6 ms·

> Microsoft has a monopoly How so anymore? There are clear paths to NOT use anything Microsoft if you want to. Microsoft even now has Linux offerings its a new

> Microsoft has a monopoly How so anymore? There are clear paths to NOT use anything Microsoft if you want to. Microsoft even now has Linux offerings its a new era.

ginko 9y ago
> Microsoft even now has Linux offerings its a new era. If they made a Linux version of Office and ported Direct3D to Linux, I'd be impressed. As such it's just embrace, extend extinguish again.
- baldfat 9y ago
  You mean the monopoly is due to Office and DirectX? There are plenty of alternatives still. I only use Outlook due to work but I could also get around that through several ways. Maybe we just have a different definition of monopoly? Definition: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly 1 :exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action 2 :exclusive possession or control no country has a monopoly on morality or truth —Helen M. Lynd 3 :a commodity controlled by one party had a monopoly on flint from their quarries —Barbara A. Leitch 4 :one that has a monopoly The government passed laws intended to break up monopolies.
  - Gaelan 9y ago
    I haven’t used OpenOffice much? But it feels much less polished than Office or iWork. I guess there’s Google Docs, but even that’s limited compared to even iWork. Is there anything actually decent that can be used for “Office” stuff on Linux?
    - debaserab2 9y ago
      GDocs has been the primary office tool for the past several jobs I've had across the entire staff. What can it not do that office can do?
      - deong 9y ago
        Within large organizations, I don't think there's any replacement for Excel. Google docs are great as a Word replacement, but Google's spreadsheet offering is a spreadsheet. Excel is an extremely sophisticated development environment.
        debaserab2 9y ago
        I hear this argument a lot and I still don't buy it. I use more advanced functionality than 90% of my coleagues and I don't find google spreadsheet stops me in any way. Tell me something excel can do that Google spreadsheet can't.
        dbattaglia 9y ago
        My guess is mainly legacy stuff (VBA macros) and .Net/COM based plugins that may be purchased or developed in-house at some businesses. For something brand new I would imagine Google Sheets can handle the vast majority of use cases.
        baldfat 9y ago
        Those companies need to hire programmers and use a programming language like R.
        debaserab2 9y ago
        If you're using excel as a programming interface it's going to be hard to dig out of that. Of course, one could argue that excel was never a good place for that sort of thing in the first place.
        baldfat 9y ago
        > I don't think there's any replacement for Excel That would be great. People over use Excel to no end and it causes problems. They need to use programming. Get people with R or Python and Pandas, or some other statistical program. (88% of Excel Spreadsheets contain human errors) These are human error. Use a program not an Excel sheet. https://www.forbes.com/sites/salesforce/2014/09/13/sorry-spreadsheet-errors/#69c7221b56ab https://www.forbes.com/sites/salesforce/2014/09/13/sorry-spr... One error cost $6 Billion in the "London Whale"
    - fish_fan 9y ago
      Libre office and google docs more than do it for everyone I know.
      - gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
        Unfortunately they don't (and probably can't) do it for everyone. What is needed is bug level compatibility with msoffice (including visual basic) and seemless interoperability (including add ons). Not only is this an insanely difficult target - it is also a moving and potentially hostile one to interoperate with. I've massive respect for the libreoffice developers but I don't envy them the task of msoffice interoperability.
        merb 9y ago
        Office 2003 and Office 2007 upwards don't have bug level compat. it's even worse if you used special things in your .doc files the chances are/were high to render them different between the older and the newer versions. basically nobody cared as soon as a lot of people moved to ooxml. Also Office 2003 and LibreOffice4/5 have way more in common than Office 2003 has with 2010/2013/2016.
        gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
        Bare in mind I've been often on the other side of this discussion.... None of this really matters - if you tell someone word ate a word document then they are sympathetic whereas if you tell them libreoffice ate a word document the reaction is much less favourable. I do not like this. My solution - I just refuse to use any office software.
        merb 9y ago
        well just wanted to say that the conversion between ribbon caused a lot of people problems. especially the older personal really dislikes office 2007+ upwards. basically I barely use any office software and I'm on mac where Microsoft Office is basically bloat software. And for my needs, LibreOffice/The Mac stuff or just a text editor is most of the time's more than enough. Outlook is actually a pretty good product on Windows, however on Mac it is as good/bad as the built-in mail app. (actually it share's a lot with it, i.e. account's go over apple exchange integration and search uses spotlight and so on).
    - shaggerty 9y ago
      OpenOffice stopped being supported in 2011. Most distros use LibreOffice.
    - Tenobrus 9y ago
      LaTeX and Org mode are much better and more usable than either Office or OpenOffice for me. I haven't needed to do more than copy-paste into Office documents for the last 4 years. Of course, that's not at all relevant for general market share, but there are viable alternatives depending on how technical you are and your exact needs/restrictions/use-cases.
      - felipelemos 9y ago
        But the issue here is monopoly. Or do you really think that LaTeX will somehow gain any market share from Microsoft?
      - qznc 9y ago
        How do you open docx and pptx files other people send you with LaTeX and Org mode? ;)
        sandov 9y ago
        Sending docx and pptx files, expecting the receiver to be able to open them is wrong, not OP's fault.
        ufmace 9y ago
        You might be right in a certain philosophical sense, but you're also cut off from communications with 98% of the business world with that attitude.
        _-david-_ 9y ago
        You could probably use something like pandoc (http://pandoc.org/ http://pandoc.org/) for the docx. Not sure how well it works though. Not sure what to do about pptx.
Aaargh20318 9y ago
> There are clear paths to NOT use anything Microsoft if you want to. For a lot of people there isn't. Take my dad for example. He sells weight scales for retail (think butchers, greengrocers, cheese shops, etc). Those scales are pretty much embedded PC's nowadays, they connect to the internet and can be remotely accessed to update product prices, promotions, get the daily sales numbers but also things like changing the logos and text on the receipt and a million other things. The manufacturers of those scales sell a piece of software to do that, but it's always a 100% Windows app, held together with all kinds of (outdated) MS technology like Visual FoxPro. Often they have licenses that require hardware dongles, have bizarre drivers to communicate with the hardware and it feels like it's al held together with spit and ducktape. There is no Linux or OSS alternative, the protocols aren't even published and no one cares to reverse engineer them as the market is just tiny, and the target audience has no overlap with the techies that are interested in Linux and the like. And that's just one example, there are tons of crappy, outdated, proprietary apps like that out there. Apps with tiny user bases no one cares about so no OSS options will ever emerge.
- RandVal30142 9y ago
  But all of that is not a monopoly by any stretch of the imagination. It speaks less of Microsoft and more of the vendors who find no need to change their ways. Yes it really is all held together with spit and tape, but nothing has forced them to change from it.
  - ethbro 9y ago
    It's a monopoly for those users * innumerable_similar_niches. Which translates into a pretty large part of the small business market that doesn't have any de facto choice. And WINE et al. aren't a scalable solution because invariably these things depend on odd Windows quirks and/or are generally terrible from a code/standards quality perspective. And there's functionally no way to address that because the historical-Windows-in-fact API is "every odd behavior every release of Windows has had over the years."
  - kbenson 9y ago
    Your example may be a monopoly (if there are no alternatives then Microsoft has a monopoly in that market, whether they actively pursued on or not, just as the first entry in a market has a monopoly until other entrants appear), but when talking about operating systems in general, Microsoft hasn't had close to a monopoly in a while. They still have significant market penetration and the majority of desktops, but credible alternatives exist in most cases, and more and more people are using them (thus the importance and interest in this MacOS release).

> Microsoft has a monopoly How so anymore? There are clear paths to NOT use anything Microsoft if you want to. Microsoft even now has Linux offerings its a new era.

ginko 9y ago

> Microsoft even now has Linux offerings its a new era. If they made a Linux version of Office and ported Direct3D to Linux, I'd be impressed. As such it's just embrace, extend extinguish again.

baldfat 9y ago
You mean the monopoly is due to Office and DirectX? There are plenty of alternatives still. I only use Outlook due to work but I could also get around that through several ways. Maybe we just have a different definition of monopoly? Definition: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly 1 :exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action 2 :exclusive possession or control no country has a monopoly on morality or truth —Helen M. Lynd 3 :a commodity controlled by one party had a monopoly on flint from their quarries —Barbara A. Leitch 4 :one that has a monopoly The government passed laws intended to break up monopolies.
- Gaelan 9y ago
  I haven’t used OpenOffice much? But it feels much less polished than Office or iWork. I guess there’s Google Docs, but even that’s limited compared to even iWork. Is there anything actually decent that can be used for “Office” stuff on Linux?
  - debaserab2 9y ago
    GDocs has been the primary office tool for the past several jobs I've had across the entire staff. What can it not do that office can do?
    - deong 9y ago
      Within large organizations, I don't think there's any replacement for Excel. Google docs are great as a Word replacement, but Google's spreadsheet offering is a spreadsheet. Excel is an extremely sophisticated development environment.
      - debaserab2 9y ago
        I hear this argument a lot and I still don't buy it. I use more advanced functionality than 90% of my coleagues and I don't find google spreadsheet stops me in any way. Tell me something excel can do that Google spreadsheet can't.
        dbattaglia 9y ago
        My guess is mainly legacy stuff (VBA macros) and .Net/COM based plugins that may be purchased or developed in-house at some businesses. For something brand new I would imagine Google Sheets can handle the vast majority of use cases.
        baldfat 9y ago
        Those companies need to hire programmers and use a programming language like R.
        debaserab2 9y ago
        If you're using excel as a programming interface it's going to be hard to dig out of that. Of course, one could argue that excel was never a good place for that sort of thing in the first place.
      - baldfat 9y ago
        > I don't think there's any replacement for Excel That would be great. People over use Excel to no end and it causes problems. They need to use programming. Get people with R or Python and Pandas, or some other statistical program. (88% of Excel Spreadsheets contain human errors) These are human error. Use a program not an Excel sheet. https://www.forbes.com/sites/salesforce/2014/09/13/sorry-spreadsheet-errors/#69c7221b56ab https://www.forbes.com/sites/salesforce/2014/09/13/sorry-spr... One error cost $6 Billion in the "London Whale"
  - fish_fan 9y ago
    Libre office and google docs more than do it for everyone I know.
    - gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
      Unfortunately they don't (and probably can't) do it for everyone. What is needed is bug level compatibility with msoffice (including visual basic) and seemless interoperability (including add ons). Not only is this an insanely difficult target - it is also a moving and potentially hostile one to interoperate with. I've massive respect for the libreoffice developers but I don't envy them the task of msoffice interoperability.
      - merb 9y ago
        Office 2003 and Office 2007 upwards don't have bug level compat. it's even worse if you used special things in your .doc files the chances are/were high to render them different between the older and the newer versions. basically nobody cared as soon as a lot of people moved to ooxml. Also Office 2003 and LibreOffice4/5 have way more in common than Office 2003 has with 2010/2013/2016.
        gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
        Bare in mind I've been often on the other side of this discussion.... None of this really matters - if you tell someone word ate a word document then they are sympathetic whereas if you tell them libreoffice ate a word document the reaction is much less favourable. I do not like this. My solution - I just refuse to use any office software.
        merb 9y ago
        well just wanted to say that the conversion between ribbon caused a lot of people problems. especially the older personal really dislikes office 2007+ upwards. basically I barely use any office software and I'm on mac where Microsoft Office is basically bloat software. And for my needs, LibreOffice/The Mac stuff or just a text editor is most of the time's more than enough. Outlook is actually a pretty good product on Windows, however on Mac it is as good/bad as the built-in mail app. (actually it share's a lot with it, i.e. account's go over apple exchange integration and search uses spotlight and so on).
  - shaggerty 9y ago
    OpenOffice stopped being supported in 2011. Most distros use LibreOffice.
  - Tenobrus 9y ago
    LaTeX and Org mode are much better and more usable than either Office or OpenOffice for me. I haven't needed to do more than copy-paste into Office documents for the last 4 years. Of course, that's not at all relevant for general market share, but there are viable alternatives depending on how technical you are and your exact needs/restrictions/use-cases.
    - felipelemos 9y ago
      But the issue here is monopoly. Or do you really think that LaTeX will somehow gain any market share from Microsoft?
    - qznc 9y ago
      How do you open docx and pptx files other people send you with LaTeX and Org mode? ;)
      - sandov 9y ago
        Sending docx and pptx files, expecting the receiver to be able to open them is wrong, not OP's fault.
        ufmace 9y ago
        You might be right in a certain philosophical sense, but you're also cut off from communications with 98% of the business world with that attitude.
      - _-david-_ 9y ago
        You could probably use something like pandoc (http://pandoc.org/ http://pandoc.org/) for the docx. Not sure how well it works though. Not sure what to do about pptx.

Aaargh20318 9y ago

> There are clear paths to NOT use anything Microsoft if you want to. For a lot of people there isn't. Take my dad for example. He sells weight scales for retail (think butchers, greengrocers, cheese shops, etc). Those scales are pretty much embedded PC's nowadays, they connect to the internet and can be remotely accessed to update product prices, promotions, get the daily sales numbers but also things like changing the logos and text on the receipt and a million other things. The manufacturers of those scales sell a piece of software to do that, but it's always a 100% Windows app, held together with all kinds of (outdated) MS technology like Visual FoxPro. Often they have licenses that require hardware dongles, have bizarre drivers to communicate with the hardware and it feels like it's al held together with spit and ducktape. There is no Linux or OSS alternative, the protocols aren't even published and no one cares to reverse engineer them as the market is just tiny, and the target audience has no overlap with the techies that are interested in Linux and the like. And that's just one example, there are tons of crappy, outdated, proprietary apps like that out there. Apps with tiny user bases no one cares about so no OSS options will ever emerge.

RandVal30142 9y ago
But all of that is not a monopoly by any stretch of the imagination. It speaks less of Microsoft and more of the vendors who find no need to change their ways. Yes it really is all held together with spit and tape, but nothing has forced them to change from it.
- ethbro 9y ago
  It's a monopoly for those users * innumerable_similar_niches. Which translates into a pretty large part of the small business market that doesn't have any de facto choice. And WINE et al. aren't a scalable solution because invariably these things depend on odd Windows quirks and/or are generally terrible from a code/standards quality perspective. And there's functionally no way to address that because the historical-Windows-in-fact API is "every odd behavior every release of Windows has had over the years."
- kbenson 9y ago
  Your example may be a monopoly (if there are no alternatives then Microsoft has a monopoly in that market, whether they actively pursued on or not, just as the first entry in a market has a monopoly until other entrants appear), but when talking about operating systems in general, Microsoft hasn't had close to a monopoly in a while. They still have significant market penetration and the majority of desktops, but credible alternatives exist in most cases, and more and more people are using them (thus the importance and interest in this MacOS release).