9 ms·

I almost feel obligated to pirate Office for Mac

102 points by gliese1337 14y ago

Osmium 14y ago
I just wanted to give a counter-point here, to show they're not all bad. Microsoft saved me recently, when (due to my own stupidity) I was in a foreign country without my main computer and I'd forgotten to install Office for Mac, which I needed urgently to finish a presentation. Luckily, I had my license key so I entered it in on their website, and they gave me a link to download the full version of Office. No questions asked. I hadn't even bought it off Microsoft directly in the first place; I'd bought a student version off a third party. This might seem like a no-brainer feature, but when I've bought software online in the past it's often come with a 30-day download link, and when that link expires you're out of luck. You have to have the forethought to retain the install image to be able to install it in future. So I was actually impressed and grateful to Microsoft for that.
ggregoire 14y ago
Office is over. Try Google Docs.
georgemcbay 14y ago
I was fairly supportive of his thoughts until I read at the bottom that he works for Imagination Technologies, makers of the PowerVR chipset and quite possibly the worst company in the world when it it comes to giving any support at all to open source drivers. After reading that I was struck by a couple of things -- one is that it is hard to feel bad for someone complaining about a bad actor in the software space when they work for a bad actor in the hardware space; two is that even if I have a bad opinion of an employer already, I still think it is bad form to post an article like this with your employer's name linked right at the bottom. Even though he ultimately concludes that he won't pirate it, it is fairly easy for bad internet "journalists" to twist what he said and involve his employer since he names and links right to them at the bottom of his rant-post. Rant-posts where you invoke even the idea that you may break the law are best made on blogs that do not mention your employer.
- warfangle 14y ago
  I used to have a Kyro II. I can attest to not only the complete lack of open source drivers, but also to the absolute crap quality of their Windows drivers. I think I had to reinstall windows after I upgraded it to get the drivers gone. Feels bad, man.
- bengl3rt 14y ago
  This is not a middlebrow dismissal. It directly addresses the actual content of the linked page. Bravo.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ashcairo 14y ago
  Rys is cool though. He gives out of office hours support for people learning 3d graphics. Check out his recent talk at the London Graphics Hackerspace: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWzcEKHbBv4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWzcEKHbBv4
  - bpatrianakos 14y ago
    That's no excuse. He may be a great guy but the OP's point stil stands. In general we're all great people until we're not. I'm a nice guy but I've been known to be a total asshole like anybody else. Cool guys act like dicks sometimes and a record of being a good guy doesn't excuse one for doing something uncool. Bill Clinton left us with a surplus. He also cheated on his wife. Still a good president but cheating is a dick move. See what I'm saying (please don't read into it and focus on the wrong thing now)?
    - phaus 14y ago
      There are lots of things about Bill Clinton that I liked and just a few things about him that I didn't, but seriously, I don't think even the most incompetent person in the world could have left us without a surplus in the era that the internet went mainstream. I do agree with the point you were making.
gcb 14y ago
If you need the new version so you can open certain formats, even if you pirate it you will be helping ms by forcing yet more people to buy the new version as you will be yet another vector for the disease.
w1ntermute 14y ago
Microsoft.Office.2011.With.SP1.MAC.OSX-CRBS is what you're looking for. Also, guide from torrent comments (don't personally know if they work, but many people reported that they did): - unrar the download and install the .dmg - download the crack from [Edit: Google "2011fixTL.rar" to find a link to a "www-mediafire.com" site, around the 6th result. Change the "www-" in the URL to "www." to get the MediaFire download link] (this one still worked for me) and unrar it - now open spotlight and type terminal - click Terminal to run it - type "cd /" and hit enter - type "open /Library/Preferences" and it will open up the correct folder - drag the files from the crack folder in to this preferences map - now try open Word and it should ask you for your name, this means the hack worked. If it ask to validate your licence-key it failed. - click no on all the support questions and keep continueing - word should now open, same for the other office programs
- hack_edu 14y ago
  I suggest removing the direct link to the crack if you want to avoid being flagged for deletion.
keithpeter 14y ago
The original author uses Office on Windows at work. My employer has a licensing scheme that means purchasing a licence for my own use at home is very cheap (something like £10 for Office 2010). I'm thinking could the oa use something like crossover office http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name?app_id=6132 http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name?app_id=... or could they use a Windows 7 VM? Better than pirating in my personal world.
- rys 14y ago
  I'll ask and see if we have a scheme like that at work. I don't own a license of Office for Windows that I can use in a VM or with Crossover, but I'd be willing to entertain that if the price was right.
nobodyshere 14y ago
I currently live in Belarus and dealt with the same crap a few days ago. Win 8 pro upgrade offer? Sure, but not for you, pal. Try looking for it at local resellers... Same situation is here with paypal, which makes us register it for different countries. So there I was, buying a VPN to buy Windows. How stupid is that? I've always been confident that internet is one single area. It can not be separated by countries. It is one network with no geography, no boundaries. Itunes music purchase? Yeah, very funny. Google Play books or movies or music? Amazon mp3 store? Nope and nope on every point. So nope, I'll not give them a single cent until the day they fix their behaviour. And yes, I'll pirate as much as I can, even being a software developer myself, knowing all the efforts it takes.
gmac 14y ago
At least they only made a bad job of trying to take his money. Commonly when I want to stream a movie rental, the studios have seen to it that there is absolutely no way I can legitimately pay for that service.
countessa 14y ago
While I appreciate the frustration (and lord knows Microsoft have frustrated me plenty given I spend half my time developing for their platform), no matter how difficult they make it for you to buy, it's never an excuse not to.
neverm0re 14y ago
Is Office even necessary anymore? Where I work, most people are using LibreOffice or Google Docs and not a single complaint about document exchange or document formats. There's a few Office holdouts, but even they haven't had an issue exchanging documents with the rest of us. Even I behave like a normal human being and use LibreOffice instead of Emacs when I wanna play nice at work. What exactly is the killer feature of Office to people not obsessed with Outlook? Mac doesn't even have that, having to settle for EntouRAGE. (EDIT: My mistake, not used Mac Office in a long while -- Outlook now exists!)
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Outlook on Mac certainly exists - and is much, much better than the thoroughly aneurysm-inducing Entourage. But yeah, at my last two jobs we've exclusively used Google Docs, and it's been a dream. No more hunting your inbox for a (probably outdated) copy of the Office doc. Sharing is a dream. It's not quite as usable as a native app. I would be rather happy if there were a native client to GDocs, but as it stands, the ability to collaborate, share, and disseminate far, far trumps whatever usability gaps between it and Office.
  - Osmium 14y ago
    Yep, Outlook (Office 2011) replaced Entourage (Office 2008) on Mac.
- keithpeter 14y ago
  "Is Office even necessary anymore?" Can't speak for OP but for many people, yes, it is. My sister works in arts admin. Dealings with funders are done using Word files with macros and protected areas. Works ok on Mac Word (they use Apple at work) but not with Open/LibreOffice. When I set up an old thinkpad for my sister to use at home, I suggested Ubuntu and got an earful. So an OEM copy of Windows 7 and she got a licensed Office 2010 under her employer's licence agreement. Also William Gibson... "Word is, I'm told, horrid, but it talks to publishers, which is really all I use it for." http://william.gibson.usesthis.com/ http://william.gibson.usesthis.com/ I really hope the UK government can stick to this... https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2012/11/01/the-uks-new-open-standards-policy/ https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2012/11/01/the-uks-new-open-s... (It was posted to HN some days ago)
bpatrianakos 14y ago
I am annoyed and frustrated by so,e software therefor it's okay for me to not pay for it? Give me a break. This is such a lame justification for piracy. If the author truly wants to pay for it then he will. Saying you want to pay for it in an attempt to seem on the up and up and really wanting to pay for something are different. I can understand the frustration and I can empathize and I can get on board with the idea that the process they put you through to buy Office is ridiculous but I can't buy the justification for piracy. Just because you sell software yourself for a living doesmt put you in a position to decide when it's okay to pirate software. The author may consider the way in which he sells his software to be superior and therefore it's not okay to pirate what he sells but when it comes to someone else's well that's a different story. But its a slippery slope. Microsoft's process certainly is ludicrous but it's not long before people start saying "you want me to enter an email address to buy software? Oh, that's too much, I think I'll just pirate it, thanks". Calling it one's and zeros doesn't justify it either. I hate the ones and zeros argument. You're not paying for one's and zeros. You're paying for the value the software creates for you. It may only need to be coded and compiled once but does that mean that after the first person gets value from it that the software has been paid for? Of course not. If someone creates software and you value what it can do then you are obligated to pay for it if that's what the creator asks. Argue about the definition of stealing till your blue in the face but it doesn't change the fact that you are depriving the author of revenue they would otherwise have gotten. It is stealing and to say otherwise is to do some impressive mental gymnastics. The system may suck but piracy isn't going to solve the problem. It's just going to create more problems. Using Office without a license doesn't hurt Microsoft. What hurts them is a more popular alternative. The only thing that will change what the author complains about is someone else creating some half decent office replacement in a way that shows Microsoft how to do it right. If such a program existed and were widely adopted you'd better believe they'd take notice and shape up. Piracy hurts people. It doesn't hurt the big guys though and we know it so we all tend to justify it. But that same attitude that gets people thinking its okay to pirate Office allows people to justify pirating software from smaller companies and that's who it hurts. I see no justification for piracy.
- neverm0re 14y ago
  How about when you pay USD$10,000 for a niche software package with a crappy USB hardware dongle with drivers that only work on Windows XP, despite the application itself working just fine under Windows 7 64-bit? When I asked the vendor, I was told I could pay another $10,000 so I could buy a new version of the software that just so happened to have a newer DRM dongle. At that point you really have four options: 1.) Hope someone else pirated it. 2.) Kill a few evenings cracking the application with IDA Pro. 3.) Forever remain on Windows XP on a graphics workstation, unable to use the entirety of RAM installed, or some horrible dual-boot situation isolating you from the rest of your tools. 4.) Pay ANOTHER $10,000. Seriously, you have no position to tell anyone that there's 'no justification'. It's obvious you're missing real world experience here. I picked #2, myself, but I'd have rather saved time and picked #1 if it had already been done.
yakshay 14y ago
I'm not sure why Microsoft doesn't put it up on the App Store. They will probably get a lot less customer information, but things would be so convenient. Apple will stand to make a cut, but then there are several companies which sell both on the web as well as the App Store - why not do that. Adobe was hesitant at first too. They brought several smaller apps to the App Store at first, then followed by some big ones.
- AmVess 14y ago
  Apple getting a cut is the reason why MS doesn't put it on that service. There's no point in paying 30% if you don't have to, and MS doesn't have to.
SeoxyS 14y ago
If your experience with Office sucks, just don't buy it. There is not justification for pirating. It's a free market, and Microsoft's monopoly is long gone. I haven't used Office in years and I've done just fine. The few time people send me `docx` documents, I can either open them up with Preview, Pages, or simply not open it. Most of the time, I don't care enough about the contents. When it's a resumé, sending anything other than a PDF or a website is an instant fail.
- rm999 14y ago
  >When it's a resumé, sending anything other than a PDF or a website is an instant fail. What sucks is when you make your resume in latex and you apply to a company that only takes word or raw text files. I've actually skipped out on companies because of this.
Zaheer 14y ago
If you have Office at work you may be elegible to get office for just $10. http://www.microsofthup.com/hupus/otherproducts.aspx?culture=en-US http://www.microsofthup.com/hupus/otherproducts.aspx?culture... I got it through my University for just $10.
victorbstan 14y ago
I can completely sympathise with your experience! I tried buying window 7 a while ago, as a digital download, from Canada. Guess what? The on-line store wouldn't sell to Canadians? We're on the same frigging continent, it's the internet! WTF?! Frankly I don't even know why they are still in business. The whole thing is run by monkeys. I ended up purchasing a licence, and then pirating the actual software, thus I can say that I paid for it, and frankly pirating MS software is SUPERIOR EXPERIENCE compares to purchasing it. Monkeys.
bennny 14y ago
Use google docs. It's so much better. It's free, has a better UX, and is so much more powerful.
geuis 14y ago
I have a saying I like to think I coined, "Don't make it hard for your customers to give you money". I think that applies here. When you are working to optimize your business, take a step back. If you're focused on adding new features or exploring some marketing campaign, consider how you can optimize the most important part instead: getting paid. There have been more times than I can remember where I would have bought or paid for something if only the retailer hadn't made it so difficult.
tankbot 14y ago
So? Set up with a VPN that has stateside IPs, or build your own on AWS. Whether you pirate Mac Office or not though: I've been using it for awhile now and it's pretty lackluster. Most of the programs are stripped down versions. It usually gets the job done, but you'll probably run into a situation at some point where you want to do something that isn't included with Mac Office 2011.
- JackWebbHeller 14y ago
  >> So? Set up with a VPN that has stateside IPs, or build your own on AWS. Is that a serious suggestion...?!
  - tankbot 14y ago
    Well it's sort of a half-assed suggestion since I don't like the program. But there are many free VPNs that could solve this problem easily and rolling your own is fun and informative. Pretty weak blog piece to be honest. Proclaiming that it's somehow a moral duty to steal something is trumped up nihilism at best.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
Karunamon 14y ago
In my arrogant opinion, if a company will literally not allow you to give them your money, they shouldn't whine later about how piracy is killing their sales, making angels and puppies cry, etc.
bborud 14y ago
If you use Microsoft Office you are part of the problem. Please don't be part of the problem.
trotsky 14y ago
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=mac+office http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3D... I'm pretty sure it was a lot easier for me to come up with that link than for him to write that narcissistic blog entry.
niggler 14y ago
BizSpark.
rhplus 14y ago
It sounds like the problem is that a sales & marketing email took him to the wrong site. To pirate the software he'd at the very least need to do a search on Google to find out how. A simple search[1] shows how easy it is. The first result is a warez site called "Official Apple Store - UK" where he can download it immediately with very little effort. [1] http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=office+mac+uk http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=office+mac+uk
michaelpinto 14y ago
The best way to run MS Office on a Mac? I use VMware and just run Office within Windows. What's funny is that this is actually faster than launching Office for the Mac while showing me what a Windows user is seeing. By the way I'm doing this on an iMac so I'm not using anything too exotic in terms of hardware.
pootch 14y ago
You could just go to an apple store and buy it. Pretty lazy to pirate something thats pretty cheap to start with. If you dont have 149 bucks, maybe you have bigger problems than word processing?
rythie 14y ago
In the grand scheme of things, it's better for Microsoft that you pirate Office than use something else - so really you are not punishing them for their mistake by doing that. Your continued use of Office, will mean people can continue sending Office documents and you can send them too, if you used something else that whole system gets disrupted and people you work with consider new tools too. If you share your doc with Google docs for example, their copy of Office for that task is useless and after a while everyone might be using it, in my view it's a much better workflow than email documents around. Just my 2 cents [I don't think anyone should pirate software by the way].
jordanthoms 14y ago
Why do these companies think it's a good idea to refuse to sell to a customer depending on where they live? I can understand in the case of Netflix etc where they legally cannot provide access outside of the areas where they have the licences, but there is no such issue here - Microsoft is fully able to distribute their own product, and there isn't even a shipping issue since it's just online. Even Google has this problem, where they won't ship their devices from the play store to anywhere outside of a few countries, even though they would be fully able to.
- reeses 14y ago
  A) People in different regions will pay different amounts of money. By restricting regions in which a person can use a thing (such as DVDs) they can sell at the price each market will bear. B) Sometimes, the separate regions are managed by separate corporations (wholly owned by the parent) which have their own pricing policy. C) Often there are local laws or agreements dictating that the corporation not undercut local distributors.
zio99 14y ago
rys, what are using for your blog's backend? octopress? jekyll?

102 points by gliese1337 14y ago

I just wanted to give a counter-point here, to show they're not all bad. Microsoft saved me recently, when (due to my own stupidity) I was in a foreign country without my main computer and I'd forgotten to install Office for Mac, which I needed urgently to finish a presentation. Luckily, I had my license key so I entered it in on their website, and they gave me a link to download the full version of Office. No questions asked. I hadn't even bought it off Microsoft directly in the first place; I'd bought a student version off a third party. This might seem like a no-brainer feature, but when I've bought software online in the past it's often come with a 30-day download link, and when that link expires you're out of luck. You have to have the forethought to retain the install image to be able to install it in future. So I was actually impressed and grateful to Microsoft for that.

ggregoire 14y ago

Office is over. Try Google Docs.

georgemcbay 14y ago

I was fairly supportive of his thoughts until I read at the bottom that he works for Imagination Technologies, makers of the PowerVR chipset and quite possibly the worst company in the world when it it comes to giving any support at all to open source drivers. After reading that I was struck by a couple of things -- one is that it is hard to feel bad for someone complaining about a bad actor in the software space when they work for a bad actor in the hardware space; two is that even if I have a bad opinion of an employer already, I still think it is bad form to post an article like this with your employer's name linked right at the bottom. Even though he ultimately concludes that he won't pirate it, it is fairly easy for bad internet "journalists" to twist what he said and involve his employer since he names and links right to them at the bottom of his rant-post. Rant-posts where you invoke even the idea that you may break the law are best made on blogs that do not mention your employer.

warfangle 14y ago
I used to have a Kyro II. I can attest to not only the complete lack of open source drivers, but also to the absolute crap quality of their Windows drivers. I think I had to reinstall windows after I upgraded it to get the drivers gone. Feels bad, man.
bengl3rt 14y ago
This is not a middlebrow dismissal. It directly addresses the actual content of the linked page. Bravo.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ashcairo 14y ago
Rys is cool though. He gives out of office hours support for people learning 3d graphics. Check out his recent talk at the London Graphics Hackerspace: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWzcEKHbBv4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWzcEKHbBv4
- bpatrianakos 14y ago
  That's no excuse. He may be a great guy but the OP's point stil stands. In general we're all great people until we're not. I'm a nice guy but I've been known to be a total asshole like anybody else. Cool guys act like dicks sometimes and a record of being a good guy doesn't excuse one for doing something uncool. Bill Clinton left us with a surplus. He also cheated on his wife. Still a good president but cheating is a dick move. See what I'm saying (please don't read into it and focus on the wrong thing now)?
  - phaus 14y ago
    There are lots of things about Bill Clinton that I liked and just a few things about him that I didn't, but seriously, I don't think even the most incompetent person in the world could have left us without a surplus in the era that the internet went mainstream. I do agree with the point you were making.

gcb 14y ago

If you need the new version so you can open certain formats, even if you pirate it you will be helping ms by forcing yet more people to buy the new version as you will be yet another vector for the disease.

w1ntermute 14y ago

Microsoft.Office.2011.With.SP1.MAC.OSX-CRBS is what you're looking for. Also, guide from torrent comments (don't personally know if they work, but many people reported that they did): - unrar the download and install the .dmg - download the crack from [Edit: Google "2011fixTL.rar" to find a link to a "www-mediafire.com" site, around the 6th result. Change the "www-" in the URL to "www." to get the MediaFire download link] (this one still worked for me) and unrar it - now open spotlight and type terminal - click Terminal to run it - type "cd /" and hit enter - type "open /Library/Preferences" and it will open up the correct folder - drag the files from the crack folder in to this preferences map - now try open Word and it should ask you for your name, this means the hack worked. If it ask to validate your licence-key it failed. - click no on all the support questions and keep continueing - word should now open, same for the other office programs

hack_edu 14y ago
I suggest removing the direct link to the crack if you want to avoid being flagged for deletion.

keithpeter 14y ago

The original author uses Office on Windows at work. My employer has a licensing scheme that means purchasing a licence for my own use at home is very cheap (something like £10 for Office 2010). I'm thinking could the oa use something like crossover office http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name?app_id=6132 http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name?app_id=... or could they use a Windows 7 VM? Better than pirating in my personal world.

rys 14y ago
I'll ask and see if we have a scheme like that at work. I don't own a license of Office for Windows that I can use in a VM or with Crossover, but I'd be willing to entertain that if the price was right.

nobodyshere 14y ago

I currently live in Belarus and dealt with the same crap a few days ago. Win 8 pro upgrade offer? Sure, but not for you, pal. Try looking for it at local resellers... Same situation is here with paypal, which makes us register it for different countries. So there I was, buying a VPN to buy Windows. How stupid is that? I've always been confident that internet is one single area. It can not be separated by countries. It is one network with no geography, no boundaries. Itunes music purchase? Yeah, very funny. Google Play books or movies or music? Amazon mp3 store? Nope and nope on every point. So nope, I'll not give them a single cent until the day they fix their behaviour. And yes, I'll pirate as much as I can, even being a software developer myself, knowing all the efforts it takes.

gmac 14y ago

At least they only made a bad job of trying to take his money. Commonly when I want to stream a movie rental, the studios have seen to it that there is absolutely no way I can legitimately pay for that service.

countessa 14y ago

While I appreciate the frustration (and lord knows Microsoft have frustrated me plenty given I spend half my time developing for their platform), no matter how difficult they make it for you to buy, it's never an excuse not to.

neverm0re 14y ago

Is Office even necessary anymore? Where I work, most people are using LibreOffice or Google Docs and not a single complaint about document exchange or document formats. There's a few Office holdouts, but even they haven't had an issue exchanging documents with the rest of us. Even I behave like a normal human being and use LibreOffice instead of Emacs when I wanna play nice at work. What exactly is the killer feature of Office to people not obsessed with Outlook? Mac doesn't even have that, having to settle for EntouRAGE. (EDIT: My mistake, not used Mac Office in a long while -- Outlook now exists!)

potatolicious 14y ago
Outlook on Mac certainly exists - and is much, much better than the thoroughly aneurysm-inducing Entourage. But yeah, at my last two jobs we've exclusively used Google Docs, and it's been a dream. No more hunting your inbox for a (probably outdated) copy of the Office doc. Sharing is a dream. It's not quite as usable as a native app. I would be rather happy if there were a native client to GDocs, but as it stands, the ability to collaborate, share, and disseminate far, far trumps whatever usability gaps between it and Office.
- Osmium 14y ago
  Yep, Outlook (Office 2011) replaced Entourage (Office 2008) on Mac.
keithpeter 14y ago
"Is Office even necessary anymore?" Can't speak for OP but for many people, yes, it is. My sister works in arts admin. Dealings with funders are done using Word files with macros and protected areas. Works ok on Mac Word (they use Apple at work) but not with Open/LibreOffice. When I set up an old thinkpad for my sister to use at home, I suggested Ubuntu and got an earful. So an OEM copy of Windows 7 and she got a licensed Office 2010 under her employer's licence agreement. Also William Gibson... "Word is, I'm told, horrid, but it talks to publishers, which is really all I use it for." http://william.gibson.usesthis.com/ http://william.gibson.usesthis.com/ I really hope the UK government can stick to this... https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2012/11/01/the-uks-new-open-standards-policy/ https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2012/11/01/the-uks-new-open-s... (It was posted to HN some days ago)

bpatrianakos 14y ago

I am annoyed and frustrated by so,e software therefor it's okay for me to not pay for it? Give me a break. This is such a lame justification for piracy. If the author truly wants to pay for it then he will. Saying you want to pay for it in an attempt to seem on the up and up and really wanting to pay for something are different. I can understand the frustration and I can empathize and I can get on board with the idea that the process they put you through to buy Office is ridiculous but I can't buy the justification for piracy. Just because you sell software yourself for a living doesmt put you in a position to decide when it's okay to pirate software. The author may consider the way in which he sells his software to be superior and therefore it's not okay to pirate what he sells but when it comes to someone else's well that's a different story. But its a slippery slope. Microsoft's process certainly is ludicrous but it's not long before people start saying "you want me to enter an email address to buy software? Oh, that's too much, I think I'll just pirate it, thanks". Calling it one's and zeros doesn't justify it either. I hate the ones and zeros argument. You're not paying for one's and zeros. You're paying for the value the software creates for you. It may only need to be coded and compiled once but does that mean that after the first person gets value from it that the software has been paid for? Of course not. If someone creates software and you value what it can do then you are obligated to pay for it if that's what the creator asks. Argue about the definition of stealing till your blue in the face but it doesn't change the fact that you are depriving the author of revenue they would otherwise have gotten. It is stealing and to say otherwise is to do some impressive mental gymnastics. The system may suck but piracy isn't going to solve the problem. It's just going to create more problems. Using Office without a license doesn't hurt Microsoft. What hurts them is a more popular alternative. The only thing that will change what the author complains about is someone else creating some half decent office replacement in a way that shows Microsoft how to do it right. If such a program existed and were widely adopted you'd better believe they'd take notice and shape up. Piracy hurts people. It doesn't hurt the big guys though and we know it so we all tend to justify it. But that same attitude that gets people thinking its okay to pirate Office allows people to justify pirating software from smaller companies and that's who it hurts. I see no justification for piracy.

neverm0re 14y ago
How about when you pay USD$10,000 for a niche software package with a crappy USB hardware dongle with drivers that only work on Windows XP, despite the application itself working just fine under Windows 7 64-bit? When I asked the vendor, I was told I could pay another $10,000 so I could buy a new version of the software that just so happened to have a newer DRM dongle. At that point you really have four options: 1.) Hope someone else pirated it. 2.) Kill a few evenings cracking the application with IDA Pro. 3.) Forever remain on Windows XP on a graphics workstation, unable to use the entirety of RAM installed, or some horrible dual-boot situation isolating you from the rest of your tools. 4.) Pay ANOTHER $10,000. Seriously, you have no position to tell anyone that there's 'no justification'. It's obvious you're missing real world experience here. I picked #2, myself, but I'd have rather saved time and picked #1 if it had already been done.

yakshay 14y ago

I'm not sure why Microsoft doesn't put it up on the App Store. They will probably get a lot less customer information, but things would be so convenient. Apple will stand to make a cut, but then there are several companies which sell both on the web as well as the App Store - why not do that. Adobe was hesitant at first too. They brought several smaller apps to the App Store at first, then followed by some big ones.

AmVess 14y ago
Apple getting a cut is the reason why MS doesn't put it on that service. There's no point in paying 30% if you don't have to, and MS doesn't have to.

SeoxyS 14y ago

If your experience with Office sucks, just don't buy it. There is not justification for pirating. It's a free market, and Microsoft's monopoly is long gone. I haven't used Office in years and I've done just fine. The few time people send me `docx` documents, I can either open them up with Preview, Pages, or simply not open it. Most of the time, I don't care enough about the contents. When it's a resumé, sending anything other than a PDF or a website is an instant fail.

rm999 14y ago
>When it's a resumé, sending anything other than a PDF or a website is an instant fail. What sucks is when you make your resume in latex and you apply to a company that only takes word or raw text files. I've actually skipped out on companies because of this.

Zaheer 14y ago

If you have Office at work you may be elegible to get office for just $10. http://www.microsofthup.com/hupus/otherproducts.aspx?culture=en-US http://www.microsofthup.com/hupus/otherproducts.aspx?culture... I got it through my University for just $10.

victorbstan 14y ago

I can completely sympathise with your experience! I tried buying window 7 a while ago, as a digital download, from Canada. Guess what? The on-line store wouldn't sell to Canadians? We're on the same frigging continent, it's the internet! WTF?! Frankly I don't even know why they are still in business. The whole thing is run by monkeys. I ended up purchasing a licence, and then pirating the actual software, thus I can say that I paid for it, and frankly pirating MS software is SUPERIOR EXPERIENCE compares to purchasing it. Monkeys.

bennny 14y ago

Use google docs. It's so much better. It's free, has a better UX, and is so much more powerful.

geuis 14y ago

I have a saying I like to think I coined, "Don't make it hard for your customers to give you money". I think that applies here. When you are working to optimize your business, take a step back. If you're focused on adding new features or exploring some marketing campaign, consider how you can optimize the most important part instead: getting paid. There have been more times than I can remember where I would have bought or paid for something if only the retailer hadn't made it so difficult.

tankbot 14y ago

So? Set up with a VPN that has stateside IPs, or build your own on AWS. Whether you pirate Mac Office or not though: I've been using it for awhile now and it's pretty lackluster. Most of the programs are stripped down versions. It usually gets the job done, but you'll probably run into a situation at some point where you want to do something that isn't included with Mac Office 2011.

JackWebbHeller 14y ago
>> So? Set up with a VPN that has stateside IPs, or build your own on AWS. Is that a serious suggestion...?!
- tankbot 14y ago
  Well it's sort of a half-assed suggestion since I don't like the program. But there are many free VPNs that could solve this problem easily and rolling your own is fun and informative. Pretty weak blog piece to be honest. Proclaiming that it's somehow a moral duty to steal something is trumped up nihilism at best.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

Karunamon 14y ago

In my arrogant opinion, if a company will literally not allow you to give them your money, they shouldn't whine later about how piracy is killing their sales, making angels and puppies cry, etc.

bborud 14y ago

If you use Microsoft Office you are part of the problem. Please don't be part of the problem.

trotsky 14y ago

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=mac+office http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3D... I'm pretty sure it was a lot easier for me to come up with that link than for him to write that narcissistic blog entry.

niggler 14y ago

BizSpark.

rhplus 14y ago

It sounds like the problem is that a sales & marketing email took him to the wrong site. To pirate the software he'd at the very least need to do a search on Google to find out how. A simple search[1] shows how easy it is. The first result is a warez site called "Official Apple Store - UK" where he can download it immediately with very little effort. [1] http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=office+mac+uk http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=office+mac+uk

michaelpinto 14y ago

The best way to run MS Office on a Mac? I use VMware and just run Office within Windows. What's funny is that this is actually faster than launching Office for the Mac while showing me what a Windows user is seeing. By the way I'm doing this on an iMac so I'm not using anything too exotic in terms of hardware.

pootch 14y ago

You could just go to an apple store and buy it. Pretty lazy to pirate something thats pretty cheap to start with. If you dont have 149 bucks, maybe you have bigger problems than word processing?

rythie 14y ago

In the grand scheme of things, it's better for Microsoft that you pirate Office than use something else - so really you are not punishing them for their mistake by doing that. Your continued use of Office, will mean people can continue sending Office documents and you can send them too, if you used something else that whole system gets disrupted and people you work with consider new tools too. If you share your doc with Google docs for example, their copy of Office for that task is useless and after a while everyone might be using it, in my view it's a much better workflow than email documents around. Just my 2 cents [I don't think anyone should pirate software by the way].

jordanthoms 14y ago

Why do these companies think it's a good idea to refuse to sell to a customer depending on where they live? I can understand in the case of Netflix etc where they legally cannot provide access outside of the areas where they have the licences, but there is no such issue here - Microsoft is fully able to distribute their own product, and there isn't even a shipping issue since it's just online. Even Google has this problem, where they won't ship their devices from the play store to anywhere outside of a few countries, even though they would be fully able to.

reeses 14y ago
A) People in different regions will pay different amounts of money. By restricting regions in which a person can use a thing (such as DVDs) they can sell at the price each market will bear. B) Sometimes, the separate regions are managed by separate corporations (wholly owned by the parent) which have their own pricing policy. C) Often there are local laws or agreements dictating that the corporation not undercut local distributors.

zio99 14y ago

rys, what are using for your blog's backend? octopress? jekyll?