Office is THE global standard. Office will be around after Apple is gone. That is a fact!
If by Apple you mean computers then sure. Because by then everyone will be using tablets and Apple will dump all computers and change the company name to i
All kidding aside, the days of proprietary formats is coming to an end. I think that both Office and iWork and their exclusive formats will either have to embrace a new format as a universal replacement for THE standard or at least support it as an alternate form. Making the battle not in formats but in UI for working with it. Not unlike how we moved past HTML features that only worked in Netscape or Internet Explorer for common forms.
Yeah, I noticed that too... The last time I looked at Access, it couldn't be ported to the Mac (or any other platform) because all of the database logic was in the drivers, as opposed to the app itself. And those drivers were very specific to the Windows platform.
Complex word documents are not always 100% formatted exactly the same when edited under office 2011 (mac) and office 2003 (windows) and office 2010 (windows) Fonts and other issues often cause formatting differences.
This is one of those cases where corporate standards (e.g. standard fonts) solve more problems than they create.
Since most of their products have lower quality than similar offerings (the OS, office for "light" users, etc) and some people try to force others to use them, they should be free, right?
Or, since using windows is a pain compared to OSX, they should pay me to use it, right?
Windows 7 and 8 have worked out pretty well for me. Granted Microsoft have had it's missteps, but apple's record isn't exactly spotless either, less we forget about OS9 and the early days of OSX and the spinning beachball of death.
How is office bad for 'lite' users? At $10, why would it even matter?
I expected more from an apple website. A lot of people still use office.
For the $100 a year you get 60 minutes a month of skype credits, 5 copies of office 2013, 20 gigs more space on your skydrive account and the full use of the web versions of all the office software.
If you need multiple copies of office this ends up way cheaper then buying those copies individually.
I wasn't commenting on what was 'best' for Mac or PC users regarding software preference. I was commenting on the erroneous statements being assumed by some that MS is forcing subscription pricing on consumers using Office, which is utterly not the case. And I was providing advice on sourcing multiple news/blog outlets before jumping to inaccurate conclusions. That was all.
I wasn't endorsing or disapproving of Office for any use case.
People at university usually have Windows for free, and that's the only people that i know that update their shitty OS legally. All others go to piratebay.
Office? that's cute. We do not have office for free (looks like the msdna program is much cheaper that way) so everyone that i know who has a recent (2007+) MSoffice suite "bought it" on piratebay. Usually, I do not aprove that behaviour (i do not have pirated software on my mac at all), but it's a great way to "punish" stupid teachers/universities that demand something on proprietary format. It's "their" fault, they are the ones responsible for the culture of piracy that was created.
It's time for them to realize that they can't demand us to use MS sh*t anymore... they just can't.
Thank god that people only ask for pdfs these days, and when we need to work on autocad or visual studio whe get the choice to get everything we need for free.
Give us choice, and we will choose well. But demanding us to pay something (a lot) because the stupid person in question wants docx file? There's no way.
I don't agree with piracy for Office as there are many open source alternatives available for the average user without resorting to stealing it. If you do need Office then buy it, but you don't need every new version unless there is one new feature you can't live without. Docx files have been around for a few versions now and many open source alternatives can save in that format. Look for the legal workarounds else suck it up and purchase. As a student you should get decent discounts on the real stuff anyway.
Help! I can't decide. Should I buy Microsoft Office 365 or just download Open Office and load my documents to iCloud? Hmm. 100 dollars a year for Microsoft and zero for open office. Hmm. Screw Microsoft.
Complex word documents are not always 100% formatted exactly the same when edited under office 2011 (mac) and office 2003 (windows) and office 2010 (windows) Fonts and other issues often cause formatting differences.
This is true, but Office 2011 came so, so close to perfect. It actually made Mac more of a viable platform than it's been.
Yes, fonts are not exactly the same when you go between platforms. But it's close. They really tried hard and put out a damn good product with Office 2011. Also, SP3 just came out for it.
As for Excel and PPt, I haven't had an issue. Just having _real Excel_ on the Mac is a big deal to me. Finally Excel Mac is strong enough to take a beating with large and exotic spreadsheets. So, people in (for example) financial industries can use it, not just the movie editors and photographers of the world.
Prrrraise Microsoft Offi--- well you get the idea.
Being a long-time Mac user, I find MS Office extremely frustrating to use. It's so awkward, counter-intuitive and buggy, I dont' understand how people put up with it. Most of the time I just use Pages and export to .pdf for my co-workers. Life is too short to struggle with bad software.
Paying $100 every year to torture myself with this piece of sh.t seems like a ridiculous proposition. I'd rather give up on Office altogether than subscribe.
What are they smoking in Redmond these days..
"Bad software" is often an excuse for poorly trained users.
Paying $100 a year for basically 5 licenses is not bad proposition. This SKU of Office is comparable to Office Pro, which is in NZ worth equivalent of US$500. It is probably a bit cheaper in US, but still - we are talking about single license. If 5 mates at Uni, for example, split expense, it will cost the $20 a year, which is not much even for a student. Even if you use your retail copy of Office for 6 years before purchasing new one, cumulative expense of Office 365 will be lower than purchasing retail every 2 generations.
If the price and upgrade schedule was right, why would that be a major issue. $20 a year, all updates and upgrades for free sounds pretty good, maybe $30 if you want the Pro version with server etc level features.
At least give folks the option. See what happens.
I really enjoy reading reasonable post here (no sarcasm). So much "righteous" rage and unadulterated hatred around here, usually amongst most vocal people who are first of accusing others of "iHating".
The whole fanboysm is really sad. We are all biased toward something, but there is bias, and then there is almost-religious extremism which shouldn't really exist in environments like this one...
Balmer is a very funny guy.... "with all the full-featured Office applications people know and love"... all the overly complicated, user unfriendly feature creep bloatware that people have come to hate...
Office is THE global standard. Office will be around after Apple is gone. That is a fact!
The comments are self-deserved as consumers are tired of paying for buggy, bloated, counter-intuitive, overly complicated software from MS. It is the global standard, yes. But it is still a POS! I just did a PPT on my mac but had to port it to a windows machine for a presentation to a group of about 50 people and in doing so it fk'd up the whole format by replacing the font and the two column set up. How F'n stupid do their developers have to be to not have 100% compatibility between the two versions? Give us a break. They are the default standard based on their proven anti-competitive behavior. Just look at the recent efforts in the EU to have open source formats for government use and MSFT comes in and FK's up the efforts by throwing a wrench in the works and paying small countries on the committee to support them as they have equal votes on the standards committee. They are as corrupt and unethical as ever.
Free free free.. The fact that you have "buy" software on piratebay proves you still use this software and if you use something that you did not make yourself it probably belongs to someone else. Justifying theft is lame. Sure M$ Office is more than most people can use and priced to high for today's market but there are plenty of other options out there and many are open source and "free". A fair amount of labor and skill goes into building software and those that create it should be compensated for their efforts. Try working for "free" and see how well that works out for you. If you want to complain about something notice how M$ and Adobe are moving to a subscription based business now. The days of buying an app once and using it until you decided to invest more money into it for an upgrade may soon be over. That to me is an alarming change in the tech business and no doubt it was a response to all of you that "buy" at pirate bay.
Companies do force you to use MS software. Try justifying to your boss that you broke the Excel sheet/Docx formatting because "Libreoffice". And small companies don't actually pay for your software. Sometimes, you even buy your own hardware...
Comments
If by Apple you mean computers then sure. Because by then everyone will be using tablets and Apple will dump all computers and change the company name to i
All kidding aside, the days of proprietary formats is coming to an end. I think that both Office and iWork and their exclusive formats will either have to embrace a new format as a universal replacement for THE standard or at least support it as an alternate form. Making the battle not in formats but in UI for working with it. Not unlike how we moved past HTML features that only worked in Netscape or Internet Explorer for common forms.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sedicivalvole
So this means Access is finally on the Mac?
Yeah, I noticed that too... The last time I looked at Access, it couldn't be ported to the Mac (or any other platform) because all of the database logic was in the drivers, as opposed to the app itself. And those drivers were very specific to the Windows platform.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Right_said_fred
Complex word documents are not always 100% formatted exactly the same when edited under office 2011 (mac) and office 2003 (windows) and office 2010 (windows) Fonts and other issues often cause formatting differences.
This is one of those cases where corporate standards (e.g. standard fonts) solve more problems than they create.
Windows 7 and 8 have worked out pretty well for me. Granted Microsoft have had it's missteps, but apple's record isn't exactly spotless either, less we forget about OS9 and the early days of OSX and the spinning beachball of death.
How is office bad for 'lite' users? At $10, why would it even matter?
For the $100 a year you get 60 minutes a month of skype credits, 5 copies of office 2013, 20 gigs more space on your skydrive account and the full use of the web versions of all the office software.
If you need multiple copies of office this ends up way cheaper then buying those copies individually.
Ok, sorry.
I don't agree with piracy for Office as there are many open source alternatives available for the average user without resorting to stealing it. If you do need Office then buy it, but you don't need every new version unless there is one new feature you can't live without. Docx files have been around for a few versions now and many open source alternatives can save in that format. Look for the legal workarounds else suck it up and purchase. As a student you should get decent discounts on the real stuff anyway.
Help! I can't decide. Should I buy Microsoft Office 365 or just download Open Office and load my documents to iCloud? Hmm. 100 dollars a year for Microsoft and zero for open office. Hmm. Screw Microsoft.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Right_said_fred
Complex word documents are not always 100% formatted exactly the same when edited under office 2011 (mac) and office 2003 (windows) and office 2010 (windows) Fonts and other issues often cause formatting differences.
This is true, but Office 2011 came so, so close to perfect. It actually made Mac more of a viable platform than it's been.
Yes, fonts are not exactly the same when you go between platforms. But it's close. They really tried hard and put out a damn good product with Office 2011. Also, SP3 just came out for it.
As for Excel and PPt, I haven't had an issue. Just having _real Excel_ on the Mac is a big deal to me. Finally Excel Mac is strong enough to take a beating with large and exotic spreadsheets. So, people in (for example) financial industries can use it, not just the movie editors and photographers of the world.
Prrrraise Microsoft Offi--- well you get the idea.
"Bad software" is often an excuse for poorly trained users.
Paying $100 a year for basically 5 licenses is not bad proposition. This SKU of Office is comparable to Office Pro, which is in NZ worth equivalent of US$500. It is probably a bit cheaper in US, but still - we are talking about single license. If 5 mates at Uni, for example, split expense, it will cost the $20 a year, which is not much even for a student. Even if you use your retail copy of Office for 6 years before purchasing new one, cumulative expense of Office 365 will be lower than purchasing retail every 2 generations.
I really enjoy reading reasonable post here (no sarcasm). So much "righteous" rage and unadulterated hatred around here, usually amongst most vocal people who are first of accusing others of "iHating".
The whole fanboysm is really sad. We are all biased toward something, but there is bias, and then there is almost-religious extremism which shouldn't really exist in environments like this one...
Balmer is a very funny guy.... "with all the full-featured Office applications people know and love"... all the overly complicated, user unfriendly feature creep bloatware that people have come to hate...
Quote:
Originally Posted by bwik
I don't understand the comments against Office.
Office is THE global standard. Office will be around after Apple is gone. That is a fact!
The comments are self-deserved as consumers are tired of paying for buggy, bloated, counter-intuitive, overly complicated software from MS. It is the global standard, yes. But it is still a POS! I just did a PPT on my mac but had to port it to a windows machine for a presentation to a group of about 50 people and in doing so it fk'd up the whole format by replacing the font and the two column set up. How F'n stupid do their developers have to be to not have 100% compatibility between the two versions? Give us a break. They are the default standard based on their proven anti-competitive behavior. Just look at the recent efforts in the EU to have open source formats for government use and MSFT comes in and FK's up the efforts by throwing a wrench in the works and paying small countries on the committee to support them as they have equal votes on the standards committee. They are as corrupt and unethical as ever.
The $79 for 4 years student edition isn't bad.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kerryb
Free free free.. The fact that you have "buy" software on piratebay proves you still use this software and if you use something that you did not make yourself it probably belongs to someone else. Justifying theft is lame. Sure M$ Office is more than most people can use and priced to high for today's market but there are plenty of other options out there and many are open source and "free". A fair amount of labor and skill goes into building software and those that create it should be compensated for their efforts. Try working for "free" and see how well that works out for you. If you want to complain about something notice how M$ and Adobe are moving to a subscription based business now. The days of buying an app once and using it until you decided to invest more money into it for an upgrade may soon be over. That to me is an alarming change in the tech business and no doubt it was a response to all of you that "buy" at pirate bay.
Companies do force you to use MS software. Try justifying to your boss that you broke the Excel sheet/Docx formatting because "Libreoffice". And small companies don't actually pay for your software. Sometimes, you even buy your own hardware...