Been saying this for years now. They're in the classic innovators dilema, they're turning into the IBM they always mocked.
Supposedly MS is working on Office for Android and iOS. They had better be. IMO a reasonable strategy would be to get the Office suite onto Android and iOS, and make it the best that it can be. At the same time, they should be reworking Android into their own mobile OS, using what they learn from their Office apps. Slap Bing and Outlook on it, give it a business-type aesthetic, etc. There is a gap between what Android and iPhone deliver, and what Blackberry used to. MS could create the next mobile enterprise OS, they could even bundle it along with their desktop licenses, however, they have lost so much ground, they should give up on Windows mobile.
It has always amused me that Excel started on Mac. It illustrates the basic Microsoft strategy - take something that works for someone else and fuck it up horribly. Anyone who knows the history of OOXML knows that M$ ain't doing anything that isn't deeply anticompetitive, deeply tone-deaf to the needs of the community, and deeply blind to the forces that are forcing them to change. | MS could create the next mobile enterprise OS,| Spoken like someone who has never owned a Windows phone. They were tolerable back when you could still spend the weekend hacking the registry to make them work, blowing $45 on shit from handango and restarting them fresh every morning. That ceased to be possible with the 6600. Put it this way - I was FTPing excel spreadsheets with embedded pictures shot on my phone from job sites via CDMA in 2002... and the fucking iPhone was a goddamn miracle, lack of copy-paste be damned. I'm excruciatingly sick of OS X. I am now running third party alternatives for everything - iCal, address book, Finder, Mail, everything - but the Windows machine I use to tweak my bike is XPSP3 and will stay that way forever.Microsoft originally marketed a spreadsheet program called Multiplan in 1982. Multiplan became very popular on CP/M systems, but on MS-DOS systems it lost popularity to Lotus 1-2-3. Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Macintosh on 30 September 1985, and the first Windows version was 2.05 (to synchronize with the Macintosh version 2.2) in November 1987.
No. I've only tinkered around with my brother-in-law's, and it was pretty ho-hum. That's why I think MS should just spin off their own enterprise version of Android. There's no way that they are going to be able to catch up with Windows Mobile, or a any other de novo mobile OS. After years with a ThinkPad that I wiped Vista off of for XPSP3, I was very happy to get a Lenovo with Windows 7. 7 is like XPSP3 without the excruciatingly slow boot. My only mistake was not getting the SSD version. Windows 7 on a SSD laptop, and I think I'd be set for five more years at least.Spoken like someone who has never owned a Windows phone.
but the Windows machine I use to tweak my bike is XPSP3 and will stay that way forever.
Scary thing is that backintheday, Windows Mobile was the only thing you could reasonably run. Blackberry? Please. Palm? Forget it. Windows Mobile was actually a stripped-down version of Windows, and it did okay... but they made conscious decisions to have a "start" button and a desktop and all the stuff that made XP what XP was. Which didn't pan out very well on a 240x320 screen. So they had a monopoly on the market, and were annihilated by an OS that couldn't even handle Exchange properly until version 4. XPSP3 off an SSD is pretty snappy, even on an eeePC. Just sayin'.
Honestly, I think it's too late. The iOS and Android market has met this need. People have been consuming and creating text documents, slideshows, and spreadsheets on both platforms for a long time now, all without usury MS-style licensing fees. I think Windows 8 offered (with much commotion) a solution to a problem that had already been solved, -I think they actually believed that people really needed Office Suite on their tablet. Ignoring mobile OSes, switching to a Mac really underscored how completely disposable Microsoft's cash cows (Office Suite and Windows) are. I bought the latest version of Apple's OSX for nineteen dollars and I've been using Open Office to flawlessly create and work on MS Office spreadsheets and documents, -a free solution I downloaded temporarily that has served me better than the original office suite. Why on Earth would I pay money for these products?
And if I need these solutions on a tablet, how exactly is MS going to price it to compete with Google Docs or a twenty dollar alternative in the iOS app store?
I'm not saying that MS products aren't a great choice because they are for a lot of people, but just that the factors keeping people locked in are gone to a large extent or worse, working agains their platforms. Don't get me wrong, -I think MS needs to get Office on Android and iOS, but really, they are so screwed because their margins are a joke and they let the market realize that they were not needed. They're damned both ways because resounding success in the mobile space for them would look pretty indistinguishable from failure compared to what they are used to.Supposedly MS is working on Office for Android and iOS. They had better be.
As someone who just got her boss a Windows 8 laptop, it is a fucking nightmare. Even after spending an hour redoing every setting, installing heaps of little programs to make usability a LITTLE bit more like what she is used to, disabling that stupid app screen that confused her, and making it so pictures and shit open in normal applications, she still managed to end up on some fullscreen amazon page. 20 minute phone call later I still have no idea where she is or how she ended up there or how to escape the madness. Gestures, hot corner, what the fuck ever. These are OPTIONS that should be limited to people with a little computer knowledge. The typical windows user will not understand and no matter how much Windows may try to force it upon them, it is a completely lost cause. She is now considering returning the computer for a mac because she can somehow navigate my laptop better than hers at this point. Failure all around.
Windows 8 for anything but a touchscreen is stupid, and even then I'm not a big fan, but at least it makes SOME sense on a tablet/touchscreen. On a straight up desktop or laptop? Win7 is the only MS choice right now, and will last until MS wises up and realizes they can't make cross platform (PC/Laptop to Tablet) OSes be all encompassing... it's just not going to work, and not everyone wants to do all of their computing on a touchscreen device yet. Using an OS that is optimized for touch devices on a normal keyboard-and-mouse computer is just not ideal. I do photography/design, work in IT infrastructure, and will never adopt to Win8... It's complete shit for my needs, and I already have a droid tablet for my couch-surfing. I don't need some magic tablet/laptop/mobile device and OS that goes best with that (lets pretend it is the best OS), and honestly, few people actually NEED anything beyond a smart phone for keeping in touch. Yet MS banked it's newest OS platform on that (mobile platforms), and I honestly think that was a bad move. People need desktops/laptops, and we need an operating system for that. I really hope MS comes back into the fold and makes another solid desktop OS in the future, and doesn't stick with the "mobile" junk. My company will switch to Ubuntu on all of our workstations before we'll ever roll to Win8. Win7 will last a while, so they have some time, but they are going to lose the office workstation and home workstation market if they don't get out of the "mobile is the ONLY future" mentality.
It makes me crazy everytime a tech journalist points to tablet adoption and slower PC sales as evidence that we are headed to a tablet-only world. Yes, a large portion of the population are strictly consumers, and these people have been using devices that gave them the option to create. Of course, when you remove the option to create and lower the price, these people will change platforms. However, there always will remain a population of those that create, and for these people, a platform that enables it will always be essential.People need desktops/laptops, and we need an operating system for that.
Because you cannot buy a new computer without Windows 8. If I had a fucking choice, I would've chosen 7 in a heartbeat.Microsoft has sold 100m copies of Windows 8, which means that it has sold as well as Windows 7 at this stage in the cycle.
Yeah I did that. But the fullscreen apps still kill her