At Apple’s special iPhone/iPad/Apple TV/Apple Watch event yesterday, “Microsoft’s appearance was so very meaningful,” Cade Metz writes for Wired. “At one point, Microsoftie Kirk Koenigsbauer appeared on stage to demonstrate Microsoft Office apps running on the Apple iPad Pro, a new tablet ostensibly aimed at business customers. Technically, the demo was short on new stuff. Office will run on the Pro’s 12.9-inch screen, just like it runs on the smaller screens of current iPads. And one day, it will make nice with the Pro’s new stylus, Apple Pencil. But in the perception game, this was a heavy moment. Microsoft sells its own tablet, the Surface Pro. And it spent years not running Office on Apple hardware. Nonetheless, there was Koenigsbauer, helping Cook put on a show for the technorati.”
“For Microsoft, it was a moment of apotheosis,” Metz writes. “Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO last year, the company has pushed Office onto the iPhone as well as the iPad; open sourced its crown jewels of software development so people can build more Microsoft software that runs on Apple gear; and jettisoned its $7.6 billion effort to dominate the smartphone market with Nokia, a Finnish company famous for recent failure.”
Metz writes, “Kissing Cook’s ring was the next logical step.”
“If you hadn’t noticed before, the mobile wars are over… In today’s world, if Microsofts wants to be on mobile devices, it must jockey for position on the iPhone — just like everyone else. The latest position they’ll all tussle over: ‘3D Touch.’ Apple says that if you press really hard on its apps, other apps will pop up. So, naturally, everyone will want want to be one of those apps,” Metz writes. “Cozying up to Apple isn’t nearly as nice as running a market-dominating operating system. In their dreams, Microsoft and Facebook and Amazon would set their own rules for mobile devices, collect more of their own data, and bootstrap all sorts of their own services. But cozying up to Apple will have to do…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote yesterday in our live event coverage:
Thanks to iPad Pro, Microsoft’s Surface is even deader than it is now – as MSFT employees help sell iPad Pro to the world from Apple’s stage.
Back in January 2005, a lot of people laughed when we wrote this:
As we have always said, even as many short-sightedly waved (and continue to wave) the white flag, the war is not over. And, yes, we shall prevail… No company is invincible. Not even Microsoft.
Who’s laughing now?
SEE ALSO:
Apple iPads had physical keyboards three and a half years before Microsoft’s Surface tablet debut – September 10, 2015
Wired: Hands-on with Apple’s great, big iPad Pro and Apple Pencil – September 9, 2015
Apple introduces 12.9-inch iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard – September 9, 2015
And they just released that still horrible Window9/10 whatever.
It still tries to be all things to all devices and is still an abomination. A jack of all trades and master of none.
Well, maybe it is a master of privacy sucking madness that is only matched by the equally sucky Facebook and google.
Thankfully, with apple I am free of all of them. No winders, google, Facebook, etc and I feel fine.
I’m old enough to remember how Microsoft sucked up to Apple way back in the days when the Mac and the GUI was brand new and threatened to take over the PC world. They convinced Apple to allow them to look into the inner workings of the Mac OS to enable them to make a better functioning gui word processor (Word was born on the Mac). They took that info and made their Windows empire. Be careful Apple, be very careful when getting into bed with the dark side. It is necessary at this point in time, but very dangerous. Be careful, I think taking advantage of others fortune is in Microsoft’s DNA.
Well Microsoft really had no choice in this. Sooner or later this was bound to happen. I think Apple knew they sooner or later would have Word and Office on Apple products. It goes a long way to explaining why they have done such a piss poor job maintaining their own products such as Pages, Keynote, etc. When the last version of Pages shipped, it was even less friendly to serious users than the Pages 09. To write a decent research paper and keep all the citations in line, Word is still the only product that is friendly to academia. For all of Apple’s vaunted interest in the schools and getting iPads into the hands of everyone, sooner or later you have to switch to Word. This has been a burr under my saddle for a long time. Maybe now with Word on the new iPad, it will finally liberate researchers from the horrible PC world.
The iPad Pro looks very interesting, but a little pricey when the stylus and keyboard are added. I will probably order one to replace my iPad Air and add a mini 4 into the mix.
My personal preference is something with access to the file system as in OS X instead of the current iOS setup. An iOS iPad Pro with file system access would be a laptop killer for most people.
Just like when Apple launched the iPhone with only web apps only to relent and launch appsI think the path to file system access- at least on the iPad Pro- is where things will eventually move.
It’ll never happen. Apple and many others want to move people away from the file system forever. The file system is one of the most confusing parts of computing for the majority of the population. My wife still doesn’t get it, she likes the way files are handled in iOS. I think she isn’t alone, even though many of us seasoned tech users like the file system. We are in the minority.
I think you are both right in a way. I think the future is something that can combine both advantages. The gild structure as we know it won’t I believe be seen on the iPad but at the same time for pros and true desktop affiliates something that can mimic its flexibility is required on iOS. With 9 it has gone part of that way but more needs to be done I think. Then I think we will see the true potential of the iPad Pro and is later incarnations hit home.
I have never understood what it so confusing in the file system in OS X. Even my luddite wife has no problem. She refused for years to give up her typewriter and use a computer until I got a mac. Please, someone tell me what is so hard to figure out.
… and, at the next Apple Inc. event, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, will demo the team’s very own basketball App on the new TV!
Bring it on, Ballmer.
Now that the iPad pro is out, with side by side apps, pencil, and keyboard – there is no economical reason to consider anything else.
However I am sure Microsoft will try again, with the Surface 4/5/6 and will have something nice along the way, but it’s already too late. Sure there will be diehards, I know some that stuck with Motorola, Nokia, Palm – not so much as they were best in class, but because they weren’t Apple.
They will cancel the Surface, when everyone else has forgotten about it.
I love reading these ignorant comments. Name one thing that the iPad Pro does better than Surface Pro? SP3 can do 4 apps side by side, stylus is included, and the keyboard is superior. Plus it’s running a real desktop OS and has a USB port.
Surface is a $1 billion+ product line for Microsoft, and has gotten almost universally positive reviews. Apple is the one that is too late to the game, and their iPad Pro’s failure will reflect that.
As for Microsoft “kissing the ring” of Tim Cook? Haha, I literally lol’d at that one. Microsoft’s products have now permeated every major consumer OS, and the company is more strongly positioned than ever. If anything, Apple’s showoff of Office on the iPad was an admittance of their own failure to do anything besides make “Facebook machines”
It was sooo funny when Schiller came out and said: “… and who knows better about productivity than Microsoft?”; the audience goes mum (in shock), and Schiller continues: “…Yeah… These guys know productivity,…?”, after which the audience burst out laughing… (33:20 into the video).
You can’t make this stuff up!
Apple’s hubris is gonna bite Apple in its ass.
“And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
Schiller really wasn’t trying to be sarcastic; if you watch the video, you’ll notice that he is in fact a bit uncomfortable with the audience laughing.
There is an obvious reason why the audience thought the line was so funny, and it was nothing anyone from Apple said.
Schiller should be uncomfortable, he made himself a fool. And the audience is populated with boors.
The auditorium has 7000 seats, and it was quite full. To say the 7000 of them were boors is a very tasteless generalisation.
And Schiller most certainly didn’t make himself a fool. You should watch the video. His script was polite and respectful, as was his delivery. There were enough people in the audience who remember well the years of Microsoft’s abusive dominance form the 1990s and early 2000s, who found the sentence laughable (most MDN readers did, I’m sure).
Now that’s leadership for you.
“In today’s world, if Microsofts wants to be on mobile devices, it must jockey for position on the iPhone—just like everyone else.”
Wow, next up the wall street stock market and Jay Morrison, well maybe just Wall Street miracles are one thing but trolls are another.
I’m not a troll. Wall Street doesn’t like, respect, nor do they have any expectations for the future of Apple as long as Tim is at the helm. Totally unimpressed with his introductory claims of “amazing” and “revolutionary” and “magical” and any of the other superlatives he uses because what comes next is like him – not so much. Except for the exception yesterday of the prices for the new pad and it’s gadgets – they are all exceptionally expensive for what they do.
I’ve often been one of the first adopters but currently paying no attention of when the stuff is shipped and on the shelf. I’m sure I’ll drop in my local Apple Retail Store in the next 90 days or so, but no reason to be in any kind of rush and, unlike my usual practice, I very well may leave empty handed satisfied that what I already have is just fine.
And, I still don’t want the clunky watch with all its complications, tiny screen, and impossible to manage touch features.
Apple is riding on Steve Jobs’ legacy. Smiling faces and clever interjection of adjectives are the current products Apple is marketing.
You are a troll Jay, ever since Tim took the helm at Apple you’ve done nothing but lament on this singular topic, tossing in slices of disdain for Apple products as tidbits.
Frankly Wall Street can think what they want but it’s Tim that is to appear at WSJDLive in October not you and Apple makes money hand over fist with their gadgets. Taking that sort of money to the bank takes pretty good leadership.
“I’m sure I’ll drop in my local Apple Retail Store in the next 90 days” is as trust worthy as when you said you were leaving this site. That was way back in Sept 21 2014. nearly a year ago. I’m still waiting. Why don’t you show some leadership Jay?
You may not have the intellectual capacity to operate the watch but there sure are millions who do.
Troll on.
So Apple copies the MS Surface Pro – You call it genius. MS expands it’s software reach by adding ‘limited’ versions of MS Office – you call that kissing Tim Cook’s Ring, really! MS is way behind in mobile.- i agree. But they own the enterprise market, both private and public, Federal, state and local gov’t, – The military still uses Windows XP. The new Windows 10 will run android apps – Give me a break people on saying MS is struggling.
Apple iPads had physical keyboards three and a half years before Microsoft’s Surface tablet debut
So all organizations that want to make you a slave and blackmail you circa Orwell’s 1984 is “owned” by Microsoft. Betcha they have a lot more on those individuals in those organizations than that “bare all” website that is getting ministers to commit suicide by shouting their misdeeds from the rooftops.
It’s useless here, my friend. I started reading the comments and thought, “Whoa, whoa, whoa… Where are this handful of brainwashed people coming from?!?” Then I looked at what the site was called, we’re in the hart of fanboi territory, where the iSheep roam! For the record, I agree with you. This is the best they could do? Seriously?! How pitiful. All’s the Surface Pro 4 has to do is follow the rumors that have been buzzing around it lately and it’ll be golden! Long live the Surface!
Right.
Except the enterprise tablet market is squarely in Apple’s hands. Surface has marginal share, and while Android is better, iPad dominates.
MS is surely not on the ropes, but the picture is quite different from 20 years ago.
MDN has a weird and sickly obsession with MS. My advise: seek some help.
My advice: Learn how to spell.
If that’s all you got to say, then he’s made his point.
Microsoft has had a long love / hate relationship with Apple. I believe this was Apple wanting to show this as a tablet for professionals as much as MS wanting to make sure their biggest money maker stays that way. Yes there are good alternatives, however Office is the leader in productivity software. If Apple wants to get the iPad pro in large companies, like hospitals, they need to work with the what is already deployed. I know a lot of Apple haters are going to say Apple copied the Surface Pro, and in some ways they did, however in very important ways they destroyed it. Microsoft knows this.
Kissing Cook’s ring piece here is only really just the start. It’s going to take a lot more than that to make up for three decades of monopolistic douchebaggery.
Articles like these and comments from the gallery are exactly the reasons more and more people are growing to hate Apple and their user base. You are doing nothing to help the cause. Please stop this embarrassing behavior. You make me want to throw my iPad, iPhone, iPod and Mac in the garbage heap. Face it, you haven’t gotten over the fact that MS has kicked Mac and iWorks in the nether region for decades…grow up.
Should fans quit trash talking’ at NFL games? Come on! let the fans have a little fun when the team is winning! I think a lot of the bad feeling were built up by Balmer T. Clown, who made a point of belittling apple at every opportunity. Karma is a bitch!
There’s a much larger picture here. In a ‘post-PC’ world where the consumerization of technology is driving enterprises to re-consider how they provide tools for their employees, Microsoft may be thinking they need Office on the iPad platform for sales reasons, but Apple is looking at the demise of the PC platform and realizing they have an opportunity to push Windows out the door entirely.
Many organizations haven’t adopted the Mac due to a lack of available ‘Windows or business apps’. Those excuses are shrinking rapidly. With a price tag hovering around the same price as a lower tiered laptop, an iPad Pro w/keyboard and the new Pencil(awful name imho), enterprises can offer tremendous mobility, all-day battery, business-class performance and move away from ‘Dell Optimized Personal Computing’ or IBM’s horrible enterprise support for maintenance purposes.
There is a much grander vision in place, especially when you consider the recent Cisco announcement for optimizing infrastructures to work closer with Apple’s hardware. Mark my words, the enterprises that ‘get-it’ will be markedly changed in a few short years….minus Windows.’
Microsoft is the only company in the mobile phone business that has not copied apple. That is why Microsoft and Apple are getting along. Samsung and Google went out of there way to copy them. Hence the friction. It is not like the automobile industry that clearly invented the wheel?
seriously? without Microsoft Office fully on board, a lot of “professionals” would turn their nose up at the new iPad Pro. as much as i’m an Apple fan, i think Microsoft’s involvement was important to the audience Apple’s trying to target with the “Pro”. there’s mutual benefit for both companies here, and calling Microsoft’s appearance “ring kissing” feels childish and myopic.
The Ballmer fanboys commenting here seem particularly butt-hurt and beleaguered today.
The point is, fifteen years ago, Ballmer was dismissing Apple as a “rounding error”; their MS Office for Mac effort was still in existence for only two reasons: getting DOJ off their back (on anti-trust issues) and having that five-year deal with Apple that Jobs negotiated with Gates. The deal expired, but Ballmer kept Office:Mac in business since it wasn’t really losing money, but he kept going out of his way to dismiss and ridicule Apple.
The ‘ring kissing’ comment refers the fact that MS is making a very specific effort to develop their crown jewel, MS Office, for iOS, and is willing to showcase it at Apple’s big event. Ballmer would have never considered this back then.
After all the amazing graphics from the rest of the iPad presentation, Word looked like it was still stuck in an 8-bit color palette. Maybe MS’s secret agenda for the demo was to make the iPad Pro look like cheap hardware from the early ’90’s.
For all it’s faults Excel leaves Numbers in the dust. Word is more powerful than Pages, although it has some unique features.
For me, this is Microsoft getting real for a change. Microsoft has been slapped up, down and sideways attempting to keep up with Apple. They are giving up and doing what they do best: Providing Office and making it work great on Apple gear.
It seems to me that is really is a ‘reversal of fortunes’ whereby Microsoft is returning to their original relationship with Apple. Fascinating.
And this is precisely why Microsoft needed an new CEO. The only question is now, who’s going to save the Clippers? 😉
No. The real question is, when is Apple going to get a real CEO instead of this dimwit useless excuse for a CEO named Tim Cook.
How could you NOT click on a headline like that? 🙂
Schiller would have no reason to be embarrased if he felt no shame.
Because the boors laughed does not mean I characterized all in attendance, I merely pointed out that cetain members of the audience were classless. Does this help you?