Comments on: To stellar CEO Steve Ballmer, Office without iPad support makes ‘a lot of sense’

By: botvinnik

botvinnik — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:52:50 +0000

succinct and accurate is sufficient.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:13:01 +0000

That’s all you’ve got?

By: MacRaven

MacRaven — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:21:21 +0000

Plus as a woman I think I’m viewing that hour differently than you would.

By: MacRaven

MacRaven — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:11:55 +0000

Definitely wasn’t meant in an insulting way. But I can see how you would take it that way.

By: Gerry Attrick

Gerry Attrick — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 07:25:44 +0000

I personally don’t have any use for Word or Excel. Despite Excel being a “standard”, I can do everything I need to in Numbers. Of course, I’m sure many folks in the finance world need Excel for some advanced features, but for us mere mortals, Office is irrelevant and the alternatives are good enough.

By: Derek Currie

Derek Currie — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 06:31:35 +0000

We grok.

By: botvinnik

botvinnik — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 05:46:35 +0000

you’re an idiot.

By: pgoodwin1

pgoodwin1 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 05:37:10 +0000

Agreed. Excel is a great piece of software. I’ve used it since v1.0.1 on a Mac SE in 1990.

I just wish they hadn’t redesigned the Menus (Ribbon I think they call it). It was nearly perfect. I’m still using Excel 2008 on my Mac. The newer PC version at work is just a horrid mess of menus.

By: pgoodwin1

pgoodwin1 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 05:29:59 +0000

Amen. “MS forgot its own name: MicroSOFT! Sell software to anyone using any hardware.”

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 05:02:50 +0000

the game has barely started. why don’t you watch how it plays out instead of pretending that nothing MS does is relevant?

For your info, Steve Jobs got a bail out from MS to keep the company afloat. Without that cash and promise of MS Office for the Mac, Apple would not exist today, period. MS needed Apple as a customer to demonstrate that they were not a complete monopoly. Today no such need exists, and Ballmer will happily cut off MS Office for the Mac if it stops being a profit driver.

Mark my words, you will never see a fully fledged Office running on iOS.

Moreover, the company that appears flat-footed right now is Apple. Its office suite is aimed at amateurs and is far from ready for prime time despite years of opportunity. If I was Cook, I’d shore up Apple software and release significantly improved “Pro” versions Pages/Numbers/Keynote pronto.

… and to your attempted point: baseball is child’s play. the real men play the big game this weekend.

By: hannahjs

hannahjs — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 03:34:31 +0000

How funny is the clown that shoots himself in the foot, time after time after time? Sooner or later, you realize that he is not a funny clown at all, but a demented True Believer, a captain that astonishingly is willing to go down with a doomed ship, to take one for a team that is rapidly dissipating, or most pathetic of all, a supposedly rational human unable to convince anyone to adopt his inferior product in favor of superior ones.

By: hannahjs

hannahjs — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 03:12:24 +0000

What happened in that dorm room. (Shudder)

By: Really

Really — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 01:14:02 +0000

Yep and that is the situation I am in.

I need excel on a desktop PC but I don’t need it on my phone or iPad. The ability to view an excel file is really all I need on mobile or ipad.

By: rdiddly

rdiddly — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:24:29 +0000

It’s not $100 a year for 5 users, it’s $100 a year for 5 computers. There’s a big difference. You buy it once for $100 and you get to put it on 5 devices. You don’t get to share it with 4 friends.

By: botvinnik

botvinnik — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:46:59 +0000

Mike, your “selling feature” is irrelevant. Grab a mitt and get in the game. Hello? It is 2013, not 1983.

By: botvinnik

botvinnik — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:43:55 +0000

please do not refer to the late Mr. Jobs as a whore. Thank you in advance.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:34:00 +0000

MDN: imagine what you want, this is a selling feature that you know will sell some Surface Pros and take away some sales from the iPad. Speculate away at the numbers, but don’t be so stupid as to pretend that MS didn’t just score a hit against Apple.

Apple COULD upgrade its office suite to compete, but it has COMPLETELY floundered on that front. That’s why you hear all the time about Excel, or occasionally even Open Office, or others, but NOBODY considers Numbers to be equivalent. Same for Pages vs Word. Not sure about Keynote vs PPT, but almost all presentation slideshows are BS fluffware anyway.

Productivity users demand better from Apple, and they are still waiting. Meanwhile MS Office for the Mac reigns supreme, and iOS will always remain a CONSUMER platform, not a CREATOR platform, just as it was originally intended.

The opportunity Apple has here is to deliver a better version of Office for Mac and iOS with xml filetypes read/write capable by any office suite. But based on the deafening silence from Cupertino, and the crappy software releases Cook & Co have rolled out in the past couple of years, I am not holding my breath.

… oh, and count me among the many who won’t touch Office 2013 with a ten-foot pole. Subscription-based computing is highway robbery for small business.

By: botvinnik

botvinnik — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:33:53 +0000

Office, Microsoft, Ballmer T. Clown just do not matter. They are as irrelevant to modern computing as betamax is to media, clothes pins next to an electric dryer…I am sick and tired of hearing about a word processing application created in 1983 being important. It just isn’t.

By: 8^þ

8^þ — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:16:32 +0000

$100/yr is the *consumer* version. A business Office-365 license runs a minimum of $5 per worker per month = $300 per year for that 5 user office.

By: Bob A

Bob A — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:48:01 +0000

Long live Daddy Ballmer! Life is just too much fun with him around!
The amazing thing is that no one at Microsoft has managed to sneak up behind him and give him the chop to the back of the neck.
There they all stand, marvelling in their bosses’ vision and ability to run Microsoft into the ground in just about every conceivable way possible and hardly a murmur.

Long live Steve, I like him a lot – and his strategy? I just hope that he steers the ship carefully enough that the agony of decline is a long drawn out affair, hopefully give us a few more years of mirth before the inevitable happens…

By: trondude

trondude — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:40:50 +0000

The reality is that we haven’t needed it yet, and really won’t ever, so keep your crapola Office suite, and spare us from infecting our apple gear with a useless, bloated POS un-productivity suite.

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:16:56 +0000

$100 a year for 5 users. That’s a great deal for office especially if you keep up to date with the latest version which is every 3 years like clockwork. Office is the standard for business and that isn’t changing anytime soon. This strategy is pretty solid overall.

By: Jubei

Jubei — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:52:42 +0000

The sooner the better.

By: MacRaven

MacRaven — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:45:31 +0000

But I’d pay money for an hour with Steve Jobs (well, when he was alive thank you).

By: MacRaven

MacRaven — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:43:58 +0000

Just reading that made me puke a little.

By: MacRaven

MacRaven — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:41:38 +0000

As we’ve said he became CEO because of the luckiest College Dorm Room assignment in history!!

By: MacRaven

MacRaven — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:39:27 +0000

As I said on another thread, if for some odd reason the Mac apps won’t do, try http://www.openoffice.org next. Anything but the Sloth Suite.

By: Rorschach

Rorschach — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:35:34 +0000

There are very few people I know who need Excel in their day-to-day lives, and I have a wide circle of friends and aquaintancies. There are a few people I work with who need to use it, but only on desktop machines; I can’t imagine any of them needing a mobile version, the sales guys have laptops, and, possibly use it, but I’ve never seen it open on their machines when they’re in.

By: Aaron M.

Aaron M. — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:30:58 +0000

Basically they should’ve pulled a Sega.

By: Bongo

Bongo — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:19:00 +0000

This is true. However, the number of people who require Excel are minuscule. Most people don’t understand basic mathematics let alone have the need for software such as Excel.

Very few people will resist buying iOS products for lack of Excel.

By: hannahjs

hannahjs — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:04:15 +0000

“Loosing” still works, in the sense that PCs are being driven into the ground, or are preparing for interment.

On the other hand, Surface IS taking off, in the sense of those notorious commercials showing them airborne in outdoor martial arts clickfests.

By: Synth

Synth — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:51:22 +0000

This is exactly correct. Now you have 100s of millions of Android and iOS users who have done just fine for 5 years with no Office (or Windows).

When it became clear that the iPad was a huge hit, MS should have jumped in with an iPad optimized version of Word and Excel and given up their dead fantasy of Mobile domination.

Now, they have neither hardware sales, OS sales nor app sales worth anything.

MS forgot its own name: MicroSOFT! Sell software to anyone using any hardware.

By: doctorskywalker

doctorskywalker — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:48:56 +0000

Nothing lubricates like $$$$ so yes while he still has a job.

By: Really

Really — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:48:21 +0000

Pretty much.

excel is an amazing piece of software.

By: Liminal Ghost

Liminal Ghost — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:42:54 +0000

What do the anal-ysts say of Microsoft & Surface anyways(?)

By: Really

Really — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:42:05 +0000

All I need is the ability to access excel spreadsheets on the iPad and I’m covered. There are plenty of ways to do that so I don’t need office on the iPad.

Leave office on full blown desktop systems and provide a clean interface for accessing SharePoint workspaces on the iPad and MS will have the bases they need covered.

By: Ballmer's left nut

Ballmer's left nut — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:40:29 +0000

I thought I would flounder without MS Office on my iPad. I was in a quandary for a couple of weeks pondering what to do. But I dived into Pages, Numbers and Keynote and haven’t looked back since. Mind you I did have iWork on my Mac before plunging into iWork for iOS so I knew what I was getting into.

Apple should do more promoting the iWork suite for iOS. It fills in a missing piece of the jigsaw better than you think it would. A touch device isn’t optimised to edit long, complicated documents or spreadsheets anyway so the full functionality of an Office suite isn’t needed.

Instead of complaining about the absence of Office on the iPad/iPhone, give iWork for iOS a try. You might like it.

By: auramac

auramac — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:34:14 +0000

Losing.

By: BMWTwisty

BMWTwisty — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:31:37 +0000

And a hundred bucks a year is a smart move?

By: Synth

Synth — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:25:31 +0000

Did the same thing in 2005–I receive Word and Excel docs about once a week.

No problemo.

By: greggthurman

greggthurman — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:19:31 +0000

Squeal as you might, there is no replacement for Excel. Not iWorks, not Google Office.

By: greggthurman

greggthurman — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:17:33 +0000

Frankly I think Office 365 is a smart move. I don’t want a MSFT product ON my iPad, but I use Excel extensively. Having access to my Excel spreadsheets while on the road, with the ability to tweak them, would be a big plus.

With LTE coming online and much faster WiFi I don’t see a speed issue accessing Excel wirelessly. I’ll bet there is a large market (enterprise) of users, just like me, that will embrace Office 360 as their iOS solution. I do this now with QuickBooks.

To protect myself from sloppy, crappy MSFT software I will backup my online work to my iMac, and a licensed copy of shrink wrapped Office.

By: sjmdesigns

sjmdesigns — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:14:25 +0000

The fact that this guys is still CE… errrr… wait…. HOIST!!! May he reign forever

By: hannahjs

hannahjs — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:05:24 +0000

Even better, using the same shape to drill square holes:

http://curvebank.calstatela.edu/reu/reuleaux.htm

By: 3l3c7ro

3l3c7ro — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:04:18 +0000

In app sales are subject to the 30% too. Advertising and streaming cost money. There is no free ride.

By: Derek Currie

Derek Currie — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:02:37 +0000

#MicrosoftSuicide

It keeps getting better.

By: hannahjs

hannahjs — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:01:52 +0000

Which could actually work, as Poul Anderson revealed:

http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf613

By: 3l3c7ro

3l3c7ro — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:00:42 +0000

That is a great improvement! One less bump than a bicycle with square wheels. 25% less bumps!

By: Grifterus

Grifterus — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:59:05 +0000

I posted something on my own blog. Apparently, Ballmer is doing exactly the opposite…

http://carlomazzini.blogspot.com/2012/05/future-of-microsoftof.html

By: peterblood71

peterblood71 — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:53:04 +0000

The David Miscavige buffoon of Microsoft.