4 ms·

Yeah, people forget that MS Office, and Excel and Outlook in particular, are the real foundation of Microsoft's vendor lock-in on the desktop.

Discordian93 7mo ago
Outlook is now basically an Electron app, they've deprecated the old desktop Outlook in favor of a port of the web app to desktop, so it's basically just Excel remaining.
- johnebgd 7mo ago
  Electron apps also basically don’t work in Wine. I miss having Evernote on Linux.
  - Grisu_FTP 7mo ago
    Wouldnt it be possible to extract the files you need and sort of "repackage" it for linux? I have no idea how electron apps look "internally" but it doesnt sound too bad. Sort of like you can unzip .deb files and use them somewhere else, if what i heard was correct (never tried it myself)
    - ifwinterco 7mo ago
      Not my area of expertise so I could be wrong but Electron apps just use Chromium underneath (which already works on linux), so in theory it should be easier to get them running on linux than a native Windows app
    - jitl 7mo ago
      If the Electron app is pure JS with no native extensions it can be doable. However, many Electron apps contain platform-specific js code, since features for stuff like Dock on Mac and Taskbar icons on Windows differ. Electron apps like Notion also contain native extensions - compiled C/C++/Objective-C code that are platform specific. For example in Notion, we use sqlite via better-sqlite3 (potentially replaceable since it’s open source, but will need more work than “just” repackaging js), but we also write our own native support libraries to use OS-specific APIs for microphone recording in meeting notes feature.
      - kelvinjps10 7mo ago
        I have seen many people porting such apps, like there is aur package for notion, figma
        jitl 7mo ago
        It's cool that arch users give porting Notion a valiant effort. But as I predicted, custom native extensions will be [a problem](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/notion-app-electron#comment-1030278 https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/notion-app-electron#comme...): > Could it be possible to make the relatively new AI meeting notes feature to work? > Right now I get the following error when I click the "start transcribing" button: Error occurred in handler for 'notion:get-media-access-status': TypeError: s.systemPreferences.getMediaAccessStatus is not a function at /usr/lib/notion-app/app.asar/.webpack/main/index.js:2:631015 at WebContents.<anonymous> (node:electron/js2c/browser_init:2:87444) at WebContents.emit (node:events:524:28)
      - Grisu_FTP 7mo ago
        Thank you for the thorough reply :) I really like the comments on HN, they are very often really interesting and you actually often learn something new that actually matters.
  - exceptione 7mo ago
    How is that even possible? I expect you have to go out of your way to make it platform dependent, are you sure?
    - tsimionescu 7mo ago
      Electron is basically just a GUI framework. The application itself can be arbitrarily complicated, nothing stops you from building a Java + .NET + C++&COM app that includes three Windows Services that interfaces with the Electron runtime just for UI.
- lp0_on_fire 7mo ago
  > Outlook is now basically an Electron app And it's horrible.
- da_chicken 7mo ago
  Yeah, that's because Microsoft can see the writing on the wall. They don't want Windows to die, but they know the whole OS is at a point where it's probably inevitable that it will. Developers don't want to use Windows anymore. They all want to run Linux because servers do. Ballmer was right about one thing: It was about the developers. Microsoft can't compete with Chrome at the K-12 level. A Chromebook is a fraction of the cost at twice the runtime, so nobody is going to learn Windows growing up. There won't be a generation of new ready-trained Microsoft consumers every year. And the average consumer? Oh, they're running an iPhone and maybe an iPad that's it. If Apple were really smart they'd have released an iPhone screencast dock, but Apple still thinks the iPhone doesn't need multiple user profiles. However, even with Apple's stupid behavior, they're losing their core consumer audience. Steam is tired of Microsoft, too, so they're pushing for compatibility. Video games are either cross platform, console exclusive, or easy enough to emulate. If nVidia's graphics drivers weren't so proprietary, it wouldn't be nearly as difficult. The big holdouts are the same people that kept COBOL a live programming language in the 21st century: The business office folks. Microsoft has missed the boat on smartphones, tablets, budget laptops, smart TVs, video game consoles (which is a little surprising), server-side infrastructure, development, and now AI. Their market prospects right now are Millenials and older that don't want change, people who need exactly Excel or Outlook, and PC video gamers that aren't interested in change. Their best product is VS Code and it's free, their second best product (SQL Server) is pricing people out, and their third best product (.Net) is also free. At this point I think they're mainly hoping Adobe doesn't jump ship.
  - KptMarchewa 7mo ago
    > Developers don't want to use Windows anymore. I mean, did they ever? I've been programming just since ~2010, but I've only ever saw majority prefer macs due to hardware (with exception being late intel macs) and linux on the regular PCs. With exception of game devs, I've not seen person who _happily_ defaults to windows, not due to fact that they have to because of company policy or because company is too cheap for an Apple device.
    - da_chicken 7mo ago
Quothling 7mo ago
Having worked in non-swe enterprise for two decades I would argue that this is less true today than it was 10 years ago. It used to be that new hires would come with a basic knowledge of windows and office, but that's no longer the case. At the same time, you have things like Smartsheets and so on, which are more popular, at least with our employees, than Excel and everyone seems to hate Outlook these days. I don't think it was ever really the case though. What Microsoft sells to enterprise is governance, and they really don't have any competition in this area. Being in the European energy sector we're naturally looking into how we can replace every US tech product with an EU/FOSS one. It's actually relatively easy to buy the 365 experience through consultants which will setup a NextCloud, Libre/Only Office, Proton and a teams replacement I can't for the life of me remember the name of. Beneath it there is a mix of Identity Management systems, often based around Keycloak, at least for now. It works, from what we've seen in Germany (specificlaly with their military) it's also possible to roll it out relatively quickly. It's all the "other" stuff that gets murky. There isn't a real alternative to AD/Entra, yet, from a governance perspective. There are great tech solutions which does the same thing, but they require a lot of IT man hours. Something the public sector is always going to be more willing to deal with than the private sector. If we collectively decided that trains in Denmark should be free for passengers, then that would happen. You can't do that in a private business, though security obviously does factor into it. This is the general story really. Microsoft's copilot studio is relatively new, and it's probably been flying under the radar in a lot of tech circles because it's basically what power automate always wished it could be. Having used it to build a HR flow, where an AI model will receive the applications, read them, auto-reply to irrelevant ones, create a teams site with files and the relevant people for the relevant applications, and invite the applicant to their first appointment. Well... I gotta say that I'm not sure what we have that's an alternative to that. It took me a couple of hours to build it, and it frankly works better than I thought it would. Granted, I did know the tool because I had previously done a PoC where I build a teams agent which "took over" my teams interactions. Everyone noticed because it spelled correctly and wasn't capable of posting Warhammer 40k ORK meme's in any form of quality, but it was frightenly easy. What Microsoft sells in this area is again the governance of it all. You can do these things because of how EntraID lets you connect services seamlessly with a few clicks. While behind the scenes all of those clicks are only available to you because your IT department control them... Again... without hundreds of manhours. I'm sure we'll eventually get there, but it'll likely come down to change management. Because even if you're willing to retrain your IT operations crew, it's not likely that they will want to leave the Microsoft world where they are well paid and job-secure. Well, maybe I'm in a cheese bell, but I've never met an Azure/Microsoft IT person who would want to work with something else, and having been forced to work a little bit with it behind the scenes, I sort of get it... well not really. Which boils down to why Microsoft has always been good with enterprise customers. The decision makers in your organisation will listen to everything, but their own IT departments will often sort of automatically recommend Microsoft products and at the end of the day, it'll all boil down to risk. Which is what Microsoft really sells... risk-mitigation. Sure their licenses are expensive, but is it really more expensive than losing your entire IT staff? (this isn't an actual question I'm asking, it's what goes through the considerations.)

Discordian93 7mo ago

Outlook is now basically an Electron app, they've deprecated the old desktop Outlook in favor of a port of the web app to desktop, so it's basically just Excel remaining.

johnebgd 7mo ago
Electron apps also basically don’t work in Wine. I miss having Evernote on Linux.
- Grisu_FTP 7mo ago
  Wouldnt it be possible to extract the files you need and sort of "repackage" it for linux? I have no idea how electron apps look "internally" but it doesnt sound too bad. Sort of like you can unzip .deb files and use them somewhere else, if what i heard was correct (never tried it myself)
  - ifwinterco 7mo ago
    Not my area of expertise so I could be wrong but Electron apps just use Chromium underneath (which already works on linux), so in theory it should be easier to get them running on linux than a native Windows app
  - jitl 7mo ago
    If the Electron app is pure JS with no native extensions it can be doable. However, many Electron apps contain platform-specific js code, since features for stuff like Dock on Mac and Taskbar icons on Windows differ. Electron apps like Notion also contain native extensions - compiled C/C++/Objective-C code that are platform specific. For example in Notion, we use sqlite via better-sqlite3 (potentially replaceable since it’s open source, but will need more work than “just” repackaging js), but we also write our own native support libraries to use OS-specific APIs for microphone recording in meeting notes feature.
    - kelvinjps10 7mo ago
      I have seen many people porting such apps, like there is aur package for notion, figma
      - jitl 7mo ago
        It's cool that arch users give porting Notion a valiant effort. But as I predicted, custom native extensions will be [a problem](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/notion-app-electron#comment-1030278 https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/notion-app-electron#comme...): > Could it be possible to make the relatively new AI meeting notes feature to work? > Right now I get the following error when I click the "start transcribing" button: Error occurred in handler for 'notion:get-media-access-status': TypeError: s.systemPreferences.getMediaAccessStatus is not a function at /usr/lib/notion-app/app.asar/.webpack/main/index.js:2:631015 at WebContents.<anonymous> (node:electron/js2c/browser_init:2:87444) at WebContents.emit (node:events:524:28)
    - Grisu_FTP 7mo ago
      Thank you for the thorough reply :) I really like the comments on HN, they are very often really interesting and you actually often learn something new that actually matters.
- exceptione 7mo ago
  How is that even possible? I expect you have to go out of your way to make it platform dependent, are you sure?
  - tsimionescu 7mo ago
    Electron is basically just a GUI framework. The application itself can be arbitrarily complicated, nothing stops you from building a Java + .NET + C++&COM app that includes three Windows Services that interfaces with the Electron runtime just for UI.
lp0_on_fire 7mo ago
> Outlook is now basically an Electron app And it's horrible.
da_chicken 7mo ago
Yeah, that's because Microsoft can see the writing on the wall. They don't want Windows to die, but they know the whole OS is at a point where it's probably inevitable that it will. Developers don't want to use Windows anymore. They all want to run Linux because servers do. Ballmer was right about one thing: It was about the developers. Microsoft can't compete with Chrome at the K-12 level. A Chromebook is a fraction of the cost at twice the runtime, so nobody is going to learn Windows growing up. There won't be a generation of new ready-trained Microsoft consumers every year. And the average consumer? Oh, they're running an iPhone and maybe an iPad that's it. If Apple were really smart they'd have released an iPhone screencast dock, but Apple still thinks the iPhone doesn't need multiple user profiles. However, even with Apple's stupid behavior, they're losing their core consumer audience. Steam is tired of Microsoft, too, so they're pushing for compatibility. Video games are either cross platform, console exclusive, or easy enough to emulate. If nVidia's graphics drivers weren't so proprietary, it wouldn't be nearly as difficult. The big holdouts are the same people that kept COBOL a live programming language in the 21st century: The business office folks. Microsoft has missed the boat on smartphones, tablets, budget laptops, smart TVs, video game consoles (which is a little surprising), server-side infrastructure, development, and now AI. Their market prospects right now are Millenials and older that don't want change, people who need exactly Excel or Outlook, and PC video gamers that aren't interested in change. Their best product is VS Code and it's free, their second best product (SQL Server) is pricing people out, and their third best product (.Net) is also free. At this point I think they're mainly hoping Adobe doesn't jump ship.
- KptMarchewa 7mo ago
  > Developers don't want to use Windows anymore. I mean, did they ever? I've been programming just since ~2010, but I've only ever saw majority prefer macs due to hardware (with exception being late intel macs) and linux on the regular PCs. With exception of game devs, I've not seen person who _happily_ defaults to windows, not due to fact that they have to because of company policy or because company is too cheap for an Apple device.
  - da_chicken 7mo ago

Quothling 7mo ago

Having worked in non-swe enterprise for two decades I would argue that this is less true today than it was 10 years ago. It used to be that new hires would come with a basic knowledge of windows and office, but that's no longer the case. At the same time, you have things like Smartsheets and so on, which are more popular, at least with our employees, than Excel and everyone seems to hate Outlook these days. I don't think it was ever really the case though. What Microsoft sells to enterprise is governance, and they really don't have any competition in this area. Being in the European energy sector we're naturally looking into how we can replace every US tech product with an EU/FOSS one. It's actually relatively easy to buy the 365 experience through consultants which will setup a NextCloud, Libre/Only Office, Proton and a teams replacement I can't for the life of me remember the name of. Beneath it there is a mix of Identity Management systems, often based around Keycloak, at least for now. It works, from what we've seen in Germany (specificlaly with their military) it's also possible to roll it out relatively quickly. It's all the "other" stuff that gets murky. There isn't a real alternative to AD/Entra, yet, from a governance perspective. There are great tech solutions which does the same thing, but they require a lot of IT man hours. Something the public sector is always going to be more willing to deal with than the private sector. If we collectively decided that trains in Denmark should be free for passengers, then that would happen. You can't do that in a private business, though security obviously does factor into it. This is the general story really. Microsoft's copilot studio is relatively new, and it's probably been flying under the radar in a lot of tech circles because it's basically what power automate always wished it could be. Having used it to build a HR flow, where an AI model will receive the applications, read them, auto-reply to irrelevant ones, create a teams site with files and the relevant people for the relevant applications, and invite the applicant to their first appointment. Well... I gotta say that I'm not sure what we have that's an alternative to that. It took me a couple of hours to build it, and it frankly works better than I thought it would. Granted, I did know the tool because I had previously done a PoC where I build a teams agent which "took over" my teams interactions. Everyone noticed because it spelled correctly and wasn't capable of posting Warhammer 40k ORK meme's in any form of quality, but it was frightenly easy. What Microsoft sells in this area is again the governance of it all. You can do these things because of how EntraID lets you connect services seamlessly with a few clicks. While behind the scenes all of those clicks are only available to you because your IT department control them... Again... without hundreds of manhours. I'm sure we'll eventually get there, but it'll likely come down to change management. Because even if you're willing to retrain your IT operations crew, it's not likely that they will want to leave the Microsoft world where they are well paid and job-secure. Well, maybe I'm in a cheese bell, but I've never met an Azure/Microsoft IT person who would want to work with something else, and having been forced to work a little bit with it behind the scenes, I sort of get it... well not really. Which boils down to why Microsoft has always been good with enterprise customers. The decision makers in your organisation will listen to everything, but their own IT departments will often sort of automatically recommend Microsoft products and at the end of the day, it'll all boil down to risk. Which is what Microsoft really sells... risk-mitigation. Sure their licenses are expensive, but is it really more expensive than losing your entire IT staff? (this isn't an actual question I'm asking, it's what goes through the considerations.)