Why did Microsoft port Office to Apple's iOS iPad before Android?

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  • Reply 181 of 236
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    ws11 wrote: »

    I'm talking about web browsing experience in the benchmarks and real world applications.  

    The majority of those benchmarks carry no weight for the T100.  For example the graphical benchmark focuses on OpenGL ES 2.0 performance, meanwhile the T100 can run software that utilizes DirectX 11, OpenGL ES 3.1, or OpenGL 4.x.  It can play games like Left 4 Dead 2 or Resident Evil 5.  <span style="line-height:1.4em;">On the T100 you can run Netflix on one half of the screen and an HD Youtube video on the other half.  Again, it can also utilize full CAD applications like Inventor.  All of these things are not possible on the iPad.</span>

    <span style="line-height:1.4em;">Real world performance and applications >> benchmarks</span>

    What kind of market is there for someone buying a $300 netbook to play Resident Evil 5 or playing both a YouTube and Netflx video simultaneously? I can't imagine such a customer.
  • Reply 182 of 236
    ws11 wrote: »
    solipsismx wrote: »
    1) I wouldn't use the word embarrassing — as Asus does tend to make good products and does seem to care about display quality and battery life, unlike most of their WinPC competitor — but it's certainly not complementary when compared to the "toy" known as the iPad.


    2) You say it's a negligible amount but it's not. Especially when you consider the differences in the OSes. The only benchmarks it seems to best the iPad Air is in triangles per second, which were significantly reduced over the iPad 4 due to a GPU change, but when you consider the iPad has a 2056x1536 display and the Transformer T100 has an 1336x768 display and you compare it to the iPad 4's you see that between the two they cut a lot of corners to get their price point.


    3) This might be nice in regards to netbook-class machines but it's still a slow Atom processor running Windows on a 10" display. It's hard to imagine this affecting even one iPad sale.
    So you searched through the 20 benchmarks to find one where they were close? Figures.


    The A7 is only dual core (where the Bay Trail in the T100 is quad core). The Air's A7 runs at 1.4GHZ while the Bay Trail in the T100 is anywhere from 1.33-1.86GHz (jumping often to 1.86GHz when running benchmarks or more demanding tasks). I'd say it's very embarrassing to have a quad core processor running at a significantly higher clock speed from the king of processor design (Intel) that can't even outperform a dual core processor from Apple.


    There's a saying (incorrect saying, but that's for another time to discuss) that goes like this: "Google is getting better at what Apple does faster than Apple is getting better at what Google does."


    I'd say these are a better examples:


    "Apple is increasing ARM processor performance faster than Intel is making x86 efficient for mobile."


    or


    "Apple is increasing ARM processor performance faster than Intel is increasing x86 performance."

    I'm talking about web browsing experience in the benchmarks and real world applications.  

    The majority of those benchmarks carry no weight for the T100.  For example the graphical benchmark focuses on OpenGL ES 2.0 performance, meanwhile the T100 can run software that utilizes DirectX 11, OpenGL ES 3.1, or OpenGL 4.x.  It can play games like Left 4 Dead 2 or Resident Evil 5.  <span style="line-height:1.4em;">On the T100 you can run Netflix on one half of the screen and an HD Youtube video on the other half.  Again, it can also utilize full CAD applications like Inventor.  All of these things are not possible on the iPad.</span>


    <span style="line-height:1.4em;">Real world performance and applications >> benchmarks</span>

    What you say is nice, but I (and I suspect many others) never run any of the apps you describe even on my desktop iMacs ... The one exception is Netflix -- though I see no practical value in running it on half the 27" screen and an HD YT video on the other half.

    As to "Real world performance and applications >> benchmarks" -- I suspect that your definition of the real world is different than most mobile users.
  • Reply 183 of 236
    pmzpmz Posts: 3,433member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post



     Why would Microsoft target Apple's minority tablet platform with its new mobile Office apps over Google's Android, which supposedly owns a 61.9 percent marketshare?

    In the hopes of actually making some money on the product at all.

  • Reply 184 of 236
    droidftwdroidftw Posts: 1,009member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by EricTheHalfBee View Post



    This is the third time I've asked you to specifically mention which offerings on Android are "superior" (your description).

     

    You can keep asking until your face is blue but I suspect you're not interested in my opinion.  One could easily go and find this information on their own, but that wouldn't serve the purpose of someone who's just looking for an argument.  I suspect you're just looking for an argument and that's why I've never taken the bait.

  • Reply 185 of 236
    djsherlydjsherly Posts: 1,031member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Frank pope View Post





    Ooooh! Ooooh!

    Wait, I've got this one

    Hater, right?

     

    Hater or not, just a observation that DED is ill suited to the 'physical enforcement' role, e.g. 'punching out' someone's lights. Not gonna happen. TBH, that's probably not his disposition either.

     

    I like at least that much about him.

  • Reply 186 of 236
    adonissmuadonissmu Posts: 1,776member

    MSFT should make their C# available to OSX. That would help their strategy. 

  • Reply 187 of 236
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,491moderator
    adonissmu wrote: »
    MSFT should make their C# available to OSX. That would help their strategy. 

    C# has a very nice syntax. It would be good if this replaced both PHP and Javascript IMO - it's an open standard language so no harm done. Have C# run in both the server and browser. It's a nicer language than Objective-C in terms of readability as this old article shows:

    http://lostechies.com/scottreynolds/2009/02/05/beginning-objective-c-for-the-c-guy/

    but unfortunately it's not a replacement for that.

    If Webkit could execute C#, that would be a start to client-side adoption and rich offline web-apps. Microsoft could switch Excel Macros to C# and run them through webkit.
  • Reply 188 of 236
    dvoraakdvoraak Posts: 14member

    Wow...... This whole article makes almost no sense when put into the context of the tablet vs phone markets (which have very similar sales and market share traits) and when you consider that Office 365 IS AVAILABLE FOR ANDROID PHONES. It's not on Android tablets yet but does anyone doubt that it will be soon? 

  • Reply 189 of 236
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by EricTheHalfBee View Post



    I'd say these are a better examples:



    "Apple is increasing ARM processor performance faster than Intel is making x86 efficient for mobile."



    or



    "Apple is increasing ARM processor performance faster than Intel is increasing x86 performance."

     

    That's hardly true.  Intel has massively reduced their TDP in the last few years and nothing ARM will touch a Core i5 (Surface Pro 2) in terms of performance.  The Bay Trails are decent and the Z3795 based tablets look good with 4GB RAM.  That's enough to comfortably run Win 8 and normal desktop apps.

     

    Many of the improvements we've seen in the MBA and MBP lines are due to Intel making the x86 far more efficient for mobile.

  • Reply 190 of 236
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AdonisSMU View Post

     

    MSFT should make their C# available to OSX. That would help their strategy. 


     

    Mono works just fine on OSX.  MonoMac/Xamarin.mac even provides access to Cocoa.  And that's the rub.  As craptastic as Swing is/was Java has a common UI and APIs across most platforms.  New languages and syntax is easy to get used to.  It's all the APIs that takes a bit of learning to become proficient.  If you're going to learn CoreData, etc you might as well just code ObjC.  It's not going to be overly portable to any other platform anyway.

     

    I guess MS could port all of .net/wpf to OSX.

  • Reply 191 of 236
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by EricTheHalfBee View Post



    Guys, the answer is so simple.



    While iOS leads Enterprise use over Android overall at around 2:1, the iPad totally crushes Android on the tablet side with over 90% of tablets in use being the iPad.



    Now explain to me why Microsoft would want to invest in making Office for Android tablets when they represent only 10% of the Enterprise market? Then add to that the variations in models and performance/features that would require additional coding effort and that 10% looks pretty pathetic.

     

    and android is going to go nowhere in the Enterprise. the Surface might, but MS is hedging their bets.

  • Reply 192 of 236
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post

     

     

    and android is going to go nowhere in the Enterprise. the Surface might, but MS is hedging their bets.


    It is not going anywhere in the Enterprise yet, but Android did not take the enterprise seriously until Samsung came out with the Galaxy Note Pro (which is intended to compete with laptops, not I-Pads curiously). By contrast, the Surface, which was created and marketed specifically as an Enterprise device (hence its price and its marketing campaign) has totally, completely failed, with an even lower enterprise share than Android has. Android has focused entirely on being a lightweight consumer entertainment device ... on gaming, streaming, email, social networking etc. because that is the type of activity that Google makes money on (via ads, searches and collecting data). They are just now focusing on coming out with enterprise-capable hardware. However, they will probably still need to tweak the OS in order to make it powerful enough to be useful in the enterprise also (another reason for Samsung to play around with Tizen, although if they can't get Tizen to run Android apps natively then that won't work either). 

  • Reply 193 of 236
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nht View Post

     

     

    Mono works just fine on OSX.  MonoMac/Xamarin.mac even provides access to Cocoa.  And that's the rub.  As craptastic as Swing is/was Java has a common UI and APIs across most platforms.  New languages and syntax is easy to get used to.  It's all the APIs that takes a bit of learning to become proficient.  If you're going to learn CoreData, etc you might as well just code ObjC.  It's not going to be overly portable to any other platform anyway.

     

    I guess MS could port all of .net/wpf to OSX.


    lots of work, that would be crazy. Yeah mono etc, can never compete with native code as there will always be something missing, c# is a better language than Objective C to look at maybe, but thats not enough.

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mensmovement View Post

     

    It is not going anywhere in the Enterprise yet, but Android did not take the enterprise seriously until Samsung came out with the Galaxy Note Pro (which is intended to compete with laptops, not I-Pads curiously). By contrast, the Surface, which was created and marketed specifically as an Enterprise device (hence its price and its marketing campaign) has totally, completely failed, with an even lower enterprise share than Android has. Android has focused entirely on being a lightweight consumer entertainment device ... on gaming, streaming, email, social networking etc. because that is the type of activity that Google makes money on (via ads, searches and collecting data). They are just now focusing on coming out with enterprise-capable hardware. However, they will probably still need to tweak the OS in order to make it powerful enough to be useful in the enterprise also (another reason for Samsung to play around with Tizen, although if they can't get Tizen to run Android apps natively then that won't work either). 


     

    Well it's open source which makes security much more difficult. Probably Tizen will run Android apps out of the box, its open source, they can use the API at will, but also add some of their own API ( they do this anyways). 

  • Reply 194 of 236

    Simple answer would be they started on the iOS version first as it existed first, and had a bigger market share first. Not like they developed this thing in the last couple of months. Android version will be here soon enough, MS's strategy across everything from Office to Music is to support every platform. A lot of people now buy an iOS app because there's a version for Android and vice versa. 

     

    As the article mentions dev environment it would be interesting to know if these apps were built in Objective C or C#. Based on the time-frame for development I would guess Objective C, but would make a great case study for C# cross platform between iOS, Android and Windows.

  • Reply 195 of 236
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by timgriff84 View Post

     

    Simple answer would be they started on the iOS version first as it existed first, and had a bigger market share first. Not like they developed this thing in the last couple of months. Android version will be here soon enough, MS's strategy across everything from Office to Music is to support every platform. A lot of people now buy an iOS app because there's a version for Android and vice versa. 

     

    As the article mentions dev environment it would be interesting to know if these apps were built in Objective C or C#. Based on the time-frame for development I would guess Objective C, but would make a great case study for C# cross platform between iOS, Android and Windows.


    Microsoft's Mac team - which probably got tasked with this to begin with- would have Objective C skills. Rewriting C# is a lot of work. Making an API work across all platforms is both very difficult and limiting.

  • Reply 196 of 236
    droidftw wrote: »
    You can keep asking until your face is blue but I suspect you're not interested in my opinion.  One could easily go and find this information on their own, but that wouldn't serve the purpose of someone who's just looking for an argument.  I suspect you're just looking for an argument and that's why I've never taken the bait.
    Then you admit there's nothing better. I did search Google Play and I already know Android has nothing to compete with Office. So unless you know of some obscure suite that nobody knows about, or doesn't come up under normal searches, then I'm calling you a liar.

    You're simply afraid if you actually list a specific app that I (and others) are going to run out and try it to see if it really is as good,. And when we find out it isn't you'll be exposed.
  • Reply 197 of 236

    Then you admit there's nothing better. I did search Google Play and I already know Android has nothing to compete with Office.

     

    Sure it does. It is called Google Docs. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rcs.mydocs

     

    Which is what Google of course is what it strongly prefers that Android users use instead of Office by the way since it is Google's own app, and by far its most successful cloud offering. When Microsoft comes out with Office for Android, its purpose will be to slow down the number of companies that are migrating to Google Docs instead of paying licenses for Office. Google should have been marketing the enterprise potential of its tablets using FREE Google Docs as their main pitch, especially since Google Docs has long had an offline mode. That is a missed opportunity, as Google has been distracted from Android in favor of pushing ChromeOS instead. (Either that or Google knows that Android is not a suitable OS for the enterprise.)

  • Reply 198 of 236
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,644member
    Ugh. More of this "Apple versus cheap low end devices" nonsense that has never been true and never will be true. It is a rant about the monoculture that existed when Microsoft was at its peak, but it ignores two things:
    1. Corporate managers and workers aren't stupid. If the Wintel "cheap low end devices" were incapable of reliably doing the heavyweight task-intensive work in corporate America (not just word processing but programming, CAD/CAM and lots of other heavy duty stuff) they never would have adopted it wholesale and stuck with it to this day.
    2. The reason why Apple never really made a dent into the corporate market was that until recently it wasn't suited for it. Even the companies that were willing and able to pay the premium for Apple products found it unsuitable for most corporate tasks. This isn't the case now, but it was certainly the case in the 1990s and the 2000s. Work was either done on Windows machines, or if Windows machines were unsuitable, on workstations running some flavor of UNIX (Linux wasn't much of a player back then because Fedora and Ubuntu weren't out yet, so it was more likely to be Sun Solaris, HP-UX or something like that). The only people using Apple machines for work were using it for things like desktop publishing, animation, graphic arts, music etc. not business, programming, tech etc. because at the time the Windows machines - and the UNIX workstations - were better at it. It was not due to the Apple hardware, of course, but back then the Apple interface was difficult to work with (the ability to customize Windows and MS-DOS and UNIX was necessary for work back then) and there was a real lack of software tools to do work available because most of the software development was for Windows. 
    3. The dichotomy between the "great Apple machines and the $500 Windows machines" NEVER EXISTED. The cheap Wintel machines with the slow CPUs, barely adequate RAM and tiny disk drives were only bought by home users for playing games and word processing (usually with the free Microsoft Works, not Word.) Corporate users always bought good machines with hardware that was at least ballpark with Apple machines. A corporate Windows machine today likely has 4-8 GB of RAM, a 500 GB hard drive, and an I-5 Intel processor running at about 2.8 GHz. In other words, similar to the specs that those MacBooks that the side panel of this site is advertising. The difference is that you can get a $1000 Toshiba or HP machine for that very capable hardware instead of having to pay $1800. If anything, Windows is holding the hardware manufacturers back these days. It was certainly the case with Windows Vista, and is also the case with Windows 8. 
    4. Likewise, the $50 tablets that you are showing is nonsense. Samsung's enterprise tablet, 12.2 inches, great specs and capabilities and $750 price, goes unmentioned here. Why? It doesn't fit the "low end Android with bad hardware" agenda. Neither does the many $200-$350 tablets that are much more capable than 600 MHz kids toys. So "The result is a commodity market where all you can buy is junk, and any efforts to compete with better products are undermined by price dumping that effectively destroys innovation" never has been true and never will be true. It is just garbage to make people who make the CHOICE to spend $800 more on a PC or $100-$150 more on a tablet or phone feel better about themselves. You want to feel better about buying a $500 I-Pad instead of a $350 Android device, so you tell yourself that the only Android products are either Samsung copyright infringements (when Apple isn't even challenging the newer Samsung models, just the older ones) or garbage. Look, I don't know why people aren't buying the Google Nexus, the HP Slate or the other quality tablets, but there is no denying that they are capable tablets with hardware comparable to the older I-Pad models. 
    5. Proof of this? That Microsoft is making Office for the Android AT ALL. Had Microsoft come out and said that they were only going to do Office for the I-Pad, THEN you would be able to claim that Android is unviable because the hardware on the Android devices that actually sell is incapable, and the Android devices that have capable hardware do not sell. But that is not the case at all. Instead, Microsoft merely released Office for I-Pad FIRST and will come out with it for Android LATER THIS YEAR. Why? Because they know that it will make money. As Microsoft does have these internal sales figures, they know that enough mid-range ($200-$350) and high end (pricing comparable to Microsoft) Android devices sell to justify the not-too-insignificant cost of developing and maintaining Office for the Android platform while undercutting their own.
    6. More still: the Android platform is about to go through a major "next phase", of which Microsoft is fully aware. In 2015, Google is ending the Nexus brand, which Google was primarily using as a "demo" for other Android OEMs to follow. In other words, it was used to "introduce" the product. The introductory phase is over. In 2015, Google is going to discontinue their Nexus line in favor of their just-launched Google Play tablets (and phones). They are also going to start taking tighter control over Android itself (making it less "open") including coming up with a superior update process. That is going to make the platform more viable for those who have a bigger interest in it than as a child's toy. It will have to be in order for Google to continue to compete with Microsoft. That's right. Microsoft is wounded but by no means dead. Android tablets aren't competing with Apple tablets or (giggle, giggle) Windows tablets, but with Windows PCs. So people aren't choosing between a Galaxy/Nexus and an I-Pad. They are deciding between an Android tablet (or a Chromebook) and a low end Windows PC.  For that to continue - especially now that Windows is fighting back by practically giving away Windows 8 to low end OEMs to keep the cost competitive with Chromebooks as their "Scroogled" campaign was a total failure (great idea Ballmer!) - Android is going to have to be as good as or better than the low end Windows PCs that still to this very day dominate the consumer PC market (fewer such PCs are selling, but of the ones that do sell, 7 out of 10 of them run Windows 7 or Windows 8). 

    Again, stuff like this is just propaganda to make Apple consumers feel better about themselves. It is not reality. If it were, Microsoft wouldn't bother with Office for Android at all. They WOULD NOT give anyone a reason to spend $300 on a quality Galaxy or upcoming Google Play tablet instead of a low end second Windows laptop that people are going to carry to meetings and whatnot while their primary device - be it a Windows PC or MacBook - remains tethered to their desk, but that is EXACTLY what they are doing.

    What you are saying here is full of half truths. Some of it isn't even that. As far as Samsung's new " enterprise tablet goes, it's being highly criticized already as being clumsy, heavy, and not very suited for business. Again, another recent Samsung attempt to get ahead of a rumored Apple product, this time the 12.9" model being reported on everywhere. The model that Apple has never discussed, but that rumor now has Apple putting on the back shelf because of size and weight consid
    asdasd wrote: »
    Well, not true. Apple does give shipped, not sold numbers, thats what they give. You have to work out "sold", so thats the roundabout way. But you are right in not trusting the others. 

    No, that's incorrect. Apple gives "sold through" numbers, which as exactly what they seem to be, and no one disputes that.
    , except apparently, you, and sometimes, Gatorguy, in these pages.
  • Reply 199 of 236
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,644member
    gatorguy wrote: »
    From three years ago:
    'In another bellwether for Android’s growing impact on the mobile gaming industry, Angry Birds is producing roughly even revenue from both Google’s platform and iOS, says its recently-funded maker Rovio."

    Rovio is not a good poster-child for claiming developers don't make money on Android. It really doesn't help your argument to keep citing them. I'm sure you can find a valid example but Angry Birds is not one of them.
    http://www.insidemobileapps.com/2011/03/13/angry-birds-android-ios/

    That was including the ad sponsored, and I app purchasing models. Not just the paid for version.
  • Reply 200 of 236
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    @melgross. The headline figures they give are shipped to channel and online sales. Sell through has to be worked out although sometimes they will mention it in Q&A.
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