3 ms·
Because most of Microsoft's revenue is not generated by end-users. It's large government agencies and big corporations where the end-user is ten steps detached
by Etheryte 9mo ago
Because most of Microsoft's revenue is not generated by end-users. It's large government agencies and big corporations where the end-user is ten steps detached from the actual decision to buy or not to buy something.
- wolvoleo 9mo agoYeah and even the engineers and architects have no influence on the purchase decision. If you ask us we wouldn't buy Microsoft. But they're really good at rubbing shoulders with the CIOs and convincing them their stuff isn't the mediocre trash it really is.
- PaulHoule 9mo agoIt's a story in Germany all the time that some open source zealots get a town government to switch to an off-brand office suite which is so bad that the government worker's union goes on strike to get Microsoft Office back.
- stock_toaster 9mo agoMost people are just highly resistant to change, even change for the better.
- outside1234 9mo agoOk, but let's be fair. Libre Office et al are terrible.
- olyjohn 9mo agoIts really not that bad. I used to use it at work all the time. I did word processing, spreadsheets and presentations all the time with it. Maybe not as powerful as Excel, but I was never really a power user. But then again I never saw any spreadsheets that anybody used that were particularly complex.
- syockit 9mo agoWe have OnlyOffice as an alternative today. Personally I find the UI quite pleasing. But lately I haven't had any need to use office suite at home so I don't really use it so I have yet to find anything to complain (meanwhile, LibreOffice was horrible, while Office 365 was bearable until you stuff too many things in the equation editor).
- speed_spread 9mo agoAt this point, LibreOffice is much better than whatever Microsoft now sells as an office suite.
- jamesnorden 9mo agoDoesn't sound fair at all. What's so "terrible" about it in its current form?
- jetbalsa 9mo agoWhich one did they switch to?
- PaulHoule 9mo agoHere's a case of a recent one which is early in the cycle https://www.pcmag.com/news/german-province-ditches-microsoft-office-windows-for-open-source-alternatives?test_uuid=04IpBmWGZleS0I0J3epvMrC&test_variant=B https://www.pcmag.com/news/german-province-ditches-microsoft...
- wolvoleo 9mo agoLibreOffice isn't bad at all.
- simonask 9mo agoLibreOffice is catastrophically bad. It is slow, buggy, and everything it does is either pointlessly emulating a bad product, or pointlessly going against expectations. It exists for one reason only, which is OSS fervor. Great, but that doesn’t lead to great design.
- wolvoleo 9mo agoI don't agree, I use it all the time. I never use the 'real' office at home, though I do at work. And I'm really happy with it. It works fine, it's pretty light and it runs on every OS without me having to use a substandard web version. I understand their copying the MS Office look and feel because that muscle memory is key to converting users. I like the way they didn't go all-in on those ribbons which have always been pretty terrible. In that sense I think the biggest issues with the product is that it's taking so many cues from MS Office which on its own is pretty terrible but has grown to be abundant. I think the whole office workflow is grossly outdated anyway. Excel is mostly misused as a pisspoor database which it deeply sucks at because it doesn't offer any way to safeguard data integrity. What MS should do is overhaul Access completely to make users grok it better. But they don't care. Word docs are still full of weird template issues, PowerPoint still uses the old overhead projector transparent slide paradigm. What it really needs is someone to look at this without any of the 1980s baggage and come up with tools for workflow problems from this century with techniques that fit this century. Adding an AI clippy like MS has done does not cut it at all. But it does mean having to chip away at the entrenched market position of office, that's the problem. Microsoft stops innovating when they've cornered the market, just like they did with internet explorer. Someone has to do a chrome on office, but it will need someone with a big bag of money. Not an open source project run on a shoestring. So yeah I think LibreOffice is not great but the not great bits are copied from MS Office because they simply have no alternative.
- senko 9mo agoThe unironic use of "off brand office suite" here is hysterically tragic. Also, the productivity suite formerly known as Office is these days called "365 Copilot".
- direwolf20 9mo agoYou mean Munich, and Microsoft bribed them millions of dollars and a HQ relocation to put Microsoft Office back.
- PaulHoule 9mo agoHow's that different from Red Hat Linux? I mean, Linux is all about corporate takeover by IBM, Google and the like. The mainstream of Linux GUI is Android for crying out loud and X and Wayland are rounding errors compared to that.
- PlatoIsADisease 9mo agoThere was a conspiracy theory in my company that M$ had plants in my company to turn everything into M$. "If it doesnt have the word M$ in it, we aren't using it." I didn't hear this directly, but it was told to me. Call it telephone, but my director fired the python devs in favor of M$ Power Automate. As someone who lived through M$ Access.... lmao.
- Underqualified 9mo agoMy company recently decided to move away from Power Automate after having trained lots of people on this 'no code' platform and then having to hire expensive consultants to support or flesh out the apps those users had actually written.
- InterlooperX 9mo agoWhich is why it is baffling to me that MS won't let the end users alone. I am still battling with the fact they are hell bend on removing the whole "local users" approach of personal computing. Why stop giving people the option to use their computer the way they want to? What does MS get out of pushing everybody into online account for an on prem system? It should be evident to them by now that there is a portion of users that will continue to find ways to use their computer the way they want to. This cat and mouse game has gone on long enough. MS should be happy to retain any end user they can at this point and not continue to piss of some nerds that still use your operating system under the one condition that they get to do so the way they see fit.
- lizknope 9mo agoMS wants control and they will figure out some way to monetize that control. Whether it is using the data stored in the cloud for AI training or something else. If you want control then install Linux or get a Mac. I installed Linux in 1994 and I've got about 15 Linux computers and 2 Macs. My single windows VM gets booted about once a month if that often.
- snarfy 9mo agoIt makes more sense if you replace the person buying with "company" and replace "local user" with "employee".