4 ms·

Microsoft is a giant enterprise software company that also publishes Candy Crush and Call of Duty. Intune and Windows are 'nice to have' but are not the busine

Microsoft is a giant enterprise software company that also publishes Candy Crush and Call of Duty. Intune and Windows are 'nice to have' but are not the business-business. The business is 365 (which runs on Macs and is worlds better than Apple's office suite + Apple's hosted email is god awful) and Azure.

martibravo 7mo ago
A lot of new businesses are going the Notion/Google Drive route for docs, tables and knowledge, plus Canva for presentations and more visual work. It's not the majority, but the market is there.
- martibravo 7mo ago
  Plus Pages, Numbers and Keynote are free on Macs, minus the new paid features. I think it's a no brainer for new businesses
  - pixeldash928 7mo ago
    Unfortunately, there's a reason people prefer paid office software over Apple's free suite. Apps like Numbers are chaotic in the face of Excel.
- radicaldreamer 7mo ago
  That might be true for tech startups, but many businesses (even "new" ones) go with Microsoft 365 as a default, especially outside of the west coast or NYC.
  - martibravo 7mo ago
    I’m talking about the context I know which is Barcelona companies
  - selectively 7mo ago
    Exactly. 365 gets you perfect compatibility and the 'real tools that professionals use'. Not Google Docs or some weird Apple thing - the tools that always will read the document.
    - sleepybrett 7mo ago
      If you can navigate the terrible UI enough to find the open button on the proper 'ribbon', that is. The ribbon makeover should have textbooks written about it so we can teach our future UI designers not to make the same mistakes again.
      - oblio 7mo ago
        Meh. Techies keep ranting about it but regular users are just fine with it.
        sleepybrett 7mo ago
        As someone 'technical' who sat close to 'normies' who hated the helpdesk guys so much they would interrupt me with their problems, no they do not.
        oblio 7mo ago
        I don't see why the ribbon would be inherently worse than a menu. It's still hierarchical, everything is labeled and has an icon and it's bigger. Oh, and everything has a shortcut that's highlighted...
    - nolist_policy 7mo ago
      Google docs actually has better MS Office compatibility than the 365 Web Apps.
  - TacticalCoder 7mo ago
    Europe here. I disagree. Many SMEs are totally happy with Google Workspace and Canva, as GP mentioned. I know people using just that. And they don't understand why there are people suffering from the Microsoft-Stockholm syndrome. The market may not yet be 365-sized but as GP mentioned: it's there. And there are young people arriving at an age to open a business who have never used a Windows computer in their entire life. To them Microsoft is the company that make the virus-infested, slow, computers full of ads they see at their grandparents' house. That cohort ain't buying Windows / buying Office / using Azure.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
genthree 7mo ago
Apple's office suite is my favorite I've ever used, and it's not close. After that, old copies of MSOffice. Next-best would be a hodgepodge of the lighter options on Linux and such. Gnumeric, Abiword, that sort of thing. Not great, but at least they're light on resources and easy to use. Distantly after that, LibreOffice. Then, modern MSOffice in last place. The only reason I'd count any of them as "worse" than modern MSOffice is that ~perfect office compatibility and a bulletproof excuse when things go wrong ("I'm also using MSOffice, don't know why your document isn't working") is non-negotiable in any business context. [EDIT] Oh I forgot about Google. That's actually the true last-place. Modern MSOffice isn't worse than that. Christ the performance is awful.
- MidnightRider39 7mo ago
  Crazy how different people experience this. For me it’s completely inverted; Google is top place, then Libreoffice, then MSOffice, then anything by Apple last place.
  - echelon 7mo ago
    That's my exact ranking as well.
  - genthree 7mo ago
    I value performance and stability highly, and Apple's productivity programs are so light I can leave them open in the background and forget they're running for months at a time even on fairly old, weak machines. And I'm not sure I've ever seen any of them crash (I can't say the same about, say, LibreOffice or pretty much any other Linux-associated productivity software). That they're a ton more polished and stable than things like Abiword or Gnumeric, and have most modern features I'd expect (even live collaborative editing) puts them solidly above those other light options. I hate modern MSOffice's UI, plus it's full of slow, heavy webtech which deducts a lot of points from basically anything for me. Google's leaks memory (like most of their software... so do Gmail tabs) and is so slow that it introduces a ton of input latency, which drives me nuts, I hate to type in it, aside from my experience with most of its formatting and editing features being that they're very janky even by the standards of GUI word processors. Both are very heavy on resources, which means they have a huge hurdle to overcome on the feature side before I'd consider them anything but extremely-unpleasant. Old (like... '00s) MSOffice is pretty good because it's not such a resource hog, and the UI used to be really good.
codeulike 7mo ago
Exactly. So many people on hn have no idea how diversified Microsoft is, and have no inkling of what the enterprise market is like
- Petersipoi 7mo ago
  On the contrary, nobody here is suggesting Microsoft isn't really diverse. They're suggesting that Apple is going to start to eat into their SMB market. Nobody at Microsoft is saying, "we don't care if Apple chips away at SMB because we have Call of Duty"
  - selectively 7mo ago
    Microsoft offers Office for Mac. It's a thing they do. It's the full fledged Office suite. They see a Mac user the same way they see a Windows user - a source of revenue.
    - grumpyprole 7mo ago
      Not always. There's no Minecraft for Mac, they even prohibited Macs running the iPad version. It's essentially been ported to Apples APIs but purposely withheld from macOS.
      - selectively 7mo ago
        I'm talking about enterprise software, not games. Minecraft exists for Mac, grab the Java version.
        genthree 7mo ago
        Anyone on Bedrock Minecraft is probably there for the cross-platform multiplayer. The Java version doesn't substitute for that. (MS made Bedrock and Java incompatible so they can rent-seek on closed mod and server-hosting "marketplaces"; can't let people share things and have fun without paying a middleman after all, think of the wasted "productivity"!)
selfmodruntime 7mo ago
No way. Intune and Entra are the vendor-lock in technologies that cement a business via m365 for the long haul.
downrightmike 7mo ago
No, it isn't 365, it is 365 + (forced ai)

martibravo 7mo ago

A lot of new businesses are going the Notion/Google Drive route for docs, tables and knowledge, plus Canva for presentations and more visual work. It's not the majority, but the market is there.

martibravo 7mo ago
Plus Pages, Numbers and Keynote are free on Macs, minus the new paid features. I think it's a no brainer for new businesses
- pixeldash928 7mo ago
  Unfortunately, there's a reason people prefer paid office software over Apple's free suite. Apps like Numbers are chaotic in the face of Excel.
radicaldreamer 7mo ago
That might be true for tech startups, but many businesses (even "new" ones) go with Microsoft 365 as a default, especially outside of the west coast or NYC.
- martibravo 7mo ago
  I’m talking about the context I know which is Barcelona companies
- selectively 7mo ago
  Exactly. 365 gets you perfect compatibility and the 'real tools that professionals use'. Not Google Docs or some weird Apple thing - the tools that always will read the document.
  - sleepybrett 7mo ago
    If you can navigate the terrible UI enough to find the open button on the proper 'ribbon', that is. The ribbon makeover should have textbooks written about it so we can teach our future UI designers not to make the same mistakes again.
    - oblio 7mo ago
      Meh. Techies keep ranting about it but regular users are just fine with it.
      - sleepybrett 7mo ago
        As someone 'technical' who sat close to 'normies' who hated the helpdesk guys so much they would interrupt me with their problems, no they do not.
        oblio 7mo ago
        I don't see why the ribbon would be inherently worse than a menu. It's still hierarchical, everything is labeled and has an icon and it's bigger. Oh, and everything has a shortcut that's highlighted...
  - nolist_policy 7mo ago
    Google docs actually has better MS Office compatibility than the 365 Web Apps.
- TacticalCoder 7mo ago
  Europe here. I disagree. Many SMEs are totally happy with Google Workspace and Canva, as GP mentioned. I know people using just that. And they don't understand why there are people suffering from the Microsoft-Stockholm syndrome. The market may not yet be 365-sized but as GP mentioned: it's there. And there are young people arriving at an age to open a business who have never used a Windows computer in their entire life. To them Microsoft is the company that make the virus-infested, slow, computers full of ads they see at their grandparents' house. That cohort ain't buying Windows / buying Office / using Azure.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

genthree 7mo ago

Apple's office suite is my favorite I've ever used, and it's not close. After that, old copies of MSOffice. Next-best would be a hodgepodge of the lighter options on Linux and such. Gnumeric, Abiword, that sort of thing. Not great, but at least they're light on resources and easy to use. Distantly after that, LibreOffice. Then, modern MSOffice in last place. The only reason I'd count any of them as "worse" than modern MSOffice is that ~perfect office compatibility and a bulletproof excuse when things go wrong ("I'm also using MSOffice, don't know why your document isn't working") is non-negotiable in any business context. [EDIT] Oh I forgot about Google. That's actually the true last-place. Modern MSOffice isn't worse than that. Christ the performance is awful.

MidnightRider39 7mo ago
Crazy how different people experience this. For me it’s completely inverted; Google is top place, then Libreoffice, then MSOffice, then anything by Apple last place.
- echelon 7mo ago
  That's my exact ranking as well.
- genthree 7mo ago
  I value performance and stability highly, and Apple's productivity programs are so light I can leave them open in the background and forget they're running for months at a time even on fairly old, weak machines. And I'm not sure I've ever seen any of them crash (I can't say the same about, say, LibreOffice or pretty much any other Linux-associated productivity software). That they're a ton more polished and stable than things like Abiword or Gnumeric, and have most modern features I'd expect (even live collaborative editing) puts them solidly above those other light options. I hate modern MSOffice's UI, plus it's full of slow, heavy webtech which deducts a lot of points from basically anything for me. Google's leaks memory (like most of their software... so do Gmail tabs) and is so slow that it introduces a ton of input latency, which drives me nuts, I hate to type in it, aside from my experience with most of its formatting and editing features being that they're very janky even by the standards of GUI word processors. Both are very heavy on resources, which means they have a huge hurdle to overcome on the feature side before I'd consider them anything but extremely-unpleasant. Old (like... '00s) MSOffice is pretty good because it's not such a resource hog, and the UI used to be really good.

codeulike 7mo ago

Exactly. So many people on hn have no idea how diversified Microsoft is, and have no inkling of what the enterprise market is like

Petersipoi 7mo ago
On the contrary, nobody here is suggesting Microsoft isn't really diverse. They're suggesting that Apple is going to start to eat into their SMB market. Nobody at Microsoft is saying, "we don't care if Apple chips away at SMB because we have Call of Duty"
- selectively 7mo ago
  Microsoft offers Office for Mac. It's a thing they do. It's the full fledged Office suite. They see a Mac user the same way they see a Windows user - a source of revenue.
  - grumpyprole 7mo ago
    Not always. There's no Minecraft for Mac, they even prohibited Macs running the iPad version. It's essentially been ported to Apples APIs but purposely withheld from macOS.
    - selectively 7mo ago
      I'm talking about enterprise software, not games. Minecraft exists for Mac, grab the Java version.
      - genthree 7mo ago
        Anyone on Bedrock Minecraft is probably there for the cross-platform multiplayer. The Java version doesn't substitute for that. (MS made Bedrock and Java incompatible so they can rent-seek on closed mod and server-hosting "marketplaces"; can't let people share things and have fun without paying a middleman after all, think of the wasted "productivity"!)

selfmodruntime 7mo ago

No way. Intune and Entra are the vendor-lock in technologies that cement a business via m365 for the long haul.

downrightmike 7mo ago

No, it isn't 365, it is 365 + (forced ai)