Microsoft launching Loop, focused on remote & collaborative work

Posted:
in General Discussion edited November 2021
Microsoft is launching Loop, a new app in its Office Suite that's meant to streamline project collaboration in the era of remote and hybrid work.

Credit: Microsoft
Credit: Microsoft


The Microsoft Loop app is essentially a rebranding of the company's work on Fluid, which is a way to create content that can be independently copied, pasted, and shared with others.

Microsoft showed off the new Loop functionality at its online-only Ignite conference on Tuesday.

Loop components, for example, are blocks of content that can exist across multiple apps, and which users can update in real time. Loop pages are similar, but are more like individual canvases that include Loop components. Loop Workspaces provide a broad overview of shared projects.

Microsoft's corporate vice president Jared Spataro characterized the Loop initiative as a way of "blowing up the document."

The effort also comes ahead of rising Microsoft 365 prices in 2022. It's likely that the company is looking to provide more value for customers who subscribe to its services.

Microsoft says that Loop components will arrive in its Teams, Outlook, and OneNote app later in November. The main Loop app will be released "at a later date," with the company sharing availability information in the coming months.

Read on AppleInsider

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 19
    mcdavemcdave Posts: 1,927member
    As long as it’s not the mess that Teams was on first release. Microsoft really have no clue about coherent design, their products fumble along conflicting with each other ultimately requiring a PowerShell consultant to configure them to do anything useful.
    williamlondonmattinozITGUYINSD
  • Reply 2 of 19
    It’d be really amazing if Microsoft would pull their heads out of their asses and update their email clients with browser rendering engines rather then still using Word as a rendering engine for html email!!! 
  • Reply 3 of 19
    22july201322july2013 Posts: 3,735member
    What is Apple's closest competing product? iCloud?
  • Reply 4 of 19
    elijahgelijahg Posts: 2,854member
    What is Apple's closest competing product? iCloud?
    iWork has an online aspect, that's probably closest. But unfortunately Apple's insistence that iWork has feature parity across web/iOS/iPadOS/macOS means it's hobbled to the lowest common denominator. It's only really now begun to reach the same level of power it had before they crippled it to work on iOS back in about 2012. Meanwhile Office has continued to expand its collaboration and automation tools. 

    I have used Pages extensively, and whist documents created in it look 20x better than they do in Word, the development priority seems to be form over capability (much like Apple's hardware), and therefore it misses so many powerful writing features that're needed for more than just a school newsletter. Until about 6 months ago for example, it didn't even have a way to caption images, much less create an index of figures. I have previously posted here a long list of issues I encountered while writing my dissertation, I was close to abandoning it at one point and switching to Word but I persevered. Knowing its shortcomings now though, I wouldn't even consider writing a complex document in Pages. There's just so much that Word does automatically that is manual in Pages.
    edited November 2021 byronldewmemariowinco
  • Reply 5 of 19
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    Sounds vaguely similar to OpenDoc.
    FileMakerFeller
  • Reply 6 of 19
    DuhSesameDuhSesame Posts: 1,278member
    elijahg said:
    What is Apple's closest competing product? iCloud?
    iWork has an online aspect, that's probably closest. But unfortunately Apple's insistence that iWork has feature parity across web/iOS/iPadOS/macOS means it's hobbled to the lowest common denominator. It's only really now begun to reach the same level of power it had before they crippled it to work on iOS back in about 2012. Meanwhile Office has continued to expand its collaboration and automation tools. 

    I have used Pages extensively, and whist documents created in it look 20x better than they do in Word, the development priority seems to be form over capability (much like Apple's hardware), and therefore it misses so many powerful writing features that're needed for more than just a school newsletter. Until about 6 months ago for example, it didn't even have a way to caption images, much less create an index of figures. I have previously posted here a long list of issues I encountered while writing my dissertation, I was close to abandoning it at one point and switching to Word but I persevered. Knowing its shortcomings now though, I wouldn't even consider writing a complex document in Pages. There's just so much that Word does automatically that is manual in Pages.
    And that “form over function” with M1 beats pretty much every mid-to-high spec PCs.
    Other than that, I agree.  Though I think iWork never wanted to replace Office, nor it can.
  • Reply 7 of 19
    elijahgelijahg Posts: 2,854member
    DuhSesame said:
    elijahg said:
    What is Apple's closest competing product? iCloud?
    iWork has an online aspect, that's probably closest. But unfortunately Apple's insistence that iWork has feature parity across web/iOS/iPadOS/macOS means it's hobbled to the lowest common denominator. It's only really now begun to reach the same level of power it had before they crippled it to work on iOS back in about 2012. Meanwhile Office has continued to expand its collaboration and automation tools. 

    I have used Pages extensively, and whist documents created in it look 20x better than they do in Word, the development priority seems to be form over capability (much like Apple's hardware), and therefore it misses so many powerful writing features that're needed for more than just a school newsletter. Until about 6 months ago for example, it didn't even have a way to caption images, much less create an index of figures. I have previously posted here a long list of issues I encountered while writing my dissertation, I was close to abandoning it at one point and switching to Word but I persevered. Knowing its shortcomings now though, I wouldn't even consider writing a complex document in Pages. There's just so much that Word does automatically that is manual in Pages.
    And that “form over function” with M1 beats pretty much every mid-to-high spec PCs.
    Other than that, I agree.  Though I think iWork never wanted to replace Office, nor it can.
    Absolutely it does. But the base M1 iMac has lost most of the ports that its Intel predecessor had.  The M1 is faster than the Intel CPUs it replaced, but it’s not necessarily more capable. 

    I agree, I’m sure that wasn’t their aim. But the rate of improvements has - as with much of Apple’s software of late - been glacial. That does seem to be improving slightly, but MS has come up with an entirely new solution since the start of the pandemic, whereas Pages has gained a couple of templates, background page colouring, captions (!) and offline editing amongst some other small improvements. 
  • Reply 8 of 19
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,763member
    elijahg said:
    What is Apple's closest competing product? iCloud?
    iWork has an online aspect, that's probably closest. But unfortunately Apple's insistence that iWork has feature parity across web/iOS/iPadOS/macOS means it's hobbled to the lowest common denominator. It's only really now begun to reach the same level of power it had before they crippled it to work on iOS back in about 2012. Meanwhile Office has continued to expand its collaboration and automation tools. 

    I have used Pages extensively, and whist documents created in it look 20x better than they do in Word, the development priority seems to be form over capability (much like Apple's hardware), and therefore it misses so many powerful writing features that're needed for more than just a school newsletter. Until about 6 months ago for example, it didn't even have a way to caption images, much less create an index of figures. I have previously posted here a long list of issues I encountered while writing my dissertation, I was close to abandoning it at one point and switching to Word but I persevered. Knowing its shortcomings now though, I wouldn't even consider writing a complex document in Pages. There's just so much that Word does automatically that is manual in Pages.
    That’s a pretty apt description of the difference between Pages and Word. I enjoy using Pages for simple documents with a mix of text and graphics, like a newsletter. But I cannot even remotely imagine using Pages for a professional document, like a standards document with multiple contributors, with footnotes, dynamic links, table of contents, index, etc.

    Each product has its strengths and weaknesses, but where Pages works I find it a pleasure to use. It’s not that Word is perfect either, it’s a nightmare imho when it comes to getting it to stick with the styles that you want it to follow without it doing what seem like random changes on its own. 

    I’ve always been fascinated with the notion of collaboration tools, both software only tools and hardware tools like smart whiteboards and web cams. But to be perfectly honest I’ve never found one tool, or even a collection of tools, that everyone on the team liked using after the initial excitement of using a new tool wore off. Sometimes it was the tool not living up to the hype and other times it was just people falling back into ingrained habits, good and bad. Some tools just didn’t scale or had too much administration and housekeeping. 

    About the only collaboration tool that has stuck around for me is Slack. It’s better than email threads imho, and if that’s all it does, I’m okay with that. But is a better-than-email tool really a game changer when it comes to collaboration? Probably not. 

    Will Loop be any different? My gut tells me “no” but I’m holding out hope that the forced need of the pandemic has taught its designers a thing or two about collaboration with physically distributed teams. 
    elijahg
  • Reply 9 of 19
    DuhSesameDuhSesame Posts: 1,278member
    elijahg said:
    DuhSesame said:
    elijahg said:
    What is Apple's closest competing product? iCloud?
    iWork has an online aspect, that's probably closest. But unfortunately Apple's insistence that iWork has feature parity across web/iOS/iPadOS/macOS means it's hobbled to the lowest common denominator. It's only really now begun to reach the same level of power it had before they crippled it to work on iOS back in about 2012. Meanwhile Office has continued to expand its collaboration and automation tools. 

    I have used Pages extensively, and whist documents created in it look 20x better than they do in Word, the development priority seems to be form over capability (much like Apple's hardware), and therefore it misses so many powerful writing features that're needed for more than just a school newsletter. Until about 6 months ago for example, it didn't even have a way to caption images, much less create an index of figures. I have previously posted here a long list of issues I encountered while writing my dissertation, I was close to abandoning it at one point and switching to Word but I persevered. Knowing its shortcomings now though, I wouldn't even consider writing a complex document in Pages. There's just so much that Word does automatically that is manual in Pages.
    And that “form over function” with M1 beats pretty much every mid-to-high spec PCs.
    Other than that, I agree.  Though I think iWork never wanted to replace Office, nor it can.
    Absolutely it does. But the base M1 iMac has lost most of the ports that its Intel predecessor had.  The M1 is faster than the Intel CPUs it replaced, but it’s not necessarily more capable. 

    I agree, I’m sure that wasn’t their aim. But the rate of improvements has - as with much of Apple’s software of late - been glacial. That does seem to be improving slightly, but MS has come up with an entirely new solution since the start of the pandemic, whereas Pages has gained a couple of templates, background page colouring, captions (!) and offline editing amongst some other small improvements. 
    No, absolute performance makes the difference.  If you’re giving me a fanless laptop that’s equivalent to an mid-to-high eight core, I’ll say “screw the ports”.  Nobody cares about ports when you’re dominating the performance game.

    With that said, that two thunderbolt ports brings more bandwidth than 99% of laptops out there, the only limitation is you have to put adapter, but I’d say capabilities are more important.
    williamlondon
  • Reply 10 of 19
    elijahg said:
    What is Apple's closest competing product? iCloud?
    iWork has an online aspect, that's probably closest. But unfortunately Apple's insistence that iWork has feature parity across web/iOS/iPadOS/macOS means it's hobbled to the lowest common denominator. It's only really now begun to reach the same level of power it had before they crippled it to work on iOS back in about 2012. Meanwhile Office has continued to expand its collaboration and automation tools. 

    I have used Pages extensively, and whist documents created in it look 20x better than they do in Word, the development priority seems to be form over capability (much like Apple's hardware), and therefore it misses so many powerful writing features that're needed for more than just a school newsletter. Until about 6 months ago for example, it didn't even have a way to caption images, much less create an index of figures. I have previously posted here a long list of issues I encountered while writing my dissertation, I was close to abandoning it at one point and switching to Word but I persevered. Knowing its shortcomings now though, I wouldn't even consider writing a complex document in Pages. There's just so much that Word does automatically that is manual in Pages.
    Whilst iWork has similarities to MS Office, it has nothing like Loop and is not remotely a competing product. Notion could be seen as a competing product.
  • Reply 11 of 19
    We use “shared docs” on teams (or sp) and it works (not 100% but enough to be better than the alternatives)

    i like Pages, Numbers and Keynote. But there is an abyss on the features side, you can’t seriously compare against Word or Excel.
    dewme
  • Reply 12 of 19
    Google's Canvas is also around the corner. I'm wondering if Apple will upgrade Notes to something a bit more powerful.
  • Reply 13 of 19
    Unfortunately Apple has totally missed the boat in the office and cloud space. Microsoft is so far ahead it is not even funny, I work for a very large organisation ….everything now revolves around Azure, Office 365, Teams, Outlook, MS Dynamcs etc…..Micorsoft is rapidly absorbing functions from competitors….at least everything seems to work well on iOS devices
    williamlondon
  • Reply 14 of 19
    not to forget Power BI. And now Mesh is bringing the Metaverse into Teams as well…..most likely there is some kind of agreement between Meta and Microsoft otherwhise it seems to be strange that they are using the same term. Nadella even dropped „Oculus“ in his keynote….so hopefually Apple‘s upcoming AR/VR glasses  will be the best hardware to make the metaverse a reality 
  • Reply 15 of 19
    Wait, STILL no Mac MS Project app?!  *rolls eyes*
  • Reply 16 of 19
    elijahgelijahg Posts: 2,854member
    DuhSesame said:
    elijahg said:
    DuhSesame said:
    elijahg said:
    What is Apple's closest competing product? iCloud?
    iWork has an online aspect, that's probably closest. But unfortunately Apple's insistence that iWork has feature parity across web/iOS/iPadOS/macOS means it's hobbled to the lowest common denominator. It's only really now begun to reach the same level of power it had before they crippled it to work on iOS back in about 2012. Meanwhile Office has continued to expand its collaboration and automation tools. 

    I have used Pages extensively, and whist documents created in it look 20x better than they do in Word, the development priority seems to be form over capability (much like Apple's hardware), and therefore it misses so many powerful writing features that're needed for more than just a school newsletter. Until about 6 months ago for example, it didn't even have a way to caption images, much less create an index of figures. I have previously posted here a long list of issues I encountered while writing my dissertation, I was close to abandoning it at one point and switching to Word but I persevered. Knowing its shortcomings now though, I wouldn't even consider writing a complex document in Pages. There's just so much that Word does automatically that is manual in Pages.
    And that “form over function” with M1 beats pretty much every mid-to-high spec PCs.
    Other than that, I agree.  Though I think iWork never wanted to replace Office, nor it can.
    Absolutely it does. But the base M1 iMac has lost most of the ports that its Intel predecessor had.  The M1 is faster than the Intel CPUs it replaced, but it’s not necessarily more capable. 

    I agree, I’m sure that wasn’t their aim. But the rate of improvements has - as with much of Apple’s software of late - been glacial. That does seem to be improving slightly, but MS has come up with an entirely new solution since the start of the pandemic, whereas Pages has gained a couple of templates, background page colouring, captions (!) and offline editing amongst some other small improvements. 
    No, absolute performance makes the difference.  If you’re giving me a fanless laptop that’s equivalent to an mid-to-high eight core, I’ll say “screw the ports”.  Nobody cares about ports when you’re dominating the performance game.

    With that said, that two thunderbolt ports brings more bandwidth than 99% of laptops out there, the only limitation is you have to put adapter, but I’d say capabilities are more important.
    There are CPUs that're faster than the M1. But they can't run the software you would expect. But who cares right? As all that matters is performance, not interoperability, compatibility or actual usefulness 🙄
    muthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 17 of 19
    mattinozmattinoz Posts: 2,488member
    Wait, STILL no Mac MS Project app?!  *rolls eyes*
    Why would you want to inflict such pain on yourself?
    williamlondon
  • Reply 18 of 19
    DuhSesameDuhSesame Posts: 1,278member
    elijahg said:
    DuhSesame said:
    elijahg said:
    DuhSesame said:
    elijahg said:
    What is Apple's closest competing product? iCloud?
    iWork has an online aspect, that's probably closest. But unfortunately Apple's insistence that iWork has feature parity across web/iOS/iPadOS/macOS means it's hobbled to the lowest common denominator. It's only really now begun to reach the same level of power it had before they crippled it to work on iOS back in about 2012. Meanwhile Office has continued to expand its collaboration and automation tools. 

    I have used Pages extensively, and whist documents created in it look 20x better than they do in Word, the development priority seems to be form over capability (much like Apple's hardware), and therefore it misses so many powerful writing features that're needed for more than just a school newsletter. Until about 6 months ago for example, it didn't even have a way to caption images, much less create an index of figures. I have previously posted here a long list of issues I encountered while writing my dissertation, I was close to abandoning it at one point and switching to Word but I persevered. Knowing its shortcomings now though, I wouldn't even consider writing a complex document in Pages. There's just so much that Word does automatically that is manual in Pages.
    And that “form over function” with M1 beats pretty much every mid-to-high spec PCs.
    Other than that, I agree.  Though I think iWork never wanted to replace Office, nor it can.
    Absolutely it does. But the base M1 iMac has lost most of the ports that its Intel predecessor had.  The M1 is faster than the Intel CPUs it replaced, but it’s not necessarily more capable. 

    I agree, I’m sure that wasn’t their aim. But the rate of improvements has - as with much of Apple’s software of late - been glacial. That does seem to be improving slightly, but MS has come up with an entirely new solution since the start of the pandemic, whereas Pages has gained a couple of templates, background page colouring, captions (!) and offline editing amongst some other small improvements. 
    No, absolute performance makes the difference.  If you’re giving me a fanless laptop that’s equivalent to an mid-to-high eight core, I’ll say “screw the ports”.  Nobody cares about ports when you’re dominating the performance game.

    With that said, that two thunderbolt ports brings more bandwidth than 99% of laptops out there, the only limitation is you have to put adapter, but I’d say capabilities are more important.
    There are CPUs that're faster than the M1. But they can't run the software you would expect. But who cares right? As all that matters is performance, not interoperability, compatibility or actual usefulness ߙ䦬t;/div>
    Faster with what, twice as much of power and a blower?  Do they even target the same audiences?  Who’s the one that thinks “performance is all that matters?”

    This, is why I hate Apple communities these days.  All you get is people who don’t have any clue about their gears but so eager to split false criticism.

    you don’t realize what 80Gb/s bandwidth means, do you?
    Or what the M1 position itself at?
    Find me an ultrabook in late 2020 that can do everything the M1 can, anything less than 8-core (or you can even include those low-power ones).

    But all you see it’s “gawd why do I need a dongle”, I doubt most of you actually maxed out your ports.

    We’re really not on the same level, farewell.
    edited November 2021 williamlondon
  • Reply 19 of 19
    DuhSesameDuhSesame Posts: 1,278member
    Software wise, all I can say is that if you cannot built your hardware well, we’re talking nonsense.

    Yes, speed is almost the only thing when you’re having this much of an upper hand.  You can always fix your software, but if it’s slow it’s slow.

    Nor you can only choose the software Apple gives you.
    edited November 2021
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