9 ms·

Office 2016 Is Microsoft's Best Hope to Show It's Changed

39 points by howsilly 11y ago

zero-rated 11y ago
Microsoft has changed in what way? It no longer spies on its users and reports them to the CIA?
buffoon 11y ago
The marketing of "we are sorry and we are listening to our users" which turned out to be a load of crap when Windows 10 came out turned me off to any promises made in the future.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  They do listen though.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    By reading all your secrets.
    - drdaeman 11y ago
      Was there any claim that MS products, unknowingly to users, send users' private data, that was proven true by being reproducible and/or having independent verifications from well-trusted third parties? What's known (and can be independently verified and reproduced) are search queries, crash reports, hardware specs and new executables. Mostly, if appropriate settings are not disabled. And performance metrics, but their sensitivity is mild at best. Don't get me wrong - it's not any small deal and it is already quite sensitive, but this is nowhere near "all secrets". There are a lot of outcries about serious spying - on the order of webcam shots, audio streams or even hard drive scans on typing in movie names, yet I haven't seen any details and highly suspect those are rumors and speculations at best. Is there anything like those rumors - a private data leaks that can't be justified (i.e. not usual "search improvements" or "malware protection" stuff), but that can be verified and reproduced? I bet, many would love to hear about some, check the facts and went to police and/or court with those. We do have state-of-art decompilers, protocol analyzers and IDS software. Yet I'm somewhat bothered by the gap between the rumored privacy implications and analysis published.
      - buffoon 11y ago
        There is plenty of discussion out there and no conclusive results. However there is a vague set of privacy notes in an EULA, a dodgy looking agreement between the EU and US over data export/sharing, data shooting out even if everything is turned off and most importantly.... ... not a word from Microsoft on the matter. I'd expect them to conclusively defend themselves from such allegations, but no, the marketing mill is still going on non stop. To be honest it's like a toddler talking incessantly to avoid talking about the puddle of piss he/she is trying to hide.
        Someone1234 11y ago
        How are Microsoft meant to respond when there is no concrete accusations to begin with? It would be like trying to nail jello to the wall, they will say one thing and tons of people will claim that isn't what they're accusing Microsoft, and Microsoft is skirting the topic. This whole thing started because three things happened at once: - Cortona got released (with a bunch of privacy options, since they want to support the same functionality as Google Now, so email access, location, etc). - Microsoft moved tons of privacy settings from previous versions of Windows into one unified location. - Microsoft is trying to do continuous development so wanted analytics related to how people are using their software (so they know what to focus on). The ironic thing, to me, is that Microsoft unlike Google/Apple/et al decided to put all of the privacy settings in a single location (the new Privacy category in settings), and it was THAT which really got them into trouble. If they had left the privacy settings scattered all over the place, I doubt we'd be discussing this right now. Ultimately it is up the accusers to show what Microsoft is doing wrong. It isn't up to Microsoft to respond to vague hand waving and FUD. So far I am yet to see one shred of evidence that they do anything beyond what the privacy settings screens claim.
        AlexandrB 11y ago
        > - Microsoft is trying to do continuous development so wanted analytics related to how people are using their software (so they know what to focus on). If this is true, why are the same analytics and telemetry slowly being back ported to Windows 7/8 where no continuous development is happening?
  - buffoon 11y ago
    And completely ignore you, you know like Apple circa 1994-1997...
  - JimmaDaRustla 11y ago
    Windows 7 was the turning point I remember, when Gates came back to make up for Vista and they took every piece of feedback possible.
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      I meant to mock the win10 privacy issues. Not MS customer care.
    - Someone1234 11y ago
      Windows 7 was just a re-badged Vista with a sprinkling of new features. None of the criticisms that people try and lay at Vista's feat are untrue about Windows 7. Vista largely got criticised for: - Higher memory usage (than XP). - Driver issues (in particular graphics and sound). Because Microsoft made changes to the Windows Driver Model, and big name manufacturers (Nvidia, Creative, et al) weren't ready at release, and produced either buggy drivers, or no drivers at all. The reason why Windows 7 was better received is: - It wasn't called "Vista." It was/is fashionable to bash Vista. They could have literally re-released Vista without one change and it still would have been treated better than Vista was (which is essentially the 7 strategy). - Hardware moved forward. Vista and 7 don't run well on 1 GB of RAM. By the time 7 shipped most new PCs had 2 GB or more. - Drivers were fixed/improved. When 7 shipped it ran Vista compatible drivers which were time tested by that stage. Ultimately I just roll my eyes at people who continue to be critical of Vista. At least 8/8.1 I understand their perspective (Start Screen, etc), but trying to bash Vista while holding up 7 as this incredible release is just strange given how similar the two are.
      - redxdev 11y ago
        Whatever your thoughts are on Vista, the changes pretty much had to happen. The old driver model was just that: old. Something had to give, and unfortunately a lot of companies weren't ready. Windows 7 cleaned up much of the UI, fixed some performance issues, and was released at a time that drivers and memory usage weren't as big of a deal. Does that make Win7 that much better than Vista? Not really, but it does make Win7 a better release simply due to timing. I'd say that Apple could have had a similar issue with going from OS9 to OSX, though they at least had a long period of some degree of backwards compatibility. They, however, handled the transition much better since they controlled all of the hardware and drivers.
- ManFromUranus 11y ago
  >which turned out to be a load of crap when Windows 10 came out How did it turn out to be a load of crap? They changed the UI to cater to user preferences. What was missing for you?
  - buffoon 11y ago
    The privacy changes, the license changes, the authentication changes, the cloud lock in, the general unreliability of it, the fucked up updates, the poor GPO support, the enterprise updates and LTS picture, the ad-supported default apps, the fudged upgrade process. I could go on all day about what a gigantic turd it is, but hey shiny shiny! On the subject of the UI, it does precisely nothing that anyone wants or asked for. People wanted a stable, reliable desktop operating system but the just marched forward with pushing "modern apps" which are all incoherent, buggy, slow, suffer major usability problems with both touch and mouse and are brow beating this into people at every available opportunity as the next best thing. So basically everything.
    - WorldMaker 11y ago
      1) The license changes were directly from decades of user feedback: people don't buy upgrades to Windows, they buy machines with Windows on it. Microsoft listened and now Windows is licensed and updated perpetually to a given hardware configuration. 2) Windows still supports Local Accounts as well as it ever has, and with feedback it's now much more obvious how to create one if you don't want "cloud lock-in". With the latest build out to Insiders even Cortana allows you to use a Local Account and opt in sign in to a Microsoft account only for Cortana features. Certainly seems to me that Microsoft is listening and trying to balance the feedback of the paranoids like you and the people that appreciate the convenience of cloud features such as myself... 3) Giant Enterprise "Threshold 2" release is expected to drop November-ish with greater support for GPO, BYOD, LTS, and all the Enterprise appeasing buzzword acronyms that "admins" love and users live with and/or hate. Microsoft appears to be collecting a lot of feedback to work on to build this Enterprise push, including a lot of feedback from the few companies to actually try and use Windows 8 (as opposed to all the ones steadfastly "Windows XP or Death"/"LTS for Life"), which had a lot stronger Enterprise capabilities than people seem to have given it credit for... 4) The UI is doing a lot of things that people want and ask for: better handling different DPI across multiple screens, better handling touch, better handling DPI in general, increasing better access to good typography and design principles. Apple does it and gets applauded, Microsoft tries to do it and people call them tyrants and "brow beating". Here again, Microsoft is clearly doing everything they can do based on the feedback they are getting. So much so that they've even backpedaled on many of the things that once made "Modern Apps" truly "Modern" in terms of fresh, smarter approaches to common problems (I was a fan of the Charms bar and what it tried to accomplish, may it rest in peace; also, hamburger menus, sigh). Apple never had to deal with as much "who moved my cheese" hatred in the transition between Carbon and Cocoa as Microsoft seems to be working with here.
elorant 11y ago
While I’m a Windows user buying a lot of MS’s developer tools, I fail to see the need for changing Word every couple of years. I still have Office 2007 which covers 95% of my needs.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  How is the 'online' side of Word 2007 ? It seems that this release is hitting the right amount of online friendliness, simple yet full featured.
  - makosdv 11y ago
    It doesn't have an 'online' side... which is one of the main points. Why does a word processor need to be online?
    - yoz-y 11y ago
      There are a lot of benefits to have an online side when you routinely write documents in groups.
    - jasode 11y ago
      One online feature some users would welcome is integrated collaboration.[1] Yes, a group of people could invent workarounds such as using Dropbox and copy files to new names such as PetroleumContractVersion1.docx, PetroleumContractVersion2.docx, PetroleumContractVersion3.docx, etc. Other manual methods of sharing could be blasting email attachments back and forth and CC'ing collaborators. Those methods are tedious and error prone. Another option is to install a SharePoint server and use its document sharing features. That's probably overkill and many folks would think the Sharepoint "cure" is worse than the disease. Since many folks find GoogleDocs sharing feature to be useful, it seems logical that adding such capabilities to a desktop word processor would help many workflows. [1]https://www.google.com/search?q=office+2016+collaboration https://www.google.com/search?q=office+2016+collaboration
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      As other said, if you're a writer, you may not really need real-time instant online collaboration. But for many tasks, sharing, reviewing, editing collaboratively could be gold, especially if the process is lean. The video hinted at that, even though, all video demos are lean and seducing :)
stephendicato 11y ago
I understand this is journalism, but the pictures give an ominous tone that, regardless of how much I read, I can't overcome. No one is smiling or looks remotely happy.
- baldfat 11y ago
  Also I think of a bunch of things that clearly shows that Microsoft has changed. They released a programing tool in LINUX for one.
andrea_sdl 11y ago
While I personally prefer other system to develop personal project (I do that on a mac), at work I use windows 10 and recently I have thought about switch from Evernote to Onenote. I wouldn't have imaging that in the past, mostly because the microsoft product were so unpolished that were terrible to use (although sometimes very advanced). microsoft IS changing, and I think they are moving in the right direction. (I don't agree in all of their choices, but I like the result).
- ManFromUranus 11y ago
  > mostly because the microsoft product were so unpolished that were terrible to use Unpolished compared to what? Open office? Apples offerings? Surely you are joking. MS Office is probably the most polished and feature rich office suite out there. For me nothing else compares, the only factor that was off-putting about using office was the cost. The cost deterrent has largely gone away, so for me there's almost no reason to use anything else, other than to investigate future alternatives.
  - JimmaDaRustla 11y ago
    Ya, I don't know what he is talking about either...Office has always had complete and fully functional features in every release - you never got a product which didn't have features of it's predecessor (maybe aside clipart/wordart or gimmicky stuff like that), nor partially implemented features.
    - viraptor 11y ago
      Office 95/97 was a time when you had to open the file in the same version it was saved in or the formatting and any embedded objects could change. This happened both ways - not just a backwards compatibility issue.
  - viraptor 11y ago
    Things can work badly in absolute scale, not just compared to other products. Office 95 was full of bugs, pain to use, and almost designed for future compatibility issues. It ate you data when you weren't looking.
smegel 11y ago
> and a machine learning-based help feature called Tell Me Uh oh.
- willis77 11y ago
  "It looks like you're trying to write a potato. Would you like help?"
chrisseldo 11y ago
The group pictures suggest they're also releasing an indie-folk album in a few months.
markbnj 11y ago
Three photographs with six managers, and then the people sitting around the big table in the photo at the end are "Microsoft workers." Not engineers, designers, or writers, but "workers." I know Wired probably chose this presentation, but I can't help dwelling on where the emphasis is.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
makecheck 11y ago
It's certainly changed but the question is if it's better. I did play with the beta version of Mac Word and it was beautiful but buggy right up until the last release. And honestly, I was editing primarily bulleted lists and was enraged that it somehow to this day couldn't do that consistently (copy/paste across lines does unexpected things, indentation seems to differ on every single line, and the, er, list goes on). And then the final version came and a LOG-IN screen appeared after Word's characteristically-long launch (presumably because they have to launch an entire Windows VM or something on the Mac). That's it; you can't do anything else. So I enter what I think is my log-in ID and password and it sits there spinning for a LONG time with no functional way to cancel aside from force-quitting, and then it eventually says the log-in is incorrect. Apparently I needed some other account but it wouldn't tell me why my choice didn't work. So, Office became pretty but worse in every practical respect and far worse in some brand new ways. Seems to me Microsoft is about the same it has always been.
- tdkl 11y ago
  > So, Office became pretty but worse in every practical respect and far worse in some brand new ways. So, it tightly follows their other popular recent product shipped then.
- IMcD23 11y ago
  Office for Mac OS has been around for longer than Office for Windows. It is all developed natively and is not as you said, a Windows VM running it.
  - e40 11y ago
    Agreed. I've been running the Mac OS X Offce 365 for a couple of months. It's native and very Mac like. Excel has crashed a few times on me, which is what I use mostly. It's downloaded large updates 3-4 times. I haven't noticed crashes after the last update.
    - makecheck 11y ago
      It doesn't crash but it doesn't behave the way it ought to. If I'm performing simple text edits I shouldn't be surprised by anything it's doing in terms of formatting. And if I have to wait several seconds for it to open a trivial document in its own file format that even TextEdit can open immediately, that's a problem.

39 points by howsilly 11y ago

Microsoft has changed in what way? It no longer spies on its users and reports them to the CIA?

The marketing of "we are sorry and we are listening to our users" which turned out to be a load of crap when Windows 10 came out turned me off to any promises made in the future.

agumonkey 11y ago
They do listen though.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  By reading all your secrets.
  - drdaeman 11y ago
    Was there any claim that MS products, unknowingly to users, send users' private data, that was proven true by being reproducible and/or having independent verifications from well-trusted third parties? What's known (and can be independently verified and reproduced) are search queries, crash reports, hardware specs and new executables. Mostly, if appropriate settings are not disabled. And performance metrics, but their sensitivity is mild at best. Don't get me wrong - it's not any small deal and it is already quite sensitive, but this is nowhere near "all secrets". There are a lot of outcries about serious spying - on the order of webcam shots, audio streams or even hard drive scans on typing in movie names, yet I haven't seen any details and highly suspect those are rumors and speculations at best. Is there anything like those rumors - a private data leaks that can't be justified (i.e. not usual "search improvements" or "malware protection" stuff), but that can be verified and reproduced? I bet, many would love to hear about some, check the facts and went to police and/or court with those. We do have state-of-art decompilers, protocol analyzers and IDS software. Yet I'm somewhat bothered by the gap between the rumored privacy implications and analysis published.
    - buffoon 11y ago
      There is plenty of discussion out there and no conclusive results. However there is a vague set of privacy notes in an EULA, a dodgy looking agreement between the EU and US over data export/sharing, data shooting out even if everything is turned off and most importantly.... ... not a word from Microsoft on the matter. I'd expect them to conclusively defend themselves from such allegations, but no, the marketing mill is still going on non stop. To be honest it's like a toddler talking incessantly to avoid talking about the puddle of piss he/she is trying to hide.
      - Someone1234 11y ago
        How are Microsoft meant to respond when there is no concrete accusations to begin with? It would be like trying to nail jello to the wall, they will say one thing and tons of people will claim that isn't what they're accusing Microsoft, and Microsoft is skirting the topic. This whole thing started because three things happened at once: - Cortona got released (with a bunch of privacy options, since they want to support the same functionality as Google Now, so email access, location, etc). - Microsoft moved tons of privacy settings from previous versions of Windows into one unified location. - Microsoft is trying to do continuous development so wanted analytics related to how people are using their software (so they know what to focus on). The ironic thing, to me, is that Microsoft unlike Google/Apple/et al decided to put all of the privacy settings in a single location (the new Privacy category in settings), and it was THAT which really got them into trouble. If they had left the privacy settings scattered all over the place, I doubt we'd be discussing this right now. Ultimately it is up the accusers to show what Microsoft is doing wrong. It isn't up to Microsoft to respond to vague hand waving and FUD. So far I am yet to see one shred of evidence that they do anything beyond what the privacy settings screens claim.
        AlexandrB 11y ago
        > - Microsoft is trying to do continuous development so wanted analytics related to how people are using their software (so they know what to focus on). If this is true, why are the same analytics and telemetry slowly being back ported to Windows 7/8 where no continuous development is happening?
- buffoon 11y ago
  And completely ignore you, you know like Apple circa 1994-1997...
- JimmaDaRustla 11y ago
  Windows 7 was the turning point I remember, when Gates came back to make up for Vista and they took every piece of feedback possible.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    I meant to mock the win10 privacy issues. Not MS customer care.
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    Windows 7 was just a re-badged Vista with a sprinkling of new features. None of the criticisms that people try and lay at Vista's feat are untrue about Windows 7. Vista largely got criticised for: - Higher memory usage (than XP). - Driver issues (in particular graphics and sound). Because Microsoft made changes to the Windows Driver Model, and big name manufacturers (Nvidia, Creative, et al) weren't ready at release, and produced either buggy drivers, or no drivers at all. The reason why Windows 7 was better received is: - It wasn't called "Vista." It was/is fashionable to bash Vista. They could have literally re-released Vista without one change and it still would have been treated better than Vista was (which is essentially the 7 strategy). - Hardware moved forward. Vista and 7 don't run well on 1 GB of RAM. By the time 7 shipped most new PCs had 2 GB or more. - Drivers were fixed/improved. When 7 shipped it ran Vista compatible drivers which were time tested by that stage. Ultimately I just roll my eyes at people who continue to be critical of Vista. At least 8/8.1 I understand their perspective (Start Screen, etc), but trying to bash Vista while holding up 7 as this incredible release is just strange given how similar the two are.
    - redxdev 11y ago
      Whatever your thoughts are on Vista, the changes pretty much had to happen. The old driver model was just that: old. Something had to give, and unfortunately a lot of companies weren't ready. Windows 7 cleaned up much of the UI, fixed some performance issues, and was released at a time that drivers and memory usage weren't as big of a deal. Does that make Win7 that much better than Vista? Not really, but it does make Win7 a better release simply due to timing. I'd say that Apple could have had a similar issue with going from OS9 to OSX, though they at least had a long period of some degree of backwards compatibility. They, however, handled the transition much better since they controlled all of the hardware and drivers.
ManFromUranus 11y ago
>which turned out to be a load of crap when Windows 10 came out How did it turn out to be a load of crap? They changed the UI to cater to user preferences. What was missing for you?
- buffoon 11y ago
  The privacy changes, the license changes, the authentication changes, the cloud lock in, the general unreliability of it, the fucked up updates, the poor GPO support, the enterprise updates and LTS picture, the ad-supported default apps, the fudged upgrade process. I could go on all day about what a gigantic turd it is, but hey shiny shiny! On the subject of the UI, it does precisely nothing that anyone wants or asked for. People wanted a stable, reliable desktop operating system but the just marched forward with pushing "modern apps" which are all incoherent, buggy, slow, suffer major usability problems with both touch and mouse and are brow beating this into people at every available opportunity as the next best thing. So basically everything.
  - WorldMaker 11y ago
    1) The license changes were directly from decades of user feedback: people don't buy upgrades to Windows, they buy machines with Windows on it. Microsoft listened and now Windows is licensed and updated perpetually to a given hardware configuration. 2) Windows still supports Local Accounts as well as it ever has, and with feedback it's now much more obvious how to create one if you don't want "cloud lock-in". With the latest build out to Insiders even Cortana allows you to use a Local Account and opt in sign in to a Microsoft account only for Cortana features. Certainly seems to me that Microsoft is listening and trying to balance the feedback of the paranoids like you and the people that appreciate the convenience of cloud features such as myself... 3) Giant Enterprise "Threshold 2" release is expected to drop November-ish with greater support for GPO, BYOD, LTS, and all the Enterprise appeasing buzzword acronyms that "admins" love and users live with and/or hate. Microsoft appears to be collecting a lot of feedback to work on to build this Enterprise push, including a lot of feedback from the few companies to actually try and use Windows 8 (as opposed to all the ones steadfastly "Windows XP or Death"/"LTS for Life"), which had a lot stronger Enterprise capabilities than people seem to have given it credit for... 4) The UI is doing a lot of things that people want and ask for: better handling different DPI across multiple screens, better handling touch, better handling DPI in general, increasing better access to good typography and design principles. Apple does it and gets applauded, Microsoft tries to do it and people call them tyrants and "brow beating". Here again, Microsoft is clearly doing everything they can do based on the feedback they are getting. So much so that they've even backpedaled on many of the things that once made "Modern Apps" truly "Modern" in terms of fresh, smarter approaches to common problems (I was a fan of the Charms bar and what it tried to accomplish, may it rest in peace; also, hamburger menus, sigh). Apple never had to deal with as much "who moved my cheese" hatred in the transition between Carbon and Cocoa as Microsoft seems to be working with here.

elorant 11y ago

While I’m a Windows user buying a lot of MS’s developer tools, I fail to see the need for changing Word every couple of years. I still have Office 2007 which covers 95% of my needs.

agumonkey 11y ago
How is the 'online' side of Word 2007 ? It seems that this release is hitting the right amount of online friendliness, simple yet full featured.
- makosdv 11y ago
  It doesn't have an 'online' side... which is one of the main points. Why does a word processor need to be online?
  - yoz-y 11y ago
    There are a lot of benefits to have an online side when you routinely write documents in groups.
  - jasode 11y ago
    One online feature some users would welcome is integrated collaboration.[1] Yes, a group of people could invent workarounds such as using Dropbox and copy files to new names such as PetroleumContractVersion1.docx, PetroleumContractVersion2.docx, PetroleumContractVersion3.docx, etc. Other manual methods of sharing could be blasting email attachments back and forth and CC'ing collaborators. Those methods are tedious and error prone. Another option is to install a SharePoint server and use its document sharing features. That's probably overkill and many folks would think the Sharepoint "cure" is worse than the disease. Since many folks find GoogleDocs sharing feature to be useful, it seems logical that adding such capabilities to a desktop word processor would help many workflows. [1]https://www.google.com/search?q=office+2016+collaboration https://www.google.com/search?q=office+2016+collaboration
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    As other said, if you're a writer, you may not really need real-time instant online collaboration. But for many tasks, sharing, reviewing, editing collaboratively could be gold, especially if the process is lean. The video hinted at that, even though, all video demos are lean and seducing :)

stephendicato 11y ago

I understand this is journalism, but the pictures give an ominous tone that, regardless of how much I read, I can't overcome. No one is smiling or looks remotely happy.

baldfat 11y ago
Also I think of a bunch of things that clearly shows that Microsoft has changed. They released a programing tool in LINUX for one.

andrea_sdl 11y ago

While I personally prefer other system to develop personal project (I do that on a mac), at work I use windows 10 and recently I have thought about switch from Evernote to Onenote. I wouldn't have imaging that in the past, mostly because the microsoft product were so unpolished that were terrible to use (although sometimes very advanced). microsoft IS changing, and I think they are moving in the right direction. (I don't agree in all of their choices, but I like the result).

ManFromUranus 11y ago
> mostly because the microsoft product were so unpolished that were terrible to use Unpolished compared to what? Open office? Apples offerings? Surely you are joking. MS Office is probably the most polished and feature rich office suite out there. For me nothing else compares, the only factor that was off-putting about using office was the cost. The cost deterrent has largely gone away, so for me there's almost no reason to use anything else, other than to investigate future alternatives.
- JimmaDaRustla 11y ago
  Ya, I don't know what he is talking about either...Office has always had complete and fully functional features in every release - you never got a product which didn't have features of it's predecessor (maybe aside clipart/wordart or gimmicky stuff like that), nor partially implemented features.
  - viraptor 11y ago
    Office 95/97 was a time when you had to open the file in the same version it was saved in or the formatting and any embedded objects could change. This happened both ways - not just a backwards compatibility issue.
- viraptor 11y ago
  Things can work badly in absolute scale, not just compared to other products. Office 95 was full of bugs, pain to use, and almost designed for future compatibility issues. It ate you data when you weren't looking.

smegel 11y ago

> and a machine learning-based help feature called Tell Me Uh oh.

willis77 11y ago
"It looks like you're trying to write a potato. Would you like help?"

chrisseldo 11y ago

The group pictures suggest they're also releasing an indie-folk album in a few months.

markbnj 11y ago

Three photographs with six managers, and then the people sitting around the big table in the photo at the end are "Microsoft workers." Not engineers, designers, or writers, but "workers." I know Wired probably chose this presentation, but I can't help dwelling on where the emphasis is.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

makecheck 11y ago

It's certainly changed but the question is if it's better. I did play with the beta version of Mac Word and it was beautiful but buggy right up until the last release. And honestly, I was editing primarily bulleted lists and was enraged that it somehow to this day couldn't do that consistently (copy/paste across lines does unexpected things, indentation seems to differ on every single line, and the, er, list goes on). And then the final version came and a LOG-IN screen appeared after Word's characteristically-long launch (presumably because they have to launch an entire Windows VM or something on the Mac). That's it; you can't do anything else. So I enter what I think is my log-in ID and password and it sits there spinning for a LONG time with no functional way to cancel aside from force-quitting, and then it eventually says the log-in is incorrect. Apparently I needed some other account but it wouldn't tell me why my choice didn't work. So, Office became pretty but worse in every practical respect and far worse in some brand new ways. Seems to me Microsoft is about the same it has always been.

tdkl 11y ago
> So, Office became pretty but worse in every practical respect and far worse in some brand new ways. So, it tightly follows their other popular recent product shipped then.
IMcD23 11y ago
Office for Mac OS has been around for longer than Office for Windows. It is all developed natively and is not as you said, a Windows VM running it.
- e40 11y ago
  Agreed. I've been running the Mac OS X Offce 365 for a couple of months. It's native and very Mac like. Excel has crashed a few times on me, which is what I use mostly. It's downloaded large updates 3-4 times. I haven't noticed crashes after the last update.
  - makecheck 11y ago
    It doesn't crash but it doesn't behave the way it ought to. If I'm performing simple text edits I shouldn't be surprised by anything it's doing in terms of formatting. And if I have to wait several seconds for it to open a trivial document in its own file format that even TextEdit can open immediately, that's a problem.