9 ms·

This is a good and thorough article. The author got down to brass tacks pretty quickly and brings up interesting hypothesis about $MSFT. That said, I do have o

This is a good and thorough article. The author got down to brass tacks pretty quickly and brings up interesting hypothesis about $MSFT. That said, I do have one gripe: > To oversimplify Notion to its demographics, it is Office 365 for people below age 35. I recognize this is an oversimplification, but even so, it seems like a stretch. Notion is a decent product, and I have used it for a few small-scale team projects in uni (mainly for Kanban-related stuff) - but to call it a replacement for O365 is an exaggeration at best. Yes, you can have pretty, nested documents in Notion and that's great, but a tabular database in Notion is by no means a replacement for Excel or even Google Sheets. The velocity that is afforded by Excel in terms of formulas is unmatched and there's a reason it has yet to be unseated as the kingpin of modern finance. Most young people I know use a combination of Discord + Google Suite to collaborate. I am aware this is slightly anecdotal, but I am also having a hard time imagining myself as a founder and then asking my CFO to use Notion to prepare investor pitches. Source: Am 23 :)

tester756 5y ago
> Discord + Google Suite I use shitton of MS products, but I cannot switch from Google's gmail, docs and drive to anything. I hate MS login page and endless redirects between their services I cannot explain what puts me off, but Google's (gmail) login page and way better switching between apps feels way better. Also I have feeling that MS account is more "formal", idk how to explain it.
- tempnow987 5y ago
  God, if you have personal and work accounts under the same email bring on the insane pain. There is sometimes confusion on the MSFT backend (or was) in these cases and you'd get jammed into weird corners (ie, reset would do just your personal so you couldn't ever get a work account reset etc). It's something about their federation tech vs google. Google, if you are in wrong service, nice switch account, one redirect it feels like.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    Ye there is something fishy about Office365 login. Sometimes the account switch for no good reason. Even if I just entered the username and password in a prompt. It is a great mistake login in on different accounts on the same computer ...
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Exactly. this is such a pain, especially if you happen to be apart of one organization that's AAD Connect and one that's full AAD (Azure Active Directory). As far as I can tell, the easiest way to switch users is to go to https://www.office.com/login?es=Click https://www.office.com/login?es=Click directly (?es=Click is important) which will present you with all the accounts you're 'Signed in' with, even if office.com has you locked into one. Then you can use the app switcher to switch domains, which ensures the correct account.
  - pc86 5y ago
    I thought this was bad, then my work changed from on-prem AD to Azure AD. Now my account is "linked" to my computer, and the only way I can log into a different Outlook inbox is by opening an incognito window. It really does feel like something is broken on the back end of Microsoft's SSO, but I'm sure it's just so complicated with decades of cruft that it's hard to dig out.
    - Hallucinaut 5y ago
      Same here but with the added pain of an early "onmicrosoft.com" account that splits our users between their domain and ours, doesn't let me use my work domain address, and yet denies the onmicrosoft.com one access because it's not a "work or school account". It's seriously bemusing to be logging in to an organisational account with admin access only via a personal Gmail account username but there's literally no migration path for these early adopter accounts.
  - FourthProtocol 5y ago
    I wonder if this is a generational thing. If there's a decent app for a thing, I use the app¹. In this case Outlook. I have 4 email addresses to manage my personal email, throw-away registrations, website comms, and website SSL/admin. I never access any email ever from a browser - Outlook is unbelievably good, and with the .PST file size restrictions no longer being restrictions I have my entire email archive of ever in it. Been doing things like this since 2002. ¹ Social media is the exception. Where I have multiple social media accounts (Instagram) I use seperate browsers (Edge for hobby account, Firefox for personal account). This is not ideal but the workflow is easy.
- elliottinvent 5y ago
  > I hate MS login page and endless redirects between their services I dread logging into any Microsoft product for this reason, I just know it’s 30 mins of BS trying to find different passwords for different accounts, none of which relate the thing I’m actually trying to do.
  - azalemeth 5y ago
    And it carte blanch refuses to work in lynx or links too, even if the site behind an SSO login would work perfectly. Bah.
    - azalemeth 5y ago
      This is getting downvoted quite a lot. I don't understand why. There are lots of legitimate uses for a text-based browser, from quickly looking something up on an SSH session to trying to script something. Servers are often placed behind an SSO wall and Microsoft's authentication regime means that you can't, for example, curl server/data without passing a token coming from a graphical browser and a whole world of pain. This is explicitly a design decision from Microsoft: you need to support javascript to use their SSO login.
  - syradar 5y ago
    A password manager and the Authenticator app makes it dead simple
    - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
      It's really not. I have no problem remembering or calling up the passwords or emails for my personal, Xbox, current work, previous work, or previous student (!) accounts. And yet Microsoft somehow gets them confused; I haven't ever signed in with this PC or from this ItoP address to my student account, the email no longer works, and it obviously can't access my work document...but something is tied together there and MS insists that must be the account I want to use. Private windows don't always fix it either, there's something shady going on behind the curtain.
- lumost 5y ago
  Anecdotally, O365 products always felt like disjointed attempt by various engineering and sales teams to put a modern spin on the client side offering. In these contexts, it never had to be good - but just similar enough to the old products that excel, word, and outlook power users would use it and find value. GSuite, Notion, Confluence, and others appeal to an audience that either never required MSFT office nor felt the need to become power users in it.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  I use gsuite for my own needs, but unfortunately whenever I deal with anyone on the non-technical side (marketing, support, etc) I always need to switch to word/excel/powerpoint. I have been waiting for this to change, but I can't yet free up the gigabytes of space on my work laptop that is currently occupied by MS software.
- nsonha 5y ago
  I don't know why people like gmail so much but I found gmail's design, or Google's Material language in general, really bloated. Outlook.com has a flat and simple layout. Of course it's inferior to gmail in search and I don't understand why they makes me type out the "@outlook.com" part at login. Another reason I use outlook is that I already gave everything else to Google so just diversify a bit.
  - bear8642 5y ago
    >I don't understand why they makes me type out the "@outlook.com" part at login. Probably due to that's not the only address they support still - I've got a hotmail.co.uk account and outlook login page for me. Another thought is universities and other groups use outlook as their MX signing in via outlook.com which can then redirect
    - atdrummond 5y ago
      Yup - my old LSE e-mail was via outlook.com
    - nsonha 5y ago
      gmail has the same thing, but username will autocomplete to @gmail.com unless otherwise provided
    - anothernewdude 5y ago
      If only they had different websites or domains to use for those different login pages.
- mbesto 5y ago
  > but I cannot switch from Google's gmail, docs and drive to anything. Until you: - Use Google Drive and its subpar desktop experience of sync'n files (OneDrive is far worse, but Dropbox+MS Office beats it out) - Experience Gmail's hostile user stance against non-Google calendaring. (1) Automatically creating Google Meets for every invite (or did they fix this recently?) and (2) the terrible formatting that gets sent to non Google-based accounts that gives me the "fingers on the chalkboard" feeling every time it gets sent to my O365 based email. > I hate MS login page and endless redirects between their services 100% agree. > Also I have feeling that MS account is more "formal", idk how to explain it. Agreed. And I feel like anyone who sends me email/cal invites from GSuite are essentially amateurish. Can't explain it either.
  - anothernewdude 5y ago
    Desktop experience? This isn't the 2000s grandpa.
    - smt88 5y ago
      There is no web substitute for Excel yet, especially when you get into bigger files.
      - anothernewdude 5y ago
        Because at web scale you don't use individual files.
- annexrichmond 5y ago
  > I hate MS login page and endless redirects between their services whenever I login to Gmail it redirects me to YouTube and then back to Gmail
- KronisLV 5y ago
  > I use shitton of MS products, but I cannot switch from Google's gmail, docs and drive to anything. Here's my libre stack: - Thunderbird for e-mail (whichever provider you like, i also self-host a mail server for automation etc.) - LibreOffice, which i use as a local piece of software, because web office apps rub me the wrong way - Nextcloud, which i also self-host and which has both desktop software and mobile apps Of course, that's not something that everyone might want to use for themselves, but personally it has worked out pretty nicely for me, allows me to keep my data private (for the most part) and is a rather cost effective way of doing so!
  - naikrovek 5y ago
    - KronisLV 5y ago
      > no one asked! Hmm, but the above post clearly states: > ...but I cannot switch from Google's gmail, docs and drive to anything. Is me offering workable alternatives counterproductive or unhelpful? The fact that the software is free and open source is just a nice boon to have and something to mention in my eyes. Here are the links for the aforementioned software so that anyone may attempt to switch to it, if they so desire. Thunderbird: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ LibreOffice: https://www.libreoffice.org/ https://www.libreoffice.org/ Nextcloud: https://nextcloud.com/ https://nextcloud.com/ (the latter needs a server, much like Google Drive does, have a look here for a non-self hosted option if that seems like a hassle: https://nextcloud.com/providers/ https://nextcloud.com/providers/) If anyone has thoughts on the viability of any of these solutions, hearing arguments for or against them would also be nice! I know for a fact that many prefer to just use web browsers nowadays as opposed to installing software on each platform locally, which could be one such argument!
      - orionblastar 5y ago
        LibreOffice also opens up Wordperfect documents. My wife had a church project and one of the teachers had Wordperfect. Office could not read it. So we coverted it in LibreOffice. Also LibreOffice can edit PDF files so no need for Acrobat Pro.
- StreamBright 5y ago
  It is a running joke in our team that MS cannot even implement a login page without problems.
  - rand49an 5y ago
    To be fair, the authentication for Microsoft is far more complex than any other comparable system. They have to deal with their own Microsoft accounts (Outlook, Live, Hotmail...), federated domains (via ADFS or third parties) and domains hosted in 365 too - Some of those being synced passwords from AD, some of those using pass through authentication from local servers... Google just has to deal with accounts with Gmail domains and third party domains that they host.
    - StreamBright 5y ago
      I totally get that. This is why it would make sense to implement login a way that it is obvious to the user what is happening. I am not sure how much time I wasted on trying to figure out which system I am logging in to and with.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Yes, the article is good but that's where it goes off the rails. There's lots of talk about how MS has 96,000 "talented engineers". Yeah? Where are they then? My experience of Microsoft products in the past decade, both Azure and Windows, as a developer, has been extremely poor. The decay inside the Windows org has been very sad to see in particular. Windows was never exactly bug free but it had a certain robustness about it simply due to the sheer weight of apps using it. The Win32 docs were extremely verbose but mostly did tell you what you needed to know. But, those apps have been evaporating for 20 years and it shows. From the perspective of a developer trying to do stuff on Windows in 2022 is an exercise in frustration. Nothing modern works right and their developers don't seem to know or care. Trying to do absolutely basic tasks using their recommended approaches will yield an un-ending stream of stupid, impossibly basic bugs. To name just a few bugs I've hit in recent times: they've managed to screw up things as simple as taskbar icons, downloading files from web servers correctly and restart apps after an upgrade. I never thought I'd find myself actually liking Win32 but it does at least tick all the boxes and the standard code paths are bug free. Nothing about this experience radiates experience or talent. It leaves you with the constant impression that everyone working on the Windows team is a new grad who learned C++ 3 years ago and is shielded from the reality of what their customers experience by a wall of even less talented program managers whose primary job is to post vague reassurances and empty promises to (badly implemented) web forums. That's Windows. Azure was little better. Again my experience was one of incredibly simple bugs in basic functionality, like holding TCP connections open for more than a few minutes. The fact that people keep finding "root@azure" bugs is also indicative, because usually these reveal that there's no defense in depth of any kind.
- hughrr 5y ago
  For my professional stuff I’ve actually dumped O365 and Google. I’m using Apple stuff only (pages, numbers, keynote, mail, calendar, reminders, icloud). It’s completely different to anything else and there are a few small compatibility issues but it works really really well and doesn’t stab you in the face with complex problems. Add zoom and slack and you have enough interoperability. I set three simple standards that I will not budge on which ensures this solution will remain working. Documents via PDF only. Copy via cut and paste on slack. Data via CSV and JSON only. I also only use spreadsheets internally to my “partition”. They are shitty for everything else. I’m not going into the long time rants with my extensive experience with O365 and GSuite and LibreOffice here but this feels like I’m being shafted the least hard at the moment.
  - hnhamdani2 5y ago
    I think Excel is the main moat on people/company keep using Office. Even the spreadsheet product on macOS is unmatched. I think it's the defacto tools in the salaryman-world for any backoffice work requiring some spreadsheet app. I know an avid iOS fanboy that uses Excel on Windows for their main job, it's on a different level than its macOS counterpart.
    - hughrr 5y ago
      Yes that’s true. There are better ways to solve all the problems that spreadsheets solve but no one way of solving them all in one place as badly that’s quite as good :) That hurt to write.
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    Zoom and Slack are defacto standards which have similar issues as O365 and Google. That said, I love Numbers. It has some features like easy to use formulas right out of the box. I'm not able to do it that quick/easy with any other spreadsheet product. However, given I don't use Mac on work as now, I'm bound to Microsoft Office and Microsoft Excel.
- maccard 5y ago
  > I use shitton of MS products, but I cannot switch from Google's gmail, docs and drive to anything. This is how other people feel about the Office suite FWIW.
- FuriouslyAdrift 5y ago
  I'm usually in Teams all day. It's our VoIP, file share, and chat. We have scheduling, notifications, interactive web cards, and multi-user document editing all in there as a single interface. I get that that it's a duck-on-water front end to OneDrive, SharePoint, Skype-for-Biz, etc... but it works well enough to get things done.
- halo37253 5y ago
  I can't stand google docs myself, or using gmail for actual business emails.
Jamie9912 5y ago
ucm_edge 5y ago
I'm stuck on Notion since my much older CTO thinks Notion is 'hip'. I think it's more fair to say Notion is just the counter culture solution to the same problem O365 and G-Suite try to solve. I suppose Notion kind of made sense back when were tiny, but these days Notion is just clunky and has one of the worst search functions I have ever had the displeasure of using. At least it apparently isn't doing well in our security audit and the security team is telling us G-Suite is in our future.
- kstrauser 5y ago
  I’m there with you on the search function. I have no idea what its result ranking algorithm is, but I’d love it if the top results were ones with the exact search string. Instead, we get “You searched for AWS. OK! Here are pages with awl, Australia, House, lasagna, [8 pages], Google Wave, and AWS.”
- freedomben 5y ago
  I haven't used Notion much but if the search is worse than G-Suite, that is bad indeed. G-Suite search is so bad I sometimes wonder if I'm being trolled. Google is supposed to be king of search, yet I can type in one of the words in the title of a document that I was editing a few days ago, and it won't find it, but it will find some obscure and completely unrelated string in a csv file from 2014 that I haven't opened since I uploaded it. To work around the horrible search, I literally keep a google doc that starts with AAAAA so it will always be at the top that has a bunch of links and keywords in it. When I need to find a document or spreadsheet or whatever in google drive, I Ctrl+F in there and it's a life saver. Also seems ridiculous that I have to keep my own index file in order to find anything.
  - unmole 5y ago
    Try cloudsearch.google.com. It works much much better than the GSuite search.
    - eatonphil 5y ago
      That's pretty nifty, thank you!
makeitdouble 5y ago
It depends on what O365 means to the user. A lot of people (me included) aren’t using Excel beyond opening the files to look at the graphs or entering data in predefined fields. It’s the usual 20/80 split between the people actively creating and managing the data and the ones on the receiving end. For a long time Microsoft pushed Office adoption by forcing the “viewer” to have licenses to access the data. That’s why a company would buy Office for every single employee. But now, you can have Office for the “20” part, and have them push their result to Notion for everyone else to view, do simple things with it. Notion can effectively be a O365 replacement for the proverbial “80” part. (Basically O365 is becoming a “power tool” and Notion can skoop the “casual users” slice. I see G\Suite inbetween)
- rejectfinite 5y ago
  No, because Office 365 is also the email hosting , MS Teams , Windows 10 enterprise license and management of the computer with Intune. So you still need Office 365 for each user. And then, why pay for 2 tools when you can pay for 1.
  - to11mtm 5y ago
    Don't forget optional Power Apps! This is the biggest reason MS remains a huge player though. Whether you're using Microsoft's cloud e-mail or an onprem exchange, they'll be more than happy to figure out a CAL bundle that is compelling.
    - rejectfinite 5y ago
      Email is pretty important. You really think a company would pay for Office suite, Notion and Gsuite? You are insane. And CAL is not used for Office 365 sweeite
      - to11mtm 5y ago
        I'm saying the exact opposite, that they won't. > And CAL is not used for Office 365 sweeite No, it's not, but they are used for exchange last I checked. Perhaps my verbiage was a little inaccurate, but thank you very much for the downvote and condescension.
notjustanymike 5y ago
Lotta people make this mistake. They think Notion, or Google Sheets, or Slides is the only tool they need. In truth they need all three, depending on the task at hand. Lots of product managers seem only capable of thinking in slides when Notion would be better for documentation. I've received 500 pages of content for review written into CSV file for some insane reason. And yes, I've seen people struggle to run mathematical models in Notion when Excel is right there. I try and remind people not to use a hammer when you need a screwdriver, but sometimes that's all they know.
cfcfcf 5y ago
For what it’s worth, Loop[0] is an experimental Notion compete that seems to be targeting its demographics. [0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-loop?ms.url=microsoftcommicrosoft-loop https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-loop?ms.url=micros...
webreac 5y ago
IMHO the most important period for microsoft is the 90s. There is nothing about it in this article. 1990 is windows 3.0. In 2000, it was the start of Ballmer's era with the erratic management.
lewisjoe 5y ago
There's a pattern underlying the claim: The reasons why the modern productivity suite is winning (Notion, Coda, Airtable, etc) is because they've embraced the web and collaboration. - ability to share the original source to people - tag people right inside the document. - set tasks to people and track them from within the doc. - new age collaboration features - likes/comments/hashtags built-in - ability to tag a document within another document All these are small steps towards embracing the web's nature deeply inside product instead of just shipping the native features to run over the web. But there's a catch, these modern solutions tend to lag a bit over the powerfulness of what native offers, like - powerful charting capabilities - the calculation engine of excel - pagination of documents - powerful set of formatting features Interestingly it's much easier to build the new age features into the already powerful editor than vice versa - which is why google docs pivoted towards smart canvas features instead of launching an all new app.

tester756 5y ago

> Discord + Google Suite I use shitton of MS products, but I cannot switch from Google's gmail, docs and drive to anything. I hate MS login page and endless redirects between their services I cannot explain what puts me off, but Google's (gmail) login page and way better switching between apps feels way better. Also I have feeling that MS account is more "formal", idk how to explain it.

tempnow987 5y ago
God, if you have personal and work accounts under the same email bring on the insane pain. There is sometimes confusion on the MSFT backend (or was) in these cases and you'd get jammed into weird corners (ie, reset would do just your personal so you couldn't ever get a work account reset etc). It's something about their federation tech vs google. Google, if you are in wrong service, nice switch account, one redirect it feels like.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  Ye there is something fishy about Office365 login. Sometimes the account switch for no good reason. Even if I just entered the username and password in a prompt. It is a great mistake login in on different accounts on the same computer ...
- judge2020 5y ago
  Exactly. this is such a pain, especially if you happen to be apart of one organization that's AAD Connect and one that's full AAD (Azure Active Directory). As far as I can tell, the easiest way to switch users is to go to https://www.office.com/login?es=Click https://www.office.com/login?es=Click directly (?es=Click is important) which will present you with all the accounts you're 'Signed in' with, even if office.com has you locked into one. Then you can use the app switcher to switch domains, which ensures the correct account.
- pc86 5y ago
  I thought this was bad, then my work changed from on-prem AD to Azure AD. Now my account is "linked" to my computer, and the only way I can log into a different Outlook inbox is by opening an incognito window. It really does feel like something is broken on the back end of Microsoft's SSO, but I'm sure it's just so complicated with decades of cruft that it's hard to dig out.
  - Hallucinaut 5y ago
    Same here but with the added pain of an early "onmicrosoft.com" account that splits our users between their domain and ours, doesn't let me use my work domain address, and yet denies the onmicrosoft.com one access because it's not a "work or school account". It's seriously bemusing to be logging in to an organisational account with admin access only via a personal Gmail account username but there's literally no migration path for these early adopter accounts.
- FourthProtocol 5y ago
  I wonder if this is a generational thing. If there's a decent app for a thing, I use the app¹. In this case Outlook. I have 4 email addresses to manage my personal email, throw-away registrations, website comms, and website SSL/admin. I never access any email ever from a browser - Outlook is unbelievably good, and with the .PST file size restrictions no longer being restrictions I have my entire email archive of ever in it. Been doing things like this since 2002. ¹ Social media is the exception. Where I have multiple social media accounts (Instagram) I use seperate browsers (Edge for hobby account, Firefox for personal account). This is not ideal but the workflow is easy.
elliottinvent 5y ago
> I hate MS login page and endless redirects between their services I dread logging into any Microsoft product for this reason, I just know it’s 30 mins of BS trying to find different passwords for different accounts, none of which relate the thing I’m actually trying to do.
- azalemeth 5y ago
  And it carte blanch refuses to work in lynx or links too, even if the site behind an SSO login would work perfectly. Bah.
  - azalemeth 5y ago
    This is getting downvoted quite a lot. I don't understand why. There are lots of legitimate uses for a text-based browser, from quickly looking something up on an SSH session to trying to script something. Servers are often placed behind an SSO wall and Microsoft's authentication regime means that you can't, for example, curl server/data without passing a token coming from a graphical browser and a whole world of pain. This is explicitly a design decision from Microsoft: you need to support javascript to use their SSO login.
- syradar 5y ago
  A password manager and the Authenticator app makes it dead simple
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    It's really not. I have no problem remembering or calling up the passwords or emails for my personal, Xbox, current work, previous work, or previous student (!) accounts. And yet Microsoft somehow gets them confused; I haven't ever signed in with this PC or from this ItoP address to my student account, the email no longer works, and it obviously can't access my work document...but something is tied together there and MS insists that must be the account I want to use. Private windows don't always fix it either, there's something shady going on behind the curtain.
lumost 5y ago
Anecdotally, O365 products always felt like disjointed attempt by various engineering and sales teams to put a modern spin on the client side offering. In these contexts, it never had to be good - but just similar enough to the old products that excel, word, and outlook power users would use it and find value. GSuite, Notion, Confluence, and others appeal to an audience that either never required MSFT office nor felt the need to become power users in it.
rsj_hn 5y ago
I use gsuite for my own needs, but unfortunately whenever I deal with anyone on the non-technical side (marketing, support, etc) I always need to switch to word/excel/powerpoint. I have been waiting for this to change, but I can't yet free up the gigabytes of space on my work laptop that is currently occupied by MS software.
nsonha 5y ago
I don't know why people like gmail so much but I found gmail's design, or Google's Material language in general, really bloated. Outlook.com has a flat and simple layout. Of course it's inferior to gmail in search and I don't understand why they makes me type out the "@outlook.com" part at login. Another reason I use outlook is that I already gave everything else to Google so just diversify a bit.
- bear8642 5y ago
  >I don't understand why they makes me type out the "@outlook.com" part at login. Probably due to that's not the only address they support still - I've got a hotmail.co.uk account and outlook login page for me. Another thought is universities and other groups use outlook as their MX signing in via outlook.com which can then redirect
  - atdrummond 5y ago
    Yup - my old LSE e-mail was via outlook.com
  - nsonha 5y ago
    gmail has the same thing, but username will autocomplete to @gmail.com unless otherwise provided
  - anothernewdude 5y ago
    If only they had different websites or domains to use for those different login pages.
mbesto 5y ago
> but I cannot switch from Google's gmail, docs and drive to anything. Until you: - Use Google Drive and its subpar desktop experience of sync'n files (OneDrive is far worse, but Dropbox+MS Office beats it out) - Experience Gmail's hostile user stance against non-Google calendaring. (1) Automatically creating Google Meets for every invite (or did they fix this recently?) and (2) the terrible formatting that gets sent to non Google-based accounts that gives me the "fingers on the chalkboard" feeling every time it gets sent to my O365 based email. > I hate MS login page and endless redirects between their services 100% agree. > Also I have feeling that MS account is more "formal", idk how to explain it. Agreed. And I feel like anyone who sends me email/cal invites from GSuite are essentially amateurish. Can't explain it either.
- anothernewdude 5y ago
  Desktop experience? This isn't the 2000s grandpa.
  - smt88 5y ago
    There is no web substitute for Excel yet, especially when you get into bigger files.
    - anothernewdude 5y ago
      Because at web scale you don't use individual files.
annexrichmond 5y ago
> I hate MS login page and endless redirects between their services whenever I login to Gmail it redirects me to YouTube and then back to Gmail
KronisLV 5y ago
> I use shitton of MS products, but I cannot switch from Google's gmail, docs and drive to anything. Here's my libre stack: - Thunderbird for e-mail (whichever provider you like, i also self-host a mail server for automation etc.) - LibreOffice, which i use as a local piece of software, because web office apps rub me the wrong way - Nextcloud, which i also self-host and which has both desktop software and mobile apps Of course, that's not something that everyone might want to use for themselves, but personally it has worked out pretty nicely for me, allows me to keep my data private (for the most part) and is a rather cost effective way of doing so!
- naikrovek 5y ago
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    > no one asked! Hmm, but the above post clearly states: > ...but I cannot switch from Google's gmail, docs and drive to anything. Is me offering workable alternatives counterproductive or unhelpful? The fact that the software is free and open source is just a nice boon to have and something to mention in my eyes. Here are the links for the aforementioned software so that anyone may attempt to switch to it, if they so desire. Thunderbird: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ LibreOffice: https://www.libreoffice.org/ https://www.libreoffice.org/ Nextcloud: https://nextcloud.com/ https://nextcloud.com/ (the latter needs a server, much like Google Drive does, have a look here for a non-self hosted option if that seems like a hassle: https://nextcloud.com/providers/ https://nextcloud.com/providers/) If anyone has thoughts on the viability of any of these solutions, hearing arguments for or against them would also be nice! I know for a fact that many prefer to just use web browsers nowadays as opposed to installing software on each platform locally, which could be one such argument!
    - orionblastar 5y ago
      LibreOffice also opens up Wordperfect documents. My wife had a church project and one of the teachers had Wordperfect. Office could not read it. So we coverted it in LibreOffice. Also LibreOffice can edit PDF files so no need for Acrobat Pro.
StreamBright 5y ago
It is a running joke in our team that MS cannot even implement a login page without problems.
- rand49an 5y ago
  To be fair, the authentication for Microsoft is far more complex than any other comparable system. They have to deal with their own Microsoft accounts (Outlook, Live, Hotmail...), federated domains (via ADFS or third parties) and domains hosted in 365 too - Some of those being synced passwords from AD, some of those using pass through authentication from local servers... Google just has to deal with accounts with Gmail domains and third party domains that they host.
  - StreamBright 5y ago
    I totally get that. This is why it would make sense to implement login a way that it is obvious to the user what is happening. I am not sure how much time I wasted on trying to figure out which system I am logging in to and with.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Yes, the article is good but that's where it goes off the rails. There's lots of talk about how MS has 96,000 "talented engineers". Yeah? Where are they then? My experience of Microsoft products in the past decade, both Azure and Windows, as a developer, has been extremely poor. The decay inside the Windows org has been very sad to see in particular. Windows was never exactly bug free but it had a certain robustness about it simply due to the sheer weight of apps using it. The Win32 docs were extremely verbose but mostly did tell you what you needed to know. But, those apps have been evaporating for 20 years and it shows. From the perspective of a developer trying to do stuff on Windows in 2022 is an exercise in frustration. Nothing modern works right and their developers don't seem to know or care. Trying to do absolutely basic tasks using their recommended approaches will yield an un-ending stream of stupid, impossibly basic bugs. To name just a few bugs I've hit in recent times: they've managed to screw up things as simple as taskbar icons, downloading files from web servers correctly and restart apps after an upgrade. I never thought I'd find myself actually liking Win32 but it does at least tick all the boxes and the standard code paths are bug free. Nothing about this experience radiates experience or talent. It leaves you with the constant impression that everyone working on the Windows team is a new grad who learned C++ 3 years ago and is shielded from the reality of what their customers experience by a wall of even less talented program managers whose primary job is to post vague reassurances and empty promises to (badly implemented) web forums. That's Windows. Azure was little better. Again my experience was one of incredibly simple bugs in basic functionality, like holding TCP connections open for more than a few minutes. The fact that people keep finding "root@azure" bugs is also indicative, because usually these reveal that there's no defense in depth of any kind.
hughrr 5y ago
For my professional stuff I’ve actually dumped O365 and Google. I’m using Apple stuff only (pages, numbers, keynote, mail, calendar, reminders, icloud). It’s completely different to anything else and there are a few small compatibility issues but it works really really well and doesn’t stab you in the face with complex problems. Add zoom and slack and you have enough interoperability. I set three simple standards that I will not budge on which ensures this solution will remain working. Documents via PDF only. Copy via cut and paste on slack. Data via CSV and JSON only. I also only use spreadsheets internally to my “partition”. They are shitty for everything else. I’m not going into the long time rants with my extensive experience with O365 and GSuite and LibreOffice here but this feels like I’m being shafted the least hard at the moment.
- hnhamdani2 5y ago
  I think Excel is the main moat on people/company keep using Office. Even the spreadsheet product on macOS is unmatched. I think it's the defacto tools in the salaryman-world for any backoffice work requiring some spreadsheet app. I know an avid iOS fanboy that uses Excel on Windows for their main job, it's on a different level than its macOS counterpart.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    Yes that’s true. There are better ways to solve all the problems that spreadsheets solve but no one way of solving them all in one place as badly that’s quite as good :) That hurt to write.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  Zoom and Slack are defacto standards which have similar issues as O365 and Google. That said, I love Numbers. It has some features like easy to use formulas right out of the box. I'm not able to do it that quick/easy with any other spreadsheet product. However, given I don't use Mac on work as now, I'm bound to Microsoft Office and Microsoft Excel.
maccard 5y ago
> I use shitton of MS products, but I cannot switch from Google's gmail, docs and drive to anything. This is how other people feel about the Office suite FWIW.
FuriouslyAdrift 5y ago
I'm usually in Teams all day. It's our VoIP, file share, and chat. We have scheduling, notifications, interactive web cards, and multi-user document editing all in there as a single interface. I get that that it's a duck-on-water front end to OneDrive, SharePoint, Skype-for-Biz, etc... but it works well enough to get things done.
halo37253 5y ago
I can't stand google docs myself, or using gmail for actual business emails.

Jamie9912 5y ago

ucm_edge 5y ago

I'm stuck on Notion since my much older CTO thinks Notion is 'hip'. I think it's more fair to say Notion is just the counter culture solution to the same problem O365 and G-Suite try to solve. I suppose Notion kind of made sense back when were tiny, but these days Notion is just clunky and has one of the worst search functions I have ever had the displeasure of using. At least it apparently isn't doing well in our security audit and the security team is telling us G-Suite is in our future.

kstrauser 5y ago
I’m there with you on the search function. I have no idea what its result ranking algorithm is, but I’d love it if the top results were ones with the exact search string. Instead, we get “You searched for AWS. OK! Here are pages with awl, Australia, House, lasagna, [8 pages], Google Wave, and AWS.”
freedomben 5y ago
I haven't used Notion much but if the search is worse than G-Suite, that is bad indeed. G-Suite search is so bad I sometimes wonder if I'm being trolled. Google is supposed to be king of search, yet I can type in one of the words in the title of a document that I was editing a few days ago, and it won't find it, but it will find some obscure and completely unrelated string in a csv file from 2014 that I haven't opened since I uploaded it. To work around the horrible search, I literally keep a google doc that starts with AAAAA so it will always be at the top that has a bunch of links and keywords in it. When I need to find a document or spreadsheet or whatever in google drive, I Ctrl+F in there and it's a life saver. Also seems ridiculous that I have to keep my own index file in order to find anything.
- unmole 5y ago
  Try cloudsearch.google.com. It works much much better than the GSuite search.
  - eatonphil 5y ago
    That's pretty nifty, thank you!

makeitdouble 5y ago

It depends on what O365 means to the user. A lot of people (me included) aren’t using Excel beyond opening the files to look at the graphs or entering data in predefined fields. It’s the usual 20/80 split between the people actively creating and managing the data and the ones on the receiving end. For a long time Microsoft pushed Office adoption by forcing the “viewer” to have licenses to access the data. That’s why a company would buy Office for every single employee. But now, you can have Office for the “20” part, and have them push their result to Notion for everyone else to view, do simple things with it. Notion can effectively be a O365 replacement for the proverbial “80” part. (Basically O365 is becoming a “power tool” and Notion can skoop the “casual users” slice. I see G\Suite inbetween)

rejectfinite 5y ago
No, because Office 365 is also the email hosting , MS Teams , Windows 10 enterprise license and management of the computer with Intune. So you still need Office 365 for each user. And then, why pay for 2 tools when you can pay for 1.
- to11mtm 5y ago
  Don't forget optional Power Apps! This is the biggest reason MS remains a huge player though. Whether you're using Microsoft's cloud e-mail or an onprem exchange, they'll be more than happy to figure out a CAL bundle that is compelling.
  - rejectfinite 5y ago
    Email is pretty important. You really think a company would pay for Office suite, Notion and Gsuite? You are insane. And CAL is not used for Office 365 sweeite
    - to11mtm 5y ago
      I'm saying the exact opposite, that they won't. > And CAL is not used for Office 365 sweeite No, it's not, but they are used for exchange last I checked. Perhaps my verbiage was a little inaccurate, but thank you very much for the downvote and condescension.

notjustanymike 5y ago

Lotta people make this mistake. They think Notion, or Google Sheets, or Slides is the only tool they need. In truth they need all three, depending on the task at hand. Lots of product managers seem only capable of thinking in slides when Notion would be better for documentation. I've received 500 pages of content for review written into CSV file for some insane reason. And yes, I've seen people struggle to run mathematical models in Notion when Excel is right there. I try and remind people not to use a hammer when you need a screwdriver, but sometimes that's all they know.

cfcfcf 5y ago

For what it’s worth, Loop[0] is an experimental Notion compete that seems to be targeting its demographics. [0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-loop?ms.url=microsoftcommicrosoft-loop https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-loop?ms.url=micros...

webreac 5y ago

IMHO the most important period for microsoft is the 90s. There is nothing about it in this article. 1990 is windows 3.0. In 2000, it was the start of Ballmer's era with the erratic management.

lewisjoe 5y ago

There's a pattern underlying the claim: The reasons why the modern productivity suite is winning (Notion, Coda, Airtable, etc) is because they've embraced the web and collaboration. - ability to share the original source to people - tag people right inside the document. - set tasks to people and track them from within the doc. - new age collaboration features - likes/comments/hashtags built-in - ability to tag a document within another document All these are small steps towards embracing the web's nature deeply inside product instead of just shipping the native features to run over the web. But there's a catch, these modern solutions tend to lag a bit over the powerfulness of what native offers, like - powerful charting capabilities - the calculation engine of excel - pagination of documents - powerful set of formatting features Interestingly it's much easier to build the new age features into the already powerful editor than vice versa - which is why google docs pivoted towards smart canvas features instead of launching an all new app.