Personally, I think Microsoft will become a company like IBM. A large company that is a shadow of its former self but still relevant in the corporate world because of its services.
Just because IBM has changed its business focus doesn't mean it is a shadow of its former self. Far from it, no matter which really important metric you use. Success is not merely measured by marketshare in the consumer world.
Given that IBM walked away from the PC market a few years before the dawn of the age of tablet (whilst near the top of the heap), the proper perspective is that they were frigging brilliant - one of the most brilliant transitions any large business has ever made. Microsoft has never timed anything so perfectly. Nor has it made such a strategic and successful 90° shift in its history (although Bill Gates would argue IE was one such example).
Just because IBM has changed its business focus doesn't mean it is a shadow of its former self. Far from it, no matter which really important metric you use. Success is not merely measured by marketshare in the consumer world.
Given that IBM walked away from the PC market a few years before the dawn of the age of tablet (whilst near the top of the heap), the proper perspective is that they were frigging brilliant - one of the most brilliant transitions any large business has ever made. Microsoft has never timed anything so perfectly. Nor has it made such a strategic and successful 90° shift in its history (although Bill Gates would argue IE was one such example).
The server must be acting up.
Your reply came in a long time (over an hour) after another member who also replied to my comment. That person's post included my complete comment with revisions, whereas yours did not.
Originally I was thinking of the IBM era when they had the largest loss on record for any company (at the time), $8 billion.
IBM has adapted to the changing environment. Maybe Microsoft can also do this now that Ballmer is leaving.
MS was coming very close to the point of no return before the announcement that Ballmer is leaving. The longer he stayed the harder it would be to turn that ship around.
The interesting question is whether they will hire a business manager (sales or finance person) or a technology guru to run the business.
There's no tech guru on the loose that would take this job. A tech guru would start up his own business and sell it to MS or Google for way more money than this job would make. He could sell it to Apple but Apple doesn't over pay for things.
Ballmer said he could retire in 2018 after his youngest kid started college, and won't allow his children to use google or Apple products... poor kids. I can't understand how a father wouldn't want the best for his children. Imagine his kid going to college with a Surface, he'd be the laughing-stock on campus.
None of that disproves the statement that iWorks can catch on based on the success of the iPad.
While there are exceptions, iPads are generally used for content consumption more than content creation. And iWorks will read most of those gigabytes or terabytes of files you're talking about. More importantly, the vast majority of those files are not something that would likely be accessed remotely, anyway. If you're at a level in the organization (CFO, perhaps) where you need access to all that data, you're probably not going to be using an iPad for your remote access. iPads will generally be used by sales people, service people, support people, and so on - and they need a much more limited set of those documents. Since iWorks can read Word and Excel and PowerPoint documents, that will be more than sufficient for most people.
Of course, one could argue that if you're simply using iWorks to read and write in Office format that it doesn't have a major impact on the MS Office monopoly, but that's a different argument.
I agree with you. Most of the posters who see Office's dominance also ignore how well the iPad has infiltrated the enterprise market. Since it did this without MS Office as an app, enterprise has found a way to cope without it over the last approximate three years. When you factor in the absents of MS in the enterprise phone business the vacuum filled my Apple products has been going on since 2007.
If we break down enterprise into Business, Education and Government the future of MS Office is even less secure looking.
in business, the Fortune 500 is MS Office's hold is most secure, while being eroded in the departments with highly mobile employees. In recent high profile court cases the high numbers of iPads being used by reporters in the courtroom was amazing. So, one needs to look at market segments within business to see greater or lesser conversion to iPads. Small business seems to find the iPad more compelling for point of sale/ point of customer interaction but daily I see more ways business is using the iPad to conduct business.
In government, specifically the U.S. federal government, a recent contract has completely shut MS out of consideration for the next 6 years. The contract covers phones and tablets. In fact Apple is the ONLY tablet on the schedule. People are learning to do their job without MS Office day after day, and management is adjusting very well as well.
Finally, in education, Microsoft's delay into the tablet market signals the biggest impact their slowness has cost them in today's sales and future use of MS Office. That MS is discounting their tablets below cost, and even giving away thousands to schools is a indication of what MS sees as a major loss of Office users moving forward. This year alone about a million students in high school and college will spend most/all of their time with an iPad in hand, and being taught how to use Pages and Numbers instead of Office. In addition the UI of these programs follow the same UI of the other programs they will be using on the iPad.
When these students move out into the job market they will be iPad experts and prepared for a more mobile employment world that doesn't hold Office as such an important needed skill.
All of this is being played out on a landscape where email has become a much higher form of communication and free of the need for MS Office. in addition, pdf documents are more capable and more document creation is moving to desk-top publishing software to insure that individual employees are not creating liability producing documents. MS Office is finding itself not quite DTP quality and too slow for quick-and-dirty.
What features are missing to satisfy most users' needs? I don't mean the pro Desktop Publisher or SpreadSheet Jockey?
Why? That's the way it's being used in classrooms, family rooms, meeting rooms board rooms...
It brings the features most users' need to the cloud that is compatible with their desktop, and mobile device apps.
AFAICT, Only a few features are absent from the iCloud Beta and the iDevice apps... Things like Bezier Curves, Categories/Pivot Tables... I don't believe most people use these...
I agree that Apple has work to do on iWork -- but I don't agree that it is a "HUGE" amount!
I suspect that Steve Jobs lost interest in iWork -- or didn't want to go too far lest he jeopardize the availability of Office on Macs.
But all that changed with the iPad (and a little with the iPhone). Now, users can grab an iPad and go anywhere and be productive -- on the couch, at the beach, at the park, poolside, in the car, in the lunchroom at school or the office, in the OR, on set... And you have office suite apps that are easy to use and good enough for most people.
I think Apple is rethinking iWork... and will rewrite and add features/feature parity as necessary... The WWDC announcement and release of the iCloud beta is a serious indication of that, IMO.
They are taking small, incremental steps -- they don't need another brouhaha the way they handled the FCPX and Maps releases.
I used to think that if MS brought [the 80% most used parts of] Office to the iPad -- they would make a lot of money and give the stamp of approval to the post-pc era. The Surface fiasco proved me wrong.
I think Apple will go balls-out with a 60%-80% [most-used features] iWork solution across the Mac, iDevice and iCloud platforms. I could even see Apple releasing a Windows version.
Edit: Here's an interesting review of the iCloud iWork bets:
I'm not going to go point for point it's too much work with the horrible post editing tools here, but you missed my entire point.
1) Pages for iOS is not "feature complete" because it lacks even basic features that are not only present on every Word processor ever made, but also present on the original OS X version of Pages. In particular, pagination is a relatively new "fix" and hyphenation and ligatures are still missing. These are very basic features that are still missing from the product.
2) If you don't understand why the ability to project iWork apps is not in fact a "new version" of iWork apps then it's not worth talking about.
3) The online iWork beta also lacks a lot of basic features, not just "Bezier Curves" (which you bizarrely mention so much I think you are in love with them). It doesn't support languages other than American English for example so when you load any English Word processing document into the web app it becomes alive with red squigglies on every single line.
You're so busy defending Apple you're not even being rational.
For purposes of context, I left your response and my original pose intact, above:
Below, I quote an individual point and my response to it:
1) Pages for iOS is not "feature complete" because it lacks even basic features that are not only present on every Word processor ever made, but also present on the original OS X version of Pages. In particular, pagination is a relatively new "fix" and hyphenation and ligatures are still missing. These are very basic features that are still missing from the product.
Clearly, OSX Pages has support for ligatures and hyphenation as shown by its help screens:
The support for ligatures varies by font as shown below (Palatino, Zapfino), I drew a line to the right of each font pair so you could gage compression. The image on the left is a document created on Current Pages 4.3 running on OSX 10.9. The one on the right it from an iPad 4 running Pages on iOS 7 (It looks exactly the same on another iPad running iOS 6). You can open, display and copy paste a document with ligatures on iOS -- you just can't create ligatures, yet!
Finally, Here is the same document opened in the iCloud Beta Pages app. No ligatures, yet -- but it is a beta:
If you are a typographer or professional desktop publisher, these features are noticeable and, likely, important.
The point I was trying to make is that a large percent of users of word processors do not need these features.
It would be interesting to ask a random cross-section of, say, 100 students, typists, teachers, MS Word users, etc. -- to explain "ligatures" and "auto-hyphenation"! I suspect very few could!
BTW, In my surfing on this topic, I discovered that Word users have to do a bit of gymnastics to use ligatures -- and I didn't even know Pages supported them!
Edit: I dis some more surfing and:
3) The online iWork beta also lacks a lot of basic features, not just "Bezier Curves" (which you bizarrely mention so much I think you are in love with them). It doesn't support languages other than American English for example so when you load any English Word processing document into the web app it becomes alive with red squigglies on every single line.
You can do an entire OS X Pages document in another language -- or change languages word-by-word, line-by-line, paragraph-by-paragraph... I suspect this capability will find itself in iOS and iCloud Pages.
MS has a very solid enterprise server/services business that has grown consistently in recent years and has a strong future. that is the real core of the company. Office is one of those services essentially. so is Windows 7. Ballmer did a good job of moving this ahead, and it is well positioned for the future.
his failure instead was clinging to Gates' 1990's Windows Everywhere mega ambition. which lead to continued futile consumer market initiatives (sorry, the XBox is only a niche product) and finally the misbegotten Windows 8. MS will never succeed as a consumer products company. the era when PC's were a general consumer product has proved to be temporary. the consumer PC is now devolving into another niche market, while post-PC portables dominate the mass market.
so now, Ballmer is taking the fall ... for Gates' failed vision that they shared. and Gates of course made the call to tell Bill it was time to "retire." someone had to carry the can, and it sure wasn't going to be Bill.
and now Gates is going to pick the successor too! do you think anyone Bill does not endorse will get picked by that committee? zero chance.
it's Gates of course that really needs to be fired.
since that will never happen, until he dies MS is going to limp along as now, half a strong success and half a chronic failure.
I was planning on getting the minimum storage on my next iPhone... But, if they improve the camera, 128 GB (in between WiFi locations) may not be enough!
By 'in between WiFi' you mean to upload photos? If so, it might make sense to calculate the money spend on unlimited 3G/LTE bandwidth vs minimum <> maximum storage. It may be cheaper to upload/sync your Photostream over cellular using a cheaper model iPhone.
Thanks for that link. This one popped out:
Q: Your biggest regret?
Ballmer: Oh, you know, I've actually had a chance to make a lot of mistakes, and probably because, you know, people all want to focus in on period A, period B, but I would say probably the thing I regret most is the, what shall I call it, the loopedy-loo that we did that was sort of Longhorn to Vista. I would say that's probably the thing I regret most. And, you know, there are side effects of that when you tie up a big team to do something that doesn't prove out to be as valuable.
I've always felt Apple should produce an iWorks Pro to help with one of the things you refer to.
Me too. Except in Enterprise IT they'd want a roadmap. And Apple 'never' gives one, especially looking at the updates on iWork. Sure (looking at your post Dick Appelbaum) they've added features, but it's not a 'full fledged' 'Office Document Generator' for lack of a better term. Then again, the same goes for MS Office. Look at the 'new features' Excel got with Office 2010:
Microsoft Excel 2010 (version 14). Minor enhancements and 64-bit support, including the following:
Multi-threading recalculation (MTR) for commonly used functions
Improved pivot tables
More conditional formatting options
Additional image editing capabilities
In-cell charts called sparklines
Ability to preview before pasting
Office 2010 backstage feature for document-related tasks
Ability to customize the Ribbon
Many new formulas, most highly specialized to improve accuracy
That's not really a new version; that's a lame way to extort money from your subscription customers.
Stop trying to copy Apple's strategy and instead copy Apple's philosophy: Don't be afraid to burn everything you've built in exchange for a better future.
[...]
They are already limiting themselves in order to hang on to a legacy.
Well to be fair, at the time, Apple could afford to burn everything and start over because there were only a handful of people whose careers depended on Macintosh, and, by in large they were not in enterprise. Then look at Windows. 90%+ of the world's businesses, utilities, military, governments, scientific research, banking, and education depend on legacy Windows. When you think back, Microsoft did burn almost everything when they switched from DOS to Windows but the computing install base was much smaller then and they left in the ability to run DOS, much like Apple did with Mac OS classic in OS X. Microsoft has to keep legacy compatibility because so much of the modern world depends on it. To ditch Windows legacy compatibility would be suicide for Microsoft and plunge the business computing world into chaos for years.
In W95 you could still run MS-DOS. Not only just running DOS, DOS applications 8 & 16-bit as well. In fact, I think you could disable the GUI with the flick of a switch in the boot.ini, IIRC.
But that's beside the point you are making, to which I agree. MS really has to support legacy apps. But I think they should have done that the way Apple did with Rosetta. Yeah, the greatest software ever written, that you'll never get to see ...or some similar tagline like that.
so now, Ballmer is taking the fall ... for Gates' failed vision that they shared. and Gates of course made the call to tell Bill it was time to "retire." someone had to carry the can, and it sure wasn't going to be Bill.
I think you mean Steve B there. And that is not what he says:
Q: Did Chairman Bill Gates ask you to stay or go?
Ballmer: No. Bill -- I mean, no. Bill respects my decision. I mean, it's one of these things when if it's -- you know, ultimately these kinds of things have to be one's own personal decision.
MS has a very solid enterprise server/services business that has grown consistently in recent years and has a strong future. that is the real core of the company. Office is one of those services essentially. so is Windows 7. Ballmer did a good job of moving this ahead, and it is well positioned for the future.
his failure instead was clinging to Gates' 1990's Windows Everywhere mega ambition. which lead to continued futile consumer market initiatives (sorry, the XBox is only a niche product) and finally the misbegotten Windows 8. MS will never succeed as a consumer products company. the era when PC's were a general consumer product has proved to be temporary. the consumer PC is now devolving into another niche market, while post-PC portables dominate the mass market.
so now, Ballmer is taking the fall ... for Gates' failed vision that they shared. and Gates of course made the call to tell Bill it was time to "retire." someone had to carry the can, and it sure wasn't going to be Bill.
and now Gates is going to pick the successor too! do you think anyone Bill does not endorse will get picked by that committee? zero chance.
it's Gates of course that really needs to be fired.
since that will never happen, until he dies MS is going to limp along as now, half a strong success and half a chronic failure.
This is a well-reasoned post.
The disruption has happened before... Not too long ago IBM owned 97% of the maimframe computer market with hundreds of thousands of computer installations -- each earning thousands of $ per month.
I remember reading about an event of that era... ConEd was the Electric utility for NYC. They had various branch offices where New Yorkers went to pay their bills. No internet then -- just dumb terminals connected to maimframes over dedicated ATT lines. The story goes that a bunch of customers went to their friendly local ConEd branch, cash in hand, to pay their Electric bills... But the computers/phone lines were down... Delay, lead to delay -- and after several hours of waiting, the angry crowd started a riot... Think about that! Customers were trying to pay ConEd for services rendered -- and ConEd had no way to accept their payment... frustrated, the customers rioted. More thoughts on this later.
In the early 1970s the minis began making inroads -- disrupting the maimframes. but, they, in turn we're disrupted as microcomputers began to take off in 1979...
The IBM PC and MS DOS, then Wintel dominated the scene for the next quarter century.
The next disruption began in 2007... the post-pc era,
Today we have hundreds of millions of people with computers in their pocket -- that they use continuously throughout the day.
Now we have the Internet and users that expect, nay demand, to be connected all the time, anywhere... Everywhere.
What will happen when the net/communication backbone is not available for several hours? Several days?
You won't be able to buy or pay for anything, contact friends, doctors, police... Or play games, listen to music, watch movies. You, and hundreds of millions of others, will have a computer in your pocket that is more powerful than those [temporarily] Impotent ConEd maimframes... And they will be totally useless.
What will you do? What will I do? What will we do? By comparison, the ConEd incident will seem as just a small, somewhat loud, garden party among friends....
What will you do? What will I do? What will we do? By comparison, the ConEd incident will seem as just a small, somewhat loud, garden party among friends....
To heck with the internet going down... on - 30° C winter nights I think about the electricity going down for days on end. Screwed.
What a loss for Apple users. We won't have him around to ridicule for his behavior and dumb statements. I wonder who they are going to get. Probably someone boring.
Dude we need a healthy Microsoft to stop complete Google domination.
I agree. Google has become a very unhealthy entity with a nasty habit of plastering the world with beta products in order to see which one might stick.
As far as Microsoft goes, everyone likes to take a poke at the top dog. They are not about to disappear from the scene any time soon. They have a range of good products, collect royalties from all the Android pedlars and do a lot of excellent research. Their Windows 8 approach makes a lot of sense in my opinion. It will really take off on the tablet side once Intel has even better power efficient processors.
I don't think MS has much to worry when it comes to iWork which is really quite a half hearted attempt from Apple at making a better MS Works/AppleWorks. There were better products with NeXTStep. In any case Apple has never quite gotten the network right.
One could argue that it is Apple that is sitting on a very thin base, not Microsoft. Phones are things that go in and out of style very quickly. Apple appears to be a phone and tablet company. For some odd reason that makes me nervous.
Anyway, I wish SB well. The generational change is happening. Nothing stops time.
I think you mean Steve B there. And that is not what he says:
Q: Did Chairman Bill Gates ask you to stay or go?
Ballmer: No. Bill -- I mean, no. Bill respects my decision. I mean, it's one of these things when if it's -- you know, ultimately these kinds of things have to be one's own personal decision.
...as far as we can take this as fact.
you actually don't beleve the "party line" here, do you?
I think you mean Steve B there. And that is not what he says:
Q: Did Chairman Bill Gates ask you to stay or go?
Ballmer: No. Bill -- I mean, no. Bill respects my decision. I mean, it's one of these things when if it's -- you know, ultimately these kinds of things have to be one's own personal decision.
...as far as we can take this as fact.
you actually don't beleve the "party line" here, do you?
Yeah,,,
At that level, the "actual act" never needs take place...
Probably, it went something like this:
Ballmer: "Hey Bill, What's this all about?"
Gates: "The Board and I have been discussing your desire to retire -- with this new direction we're taking, we would like your commitment to stay on up to 12 months until we find a qualified replacement -- to assure an orderly transition to the benefit of Microsoft, our customers and employees and Microsoft shareholders."
Ballmer; "Retire? 12 months? Replacement? New direction... Orderly Transition... Shareholders... Er, Ah... Yes... My family will understand... And we will appreciate it if you find a replacement ASAP -- but we also understand the need for an orderly transition... 12 months? Yes, I will commit to stay on up to 12 months until you find a qualified replacement"
Gates: "The Board and I want to thank you far all you've done for Microsft -- and especially for your continuedefforts in this matter!"
Ballmer: "No, Bill... I want to thank you (and the Board) for the support given me over the years -- and especially for honoring my request to retire -- at your earliest convenience..."
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by island hermit
Personally, I think Microsoft will become a company like IBM. A large company that is a shadow of its former self but still relevant in the corporate world because of its services.
Just because IBM has changed its business focus doesn't mean it is a shadow of its former self. Far from it, no matter which really important metric you use. Success is not merely measured by marketshare in the consumer world.
Given that IBM walked away from the PC market a few years before the dawn of the age of tablet (whilst near the top of the heap), the proper perspective is that they were frigging brilliant - one of the most brilliant transitions any large business has ever made. Microsoft has never timed anything so perfectly. Nor has it made such a strategic and successful 90° shift in its history (although Bill Gates would argue IE was one such example).
Quote:
Originally Posted by m0c0s0
Scott Forstall anyone?
Quote:
Originally Posted by TeaEarleGreyHot
Ha! Also, I hear that Leo Apothekar is available.
The interesting question is whether they will hire a business manager (sales or finance person) or a technology guru to run the business.
Quote:
Originally Posted by StruckPaper
Just because IBM has changed its business focus doesn't mean it is a shadow of its former self. Far from it, no matter which really important metric you use. Success is not merely measured by marketshare in the consumer world.
Given that IBM walked away from the PC market a few years before the dawn of the age of tablet (whilst near the top of the heap), the proper perspective is that they were frigging brilliant - one of the most brilliant transitions any large business has ever made. Microsoft has never timed anything so perfectly. Nor has it made such a strategic and successful 90° shift in its history (although Bill Gates would argue IE was one such example).
The server must be acting up.
Your reply came in a long time (over an hour) after another member who also replied to my comment. That person's post included my complete comment with revisions, whereas yours did not.
Originally I was thinking of the IBM era when they had the largest loss on record for any company (at the time), $8 billion.
IBM has adapted to the changing environment. Maybe Microsoft can also do this now that Ballmer is leaving.
MS was coming very close to the point of no return before the announcement that Ballmer is leaving. The longer he stayed the harder it would be to turn that ship around.
Quote:
Originally Posted by StruckPaper
The interesting question is whether they will hire a business manager (sales or finance person) or a technology guru to run the business.
There's no tech guru on the loose that would take this job. A tech guru would start up his own business and sell it to MS or Google for way more money than this job would make. He could sell it to Apple but Apple doesn't over pay for things.
Ballmer said he could retire in 2018 after his youngest kid started college, and won't allow his children to use google or Apple products... poor kids. I can't understand how a father wouldn't want the best for his children. Imagine his kid going to college with a Surface, he'd be the laughing-stock on campus.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
None of that disproves the statement that iWorks can catch on based on the success of the iPad.
While there are exceptions, iPads are generally used for content consumption more than content creation. And iWorks will read most of those gigabytes or terabytes of files you're talking about. More importantly, the vast majority of those files are not something that would likely be accessed remotely, anyway. If you're at a level in the organization (CFO, perhaps) where you need access to all that data, you're probably not going to be using an iPad for your remote access. iPads will generally be used by sales people, service people, support people, and so on - and they need a much more limited set of those documents. Since iWorks can read Word and Excel and PowerPoint documents, that will be more than sufficient for most people.
Of course, one could argue that if you're simply using iWorks to read and write in Office format that it doesn't have a major impact on the MS Office monopoly, but that's a different argument.
I agree with you. Most of the posters who see Office's dominance also ignore how well the iPad has infiltrated the enterprise market. Since it did this without MS Office as an app, enterprise has found a way to cope without it over the last approximate three years. When you factor in the absents of MS in the enterprise phone business the vacuum filled my Apple products has been going on since 2007.
If we break down enterprise into Business, Education and Government the future of MS Office is even less secure looking.
in business, the Fortune 500 is MS Office's hold is most secure, while being eroded in the departments with highly mobile employees. In recent high profile court cases the high numbers of iPads being used by reporters in the courtroom was amazing. So, one needs to look at market segments within business to see greater or lesser conversion to iPads. Small business seems to find the iPad more compelling for point of sale/ point of customer interaction but daily I see more ways business is using the iPad to conduct business.
In government, specifically the U.S. federal government, a recent contract has completely shut MS out of consideration for the next 6 years. The contract covers phones and tablets. In fact Apple is the ONLY tablet on the schedule. People are learning to do their job without MS Office day after day, and management is adjusting very well as well.
Finally, in education, Microsoft's delay into the tablet market signals the biggest impact their slowness has cost them in today's sales and future use of MS Office. That MS is discounting their tablets below cost, and even giving away thousands to schools is a indication of what MS sees as a major loss of Office users moving forward. This year alone about a million students in high school and college will spend most/all of their time with an iPad in hand, and being taught how to use Pages and Numbers instead of Office. In addition the UI of these programs follow the same UI of the other programs they will be using on the iPad.
When these students move out into the job market they will be iPad experts and prepared for a more mobile employment world that doesn't hold Office as such an important needed skill.
All of this is being played out on a landscape where email has become a much higher form of communication and free of the need for MS Office. in addition, pdf documents are more capable and more document creation is moving to desk-top publishing software to insure that individual employees are not creating liability producing documents. MS Office is finding itself not quite DTP quality and too slow for quick-and-dirty.
For purposes of context, I left your response and my original pose intact, above:
Below, I quote an individual point and my response to it:
Clearly, OSX Pages has support for ligatures and hyphenation as shown by its help screens:
The support for ligatures varies by font as shown below (Palatino, Zapfino), I drew a line to the right of each font pair so you could gage compression. The image on the left is a document created on Current Pages 4.3 running on OSX 10.9. The one on the right it from an iPad 4 running Pages on iOS 7 (It looks exactly the same on another iPad running iOS 6). You can open, display and copy paste a document with ligatures on iOS -- you just can't create ligatures, yet!
Finally, Here is the same document opened in the iCloud Beta Pages app. No ligatures, yet -- but it is a beta:
If you are a typographer or professional desktop publisher, these features are noticeable and, likely, important.
The point I was trying to make is that a large percent of users of word processors do not need these features.
It would be interesting to ask a random cross-section of, say, 100 students, typists, teachers, MS Word users, etc. -- to explain "ligatures" and "auto-hyphenation"! I suspect very few could!
BTW, In my surfing on this topic, I discovered that Word users have to do a bit of gymnastics to use ligatures -- and I didn't even know Pages supported them!
Edit: I dis some more surfing and:
You can do an entire OS X Pages document in another language -- or change languages word-by-word, line-by-line, paragraph-by-paragraph... I suspect this capability will find itself in iOS and iCloud Pages.
Eric Schmidt should run Microsoft.
Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton
Eric Schmidt should run Microsoft.
Eric Schmidt should be in jail.
his failure instead was clinging to Gates' 1990's Windows Everywhere mega ambition. which lead to continued futile consumer market initiatives (sorry, the XBox is only a niche product) and finally the misbegotten Windows 8. MS will never succeed as a consumer products company. the era when PC's were a general consumer product has proved to be temporary. the consumer PC is now devolving into another niche market, while post-PC portables dominate the mass market.
so now, Ballmer is taking the fall ... for Gates' failed vision that they shared. and Gates of course made the call to tell Bill it was time to "retire." someone had to carry the can, and it sure wasn't going to be Bill.
and now Gates is going to pick the successor too! do you think anyone Bill does not endorse will get picked by that committee? zero chance.
it's Gates of course that really needs to be fired.
since that will never happen, until he dies MS is going to limp along as now, half a strong success and half a chronic failure.
By 'in between WiFi' you mean to upload photos? If so, it might make sense to calculate the money spend on unlimited 3G/LTE bandwidth vs minimum <> maximum storage. It may be cheaper to upload/sync your Photostream over cellular using a cheaper model iPhone.
Thanks for that link. This one popped out:
Q: Your biggest regret?
Ballmer: Oh, you know, I've actually had a chance to make a lot of mistakes, and probably because, you know, people all want to focus in on period A, period B, but I would say probably the thing I regret most is the, what shall I call it, the loopedy-loo that we did that was sort of Longhorn to Vista. I would say that's probably the thing I regret most. And, you know, there are side effects of that when you tie up a big team to do something that doesn't prove out to be as valuable.
Me too. Except in Enterprise IT they'd want a roadmap. And Apple 'never' gives one, especially looking at the updates on iWork. Sure (looking at your post Dick Appelbaum) they've added features, but it's not a 'full fledged' 'Office Document Generator' for lack of a better term. Then again, the same goes for MS Office. Look at the 'new features' Excel got with Office 2010:
Microsoft Excel 2010 (version 14). Minor enhancements and 64-bit support, including the following:
That's not really a new version; that's a lame way to extort money from your subscription customers.
In W95 you could still run MS-DOS. Not only just running DOS, DOS applications 8 & 16-bit as well. In fact, I think you could disable the GUI with the flick of a switch in the boot.ini, IIRC.
But that's beside the point you are making, to which I agree. MS really has to support legacy apps. But I think they should have done that the way Apple did with Rosetta. Yeah, the greatest software ever written, that you'll never get to see ...or some similar tagline like that.
I think you mean Steve B there. And that is not what he says:
Q: Did Chairman Bill Gates ask you to stay or go?
Ballmer: No. Bill -- I mean, no. Bill respects my decision. I mean, it's one of these things when if it's -- you know, ultimately these kinds of things have to be one's own personal decision.
...as far as we can take this as fact.
This is a well-reasoned post.
The disruption has happened before... Not too long ago IBM owned 97% of the maimframe computer market with hundreds of thousands of computer installations -- each earning thousands of $ per month.
I remember reading about an event of that era... ConEd was the Electric utility for NYC. They had various branch offices where New Yorkers went to pay their bills. No internet then -- just dumb terminals connected to maimframes over dedicated ATT lines. The story goes that a bunch of customers went to their friendly local ConEd branch, cash in hand, to pay their Electric bills... But the computers/phone lines were down... Delay, lead to delay -- and after several hours of waiting, the angry crowd started a riot... Think about that! Customers were trying to pay ConEd for services rendered -- and ConEd had no way to accept their payment... frustrated, the customers rioted. More thoughts on this later.
In the early 1970s the minis began making inroads -- disrupting the maimframes. but, they, in turn we're disrupted as microcomputers began to take off in 1979...
The IBM PC and MS DOS, then Wintel dominated the scene for the next quarter century.
The next disruption began in 2007... the post-pc era,
Today we have hundreds of millions of people with computers in their pocket -- that they use continuously throughout the day.
Now we have the Internet and users that expect, nay demand, to be connected all the time, anywhere... Everywhere.
What will happen when the net/communication backbone is not available for several hours? Several days?
You won't be able to buy or pay for anything, contact friends, doctors, police... Or play games, listen to music, watch movies. You, and hundreds of millions of others, will have a computer in your pocket that is more powerful than those [temporarily] Impotent ConEd maimframes... And they will be totally useless.
What will you do? What will I do? What will we do? By comparison, the ConEd incident will seem as just a small, somewhat loud, garden party among friends....
Just out of curiosity, why won't the Ballmer videos in the story play on my MBP, (blocked plug-in), but they will play on my iPad?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum
What will you do? What will I do? What will we do? By comparison, the ConEd incident will seem as just a small, somewhat loud, garden party among friends....
To heck with the internet going down... on - 30° C winter nights I think about the electricity going down for days on end. Screwed.
I agree. Google has become a very unhealthy entity with a nasty habit of plastering the world with beta products in order to see which one might stick.
As far as Microsoft goes, everyone likes to take a poke at the top dog. They are not about to disappear from the scene any time soon. They have a range of good products, collect royalties from all the Android pedlars and do a lot of excellent research. Their Windows 8 approach makes a lot of sense in my opinion. It will really take off on the tablet side once Intel has even better power efficient processors.
I don't think MS has much to worry when it comes to iWork which is really quite a half hearted attempt from Apple at making a better MS Works/AppleWorks. There were better products with NeXTStep. In any case Apple has never quite gotten the network right.
One could argue that it is Apple that is sitting on a very thin base, not Microsoft. Phones are things that go in and out of style very quickly. Apple appears to be a phone and tablet company. For some odd reason that makes me nervous.
Anyway, I wish SB well. The generational change is happening. Nothing stops time.
Philip
you actually don't beleve the "party line" here, do you?
Yeah,,,
At that level, the "actual act" never needs take place...
Probably, it went something like this:
Ballmer: "Hey Bill, What's this all about?"
Gates: "The Board and I have been discussing your desire to retire -- with this new direction we're taking, we would like your commitment to stay on up to 12 months until we find a qualified replacement -- to assure an orderly transition to the benefit of Microsoft, our customers and employees and Microsoft shareholders."
Ballmer; "Retire? 12 months? Replacement? New direction... Orderly Transition... Shareholders... Er, Ah... Yes... My family will understand... And we will appreciate it if you find a replacement ASAP -- but we also understand the need for an orderly transition... 12 months? Yes, I will commit to stay on up to 12 months until you find a qualified replacement"
Gates: "The Board and I want to thank you far all you've done for Microsft -- and especially for your continued efforts in this matter!"
Ballmer: "No, Bill... I want to thank you (and the Board) for the support given me over the years -- and especially for honoring my request to retire -- at your earliest convenience..."