mention the current standard, post-Office 2010 is .docx) but iWork Apps often have issues in the translations and compatibilities. I'm going to give iWork a chance to be my home/personal use Apps, but the world of business would never (right now or in the near future) rely 100% on it. Office is a much better Suite of programs than most Mac Users realize. Sure it's highly complex suite of Apps, but they need to be for business to function.
And from what most of the people I know say, it's more like what antkm1 is saying which is that MS Office still affects their buying decisions when it comes to computers...in fact, affects whether they buy a tablet versus a laptop? It's not so much the touch vs non-touch... rather, it's getting an OS that can support MS Office.
I would say that the younger generation is a bit more savvy when it comes to flexibility using iWork/GoogleDocs/Open Office...but for those still in school or in a corporation, MS Word and Excel is a mainstay.
TS: I dream the same dream...but for now, it's more to the tune of Les Miserables.
At some time there will be a tipping point between the capabilities of an Apple Laptop and an Apple Tablet -- for many, if not most, uses.
It has to do with:
raw CPU and GPU power
other hardware capabilities
OS Capabilities
App availability and portability
I/O and UI capabilities
Cloud Services availability
Apple has a desktop OS and a mobile OS that share a lot of common capability (and two-way porting of capabilities). We know we can run iOS (apps and most iOS system capabilities) on OS X using the simulator. I suspect, that somewhere in the labs at Apple, they are running full iOS on desktops and laptops.
The Xcode developer tools and APIs have matured to a point where you could compile an App to run on OS X, then recompile the same source to run on iOS -- and it would run on either system -- UI and Horsepower issues aside. I realize that there are APIs and Frameworks that are not common to both OS X and iOS -- but that is an ever diminishing issue.
This is not to say that OS X and iOS will be combined into a single OS -- rather, each separate OS will be able to run the apps of either OS (to a greater or lesser degree of performance and success.
And from what most of the people I know say, it's more like what antkm1 is saying which is that MS Office still affects their buying decisions when it comes to computers...in fact, affects whether they buy a tablet versus a laptop? It's not so much the touch vs non-touch... rather, it's getting an OS that can support MS Office.
I would say that the younger generation is a bit more savvy when it comes to flexibility using iWork/GoogleDocs/Open Office...but for those still in school or in a corporation, MS Word and Excel is a mainstay.
There is a downside to Office when it comes to a "touch" interface, and that is it's so full of bells and whistles that it becomes nearly impossible to implement. Even Microsoft seems to cede that point on the Surface RT. Word, for example, has grown in complexity to the point where it can nearly perform as a word-processing program. That's a good thing for a sub-set of users that are highly skilled at designing with Word.
The broader set of users want to open whatever they want, read it, edit it, and create much simpler documents. A pdf document serves most of these functions except the last, and iWorks satisfies the bulk of latter.
Apple, on the other hand, seems to be of the mind to keep the iWork apps lean and clean and in balance with the overall iPad experience.
COMPLETE CRAP..... They have NO ACCESS TO APPLE'S INFO, THEREFORE CANNOT REPORT ON APPLE's PERFORMANCE.
LIARS....
That is incorrect.
For example, they could survey sales of Apple resellers and compare last year to this year. Granted, they'd have to extrapolate and assume that the sales at the retailers are representative of Apple's sales as a whole, but that's not a huge stretch - especially given that Apple's resellers include a wide range of organizations including Best Buy, Amazon, etc.
Or, they could have done some kind of sampling process.
Now, it could be argued that without access to Apple's own Apple Store and online sales numbers that these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, but to argue that they're complete crap or that NPD is lying is not a reasonable conclusion.
Let's just say you're completely out of touch with reality.
A laptop without Office would be seriously hindered. That doesn't mean that it's useless or that no one would buy it, but pretending that a laptop that didn't run Office has zero disadvantage is just plain absurd.
Really? Because I've never had Office on any of my Macs at any point and… I get along just fine. So do millions of others. And hundreds of millions of iOS users.
Originally Posted by peter236
If Apple drops prices on the MacBooks, they will dominate the laptop market.
Why would they do that when they're already dominating the laptop market at their current prices? Make less profit for no reason? Why?
Let's just say you're completely out of touch with reality.
A laptop without Office would be seriously hindered. That doesn't mean that it's useless or that no one would buy it, but pretending that a laptop that didn't run Office has zero disadvantage is just plain absurd.
TS was writing about tablets, and is correct. You changed to topic to Laptops, where you are correct. Whether MS Office will remain as dominate as it once did remains to be seen as Enterprise and government's adaption to the iPad and iPhone does not seem to be an issue as they also transition to iWorks.
It's this latter transition that should worry the hell out of MS as it really does undercut the old "Office" mindset going forward.
I'm not going to say it's a sure thing; nothing in tech ever is, but I think Intel's prospects in mobile are a lot better than what people here would have you believe.
Don't underestimate Intel. They have shown that they can be quite ferocious when competition heats up. Just take a look at what happened to AMD.
Another Moron making up numbers, these guys act like they know something that everyone else does not, No one will know the numbers until Apple announces them. These guys are assuming a decline due to other things happening in the market which may or may not apply to Apple, however, Apple has continue to grow in a down or declining market.
Apple MUST introduce touch screens to ALL their laptops. As an avid iPad user, I am constantly swiping up and down the screen on my MacBook Air 13" after using my iPad. It is the most intuitive and speedy way to scroll up and down a web page or document, and pinch to zoom is the most intuitive manner in which to, well, zoom in or out or or scale an item. (Grafio on iOS uses pinch to zoom to scale objects - and once you have tried it, there is no going back to slower less precise methods.)
Consumers are going to get used to touch screens thanks to tablets/phones and want laptops that do the same, as are creative pros like myself. Those who claim touch screens are tiring are wrong, what IS tiring is performing gestures in the air, but that is not the same.
If the 2013 MacBook Airs don't do touch, their sales will fall as people migrate to increasingly powerful Android or Windows transportables, where apps will appear in parallel with the increased sales rendering Apple's current value proposition (superior apps) redundant.
(Sorry if this appears twice, I didn't login before and not sure if prior post was accepted.)
While I disagree with your conclusion that Apple is doomed if they don't do this on your time table, I do think you may be correct as far as general trends are concerned. Eventually, there's going to be a generation of kids that grew up having used touched screens as their primary mode of input. Figuring out what they want over the next 5-10 years will be the challenge. Will it be some kind of tablet or convertible laptop? What will large screen desktops look like? Does the touch input paradigm scale up to 25-inch and larger screens? Multiple monitor workstations? I do think Apple is on to something with their current trend towards larger multi-touch trackpads controlling an onscreen pointer. The future desktop might be something like that: a combination of touch gestures directly manipulating "selected objects" on screen, with a pointer to make selections.
My local Apple store didn't have a single Mac mini or Mac Pro on display over the holiday season. It seemed like that space was used for their express table of iPhones/iPads/iPods. What's even stranger, they don't stock the mini with the Fusion Drive (BTO only from Apple.com). With the supply chain constraints on the iMacs, it probably wouldn't have hurt to at least have other options to show people...
Comments
Let's just say you're completely out of touch with reality.
A laptop without Office would be seriously hindered. That doesn't mean that it's useless or that no one would buy it, but pretending that a laptop that didn't run Office has zero disadvantage is just plain absurd.
If Apple drops prices on the MacBooks, they will dominate the laptop market.
False.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6536/arm-vs-x86-the-real-showdown
Keep in mind this is with a 5 year old CPU design from Intel on a last gen process node. And to add insult to injury, they aren't even measuring the power draw of the L2 cache for Qualcomm.
How did they come up with this number?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
I'd say roughly zero percent. The iPad isn't suffering for lack thereof; it has iWork. The Surface isn't succeeding (by anyone's definition!) because it has Office; it's just terrible.
And if you're talking all iOS devices, that's even more readily apparent. All Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone (is it still phone when phone, or is it just "Windows") 8 devices never took off, despite having access to Office.
I mean, iWork exports to DOC. Even in environments where Office still has a greater presence than iWork, that exporting is apparently all that is needed.
One of my biggest dreams right now is that the DOC format is dead in the first world by January 1, 2020. By extension, all of Microsoft Office. That'll require a push by Apple on two fronts: first into business as a whole and second to make iOS iWork and OS X (XI) iWork have absolute feature parity. They'll need to be identical applications, simply with different UI and UX.
Quote:
Originally Posted by antkm1
That might happen, but I doubt it. Unless Apple can make their current iWork Suite of Apps just as capable as Office Apps, it will still be around for another 7 years or more.
The current complaint i hear A LOT is that iWork is just not as capable as Office. Sure Pages reads and writes to .doc format (i might also mention the current standard, post-Office 2010 is .docx) but iWork Apps often have issues in the translations and compatibilities. I'm going to give iWork a chance to be my home/personal use Apps, but the world of business would never (right now or in the near future) rely 100% on it. Office is a much better Suite of programs than most Mac Users realize. Sure it's highly complex suite of Apps, but they need to be for business to function.
And from what most of the people I know say, it's more like what antkm1 is saying which is that MS Office still affects their buying decisions when it comes to computers...in fact, affects whether they buy a tablet versus a laptop? It's not so much the touch vs non-touch... rather, it's getting an OS that can support MS Office.
I would say that the younger generation is a bit more savvy when it comes to flexibility using iWork/GoogleDocs/Open Office...but for those still in school or in a corporation, MS Word and Excel is a mainstay.
TS: I dream the same dream...but for now, it's more to the tune of Les Miserables.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ifij775
A cheaper, lighter, longer-battery, arm-based notebook would destroy PC sales. Throw in LTE FTW
You've just described the iPad... and yes, it is destroying PC sales...
At some time there will be a tipping point between the capabilities of an Apple Laptop and an Apple Tablet -- for many, if not most, uses.
It has to do with:
raw CPU and GPU power
other hardware capabilities
OS Capabilities
App availability and portability
I/O and UI capabilities
Cloud Services availability
Apple has a desktop OS and a mobile OS that share a lot of common capability (and two-way porting of capabilities). We know we can run iOS (apps and most iOS system capabilities) on OS X using the simulator. I suspect, that somewhere in the labs at Apple, they are running full iOS on desktops and laptops.
The Xcode developer tools and APIs have matured to a point where you could compile an App to run on OS X, then recompile the same source to run on iOS -- and it would run on either system -- UI and Horsepower issues aside. I realize that there are APIs and Frameworks that are not common to both OS X and iOS -- but that is an ever diminishing issue.
This is not to say that OS X and iOS will be combined into a single OS -- rather, each separate OS will be able to run the apps of either OS (to a greater or lesser degree of performance and success.
LIARS....
@majjo I hope you're right
Quote:
Originally Posted by drewys808
And from what most of the people I know say, it's more like what antkm1 is saying which is that MS Office still affects their buying decisions when it comes to computers...in fact, affects whether they buy a tablet versus a laptop? It's not so much the touch vs non-touch... rather, it's getting an OS that can support MS Office.
I would say that the younger generation is a bit more savvy when it comes to flexibility using iWork/GoogleDocs/Open Office...but for those still in school or in a corporation, MS Word and Excel is a mainstay.
There is a downside to Office when it comes to a "touch" interface, and that is it's so full of bells and whistles that it becomes nearly impossible to implement. Even Microsoft seems to cede that point on the Surface RT. Word, for example, has grown in complexity to the point where it can nearly perform as a word-processing program. That's a good thing for a sub-set of users that are highly skilled at designing with Word.
The broader set of users want to open whatever they want, read it, edit it, and create much simpler documents. A pdf document serves most of these functions except the last, and iWorks satisfies the bulk of latter.
Apple, on the other hand, seems to be of the mind to keep the iWork apps lean and clean and in balance with the overall iPad experience.
That is incorrect.
For example, they could survey sales of Apple resellers and compare last year to this year. Granted, they'd have to extrapolate and assume that the sales at the retailers are representative of Apple's sales as a whole, but that's not a huge stretch - especially given that Apple's resellers include a wide range of organizations including Best Buy, Amazon, etc.
Or, they could have done some kind of sampling process.
Now, it could be argued that without access to Apple's own Apple Store and online sales numbers that these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, but to argue that they're complete crap or that NPD is lying is not a reasonable conclusion.
Originally Posted by jragosta
Let's just say you're completely out of touch with reality.
A laptop without Office would be seriously hindered. That doesn't mean that it's useless or that no one would buy it, but pretending that a laptop that didn't run Office has zero disadvantage is just plain absurd.
Really? Because I've never had Office on any of my Macs at any point and… I get along just fine. So do millions of others. And hundreds of millions of iOS users.
Originally Posted by peter236
If Apple drops prices on the MacBooks, they will dominate the laptop market.
Why would they do that when they're already dominating the laptop market at their current prices? Make less profit for no reason? Why?
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
Let's just say you're completely out of touch with reality.
A laptop without Office would be seriously hindered. That doesn't mean that it's useless or that no one would buy it, but pretending that a laptop that didn't run Office has zero disadvantage is just plain absurd.
TS was writing about tablets, and is correct. You changed to topic to Laptops, where you are correct. Whether MS Office will remain as dominate as it once did remains to be seen as Enterprise and government's adaption to the iPad and iPhone does not seem to be an issue as they also transition to iWorks.
It's this latter transition that should worry the hell out of MS as it really does undercut the old "Office" mindset going forward.
I'm not going to say it's a sure thing; nothing in tech ever is, but I think Intel's prospects in mobile are a lot better than what people here would have you believe.
Don't underestimate Intel. They have shown that they can be quite ferocious when competition heats up. Just take a look at what happened to AMD.
In fact Apple sold zero MacBooks during the period in question. Yes! — zero, not a one.
Why? Because the last MacBook (model 7,1) was discontinued in July 2011.
So if you hear that the pundits don't know what they're talking about, you can take that literally.
Another Moron making up numbers, these guys act like they know something that everyone else does not, No one will know the numbers until Apple announces them. These guys are assuming a decline due to other things happening in the market which may or may not apply to Apple, however, Apple has continue to grow in a down or declining market.
While I disagree with your conclusion that Apple is doomed if they don't do this on your time table, I do think you may be correct as far as general trends are concerned. Eventually, there's going to be a generation of kids that grew up having used touched screens as their primary mode of input. Figuring out what they want over the next 5-10 years will be the challenge. Will it be some kind of tablet or convertible laptop? What will large screen desktops look like? Does the touch input paradigm scale up to 25-inch and larger screens? Multiple monitor workstations? I do think Apple is on to something with their current trend towards larger multi-touch trackpads controlling an onscreen pointer. The future desktop might be something like that: a combination of touch gestures directly manipulating "selected objects" on screen, with a pointer to make selections.
My local Apple store didn't have a single Mac mini or Mac Pro on display over the holiday season. It seemed like that space was used for their express table of iPhones/iPads/iPods. What's even stranger, they don't stock the mini with the Fusion Drive (BTO only from Apple.com). With the supply chain constraints on the iMacs, it probably wouldn't have hurt to at least have other options to show people...
Quote:
Originally Posted by winstein2010
Even a two year old can find an Elmo app on an iPad. A two year old toddler would pop all the keys on a laptop/netbook and put them in his mouth.
Hahaha, 2 yo playing on ipad... I bet his eyes will be ruined (nearsighted) by age 5.