“Prior to the IBM announcement I told you Apple was coming for Microsoft,” Rocco Pendola writes for TheStreet. “The deal with IBM further solidifies that notion and the related extension of thought that Apple will crush Microsoft’s enterprise business, particularly MS Office.”
“Expect Apple to make further improvements to iWork,” Pendola writes. “To its utility and availability. Last year Apple fired a shot Steve Ballmer ignored when it made iWork free to iPhone and iPad buyers. Tim Cook isn’t finished. If you’re out selling this new IBM/Apple partnership to corporations, don’t you think you’re going to point out that Pages and Keynote, for example, can perform just as well, if not better than Word and PowerPoint for a fraction of the cost and aggravation? These people (both Apple/IBM sales reps and enterprise employees) aren’t stupid.”
“These days consumer preference dictates enterprise decisions. If you’re not powerfully out in front with the consumer, you’re going to end up getting hurt in the enterprise,” Pendola writes. “That’s why it was smart for IBM to partner with Apple. Led by Apple, they’ll bury Microsoft in the same grave BlackBerry cluelessly fell into.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Beleaguered Microsoft’s strategy: Fire thousands of employees and then what? – July 18, 2014
Beleaguered Microsoft employees ‘shell shocked’ at size of layoffs – July 18, 2014
Tim Bajarin: Apple-IBM deal is bad news for Google and Microsoft – July 16, 2014
Bury? That is a light. Is there a stronger words to use?
How about ‘Entomb’?
“bury”?
Rocco took his meds, but he’s still watching the History Channel.
How about interring and entombing the walking mummified corpse of the walking dead company after driving a stake through its heart and cutting its head off? Those kind of strong words?
Or “Reduce the former glory of this majestic company to the level of selling pencils on street corners imprinted with ‘Microsoft Word Processor—version 2018’ to keep the lights on,” kind of strong words?
I kind of lean toward the latter.
Oh, Rocky must have taken his meds today. Good boy.
For Apple to bury MS Office free is not everything. Open Office is FREE and very competitive. iWork has to be better, period.
Just how prevalent is Open Office on iOS devices?
Free is great if the company backing the software is Apple.
Plus you don’t have the outrageous licensing fees from MS.
Open Office as far as I can tell is not available on iOS devices. So what?
On desktops were I work it is preferred over MS and iWorks.
When Numbers can out pivot table Excel, only then will the paradigm shift responsibly begin.
“…, only then will the paradigm shift responsibly begin.”
Let me help you with that sentence; “end” instead of “begin.”
It is better because it is backed by Apple. Period twice!
Now that just sounds like fanboy posturing, and this is coming from a 30 year Apple veteran. Apple still needs to do a lot of work on iWork before it comes close to Office or Open Office. It’s enough for my limited needs but it still has a long road to travel.
Exactly!
Fanboy posturing indeed.
You have said everything I would responded to Tflint, thanks.
And this coming from another long time Apple disciple who bought my first Apple computer, hail Lisa.
Years before bought a piss poor TRS80? Long time, fuzzy recollection so don’t flame me excessively if I got the model incorrectly. :~)
The TRS 80 was competitive with machines at the time. A buddy of mine had one and we had fun with it. Then again, we all thought Pong was pretty amazing.
Yes, I digress and it was fun for its time. :~)
If I remember correctly, it was Space Invaders over Pong that ignited the gaming revolution circa late 1970s.
Old fart alert …
Sorry even old farts like me have b
Sorry, even old farts like me have good memories.
Windows wasn’t better.
Not since the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle have more bloggers, columnists, and analysts been exposed for just how clueless they actually are.
Yes, they were having a real field day
har-de-har 🙂
Unified in their cluelessness.
Mr. Higgs Boson was not amused when his afternoon dalliance with the Librarian at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the nearest Motel 6. . . especially considering how exposed he and the librarian, Mrs. Charmonia Quark were.
Mrs. Higgs Boson was even less amused and filed for divorce the next day.
The main uncertainty in the divorce, according to Mr. Higgs Boson’s attorney, Mr. Werner Heisenberg, was what would happen to the family the cat. “Mr. Higgs Boson hates that cat, attributing to it the loss of his wife’s affection, and wants the cat destroyed,” the attorney said.
“Mrs. Higgs Boson loves that innocent cat wants it to live,” said her attorney Erwin Schröedinger, esq. “The demands to kill the cat are absurd.”
The outcome remain uncertain and can only be known when the judge opens the case.
Damn, the power blinked on my internet connection and I found an incompletely edited version posted. . . the complete version is below.
Mr. Higgs Boson was not amused when his afternoon dalliance with the Librarian at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the nearest Motel 6. . . especially considering how exposed he and the librarian, Mrs. Charmonia Quark were discovered.
Mrs. Higgs Boson was even less amused and filed for divorce the next day.
The main uncertainty in the divorce, according to Mr. Higgs Boson’s attorney, Mr. Werner Heisenberg, was what would happen to the family the cat. “Mr. Higgs Boson hates that cat, attributing to it the loss of his wife’s affection, and wants the cat destroyed,” the attorney said.
“Mrs. Higgs Boson loves that innocent cat wants it to live,” said her attorney Erwin Schröedinger, esq. “The demands to kill the cat are absurd.”
The outcome remain uncertain and can only be known when the judge opens the case.
You would think Apple already has an iWorks Pro version sitting on a shelf somewhere ready to go that’s an Office killer but still biding their time until the right moment, rapidly approaching. But, that’s just reasonable conjecture.
Well if this is true that “Apple will bury beleaguered Microsoft”, at least Apple found the one thing Microsoft ‘Excels’ in (pardon the pun)… FUNERAL PROCESSIONS! : )
Apple will never bury Microsoft. Microsoft is too big, too well entrenched and firmly in control of the cheap end of the market, an area Apple has avoided like the plague.
Apple may one day take hold of a significantly larger percentage of the marketshare they now have, but much of the market Microsoft holds is a market Apple wants nothing to do with.
I think Redmond campus would make a pretty decent car park. Add a free park n ride bus service and it could be more profitable than Xbox and bing put together.
Apple never needed to bury Microsoft. That’s MDN’s headline, which is their own mischief making hyperbole. If anything, Microsoft is quite doing it by themselves. They’ve been hemmorhaging money since the turn of this century, their management appears confused, their current OS offering isn’t selling. If SemiAccurate’s recent post is accurate, that M$ will JACK UP the licensing for Windows 7 support and force an EOL for Win7 patches and updates next year to get people to upgrade to Win8, that could work against them, and create a critical mass of defections from the platform. That’s a big If, of course, but should it happen, then Microsoft will be in trouble. I still believe Microsoft will become a much smaller company by the end of this decade.
That’s what they used to say about IBM, and a whole lot of other companies too!
One can only hope the headline is true. It has been my dream for many moons.
“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” — Mark Twain
It’s been my dream for many morons.
If you want to read comments by some really delusional people, go to the original article and checks out the comments.
The MS fanboys actually think they are on top. They don’t realize they are on top of a pile of shit that is slowly sinking.
The MS fanboys are correct that MS office is the industry leader in productivity office software. Certainly in PRO circles where the kiddies and the Apple flamers have no clue.
All I can hope for is do it better, Apple. Do it now. You are not short of resources, only direction.
Let’s not forget that M$ is laying off 18,000 people. Some of them are from Nokia but not all. I will have a huge party on the day that M$ is gone for good.
Pretty sure Nokia folks won’t forget Elop’s speech about burning platforms.
And you do realize, GoeB, that the iPhone division ALONE makes more profit than all of Microsoft?
Making money is what companies are about, and Apple makes much, more more than MS, and has for years.
Well Sean we all know where Apple’s bread is buttered.
Where Apple does better is another story …
I predict Apple will abandon iWork before it ever gets anywhere close to the level of acceptance that MS Office has. Instead, Apple will try to sell you a new iCloud service. That is their trend.
Mark my words.