4 ms·

The problem is that some people are trying to re-create "The Office". Want to build the perfect tool, the better alternative? That's great, but why don't you s

by tzury 13y ago

The problem is that some people are trying to re-create "The Office". Want to build the perfect tool, the better alternative? That's great, but why don't you start with a single product, say, a word processor, or a spreadsheet? Start small, iterate, get feedback, and so on, and then expand. If you were able to beat MS Office in a single product, you must be doing something right, and chances are you will get far more resources (developers, testers, etc.) to build other products.

tixocloud 13y ago
I second that. The offering looks like a mish mash and I cannot even imagine how usable it is. I don't know how an alpha version qualifies as recreated MS Office in 30 days. What they should have done was to start with a single product like you said work on the essential features, get feedback and cruft out all the additional advanced functionality that the MS Office version has so you'd have a cleaner, leaner offering. Although sometimes, at the end of the day, the issue isn't so much the software being the perfect tool but how compatible is the tool with existing processes. We use MS Office on the business side and OpenOffice on the engineering side - so much pain when sending documents across the two divisions with documents not looking the same.
- kiiski 13y ago
  The article says that it's not ever supposed to compete with MS Office, but to be a basic solution for companies with specific needs ("such as obtaining data from a Java library").
  - tylerlh 13y ago
    The article does say, however, that the product is eventually meant to compete with Google Docs..
gus_massa 13y ago
That's the Writely model: Create a "clone" of MSWord with some advantages (online, simultaneous editing, ...) and some disadvantages (not every feature under the sun), and make this one product very useful (and get acquired by Google).
Chris_Newton 13y ago
Want to build the perfect tool, the better alternative? That's great, but why don't you start with a single product, say, a word processor, or a spreadsheet? Or take a step back, look at the ways people need to collect, manipulate and share information today, and consider whether a new application that fits into an established category like “word processor” or “spreadsheet” is still a good tool in the first place. I don’t know what will eventually displace MS Office as the universal toolbox for these things, but somehow I doubt it will look very much like classical office applications at all.

by tzury 13y ago

tixocloud 13y ago

I second that. The offering looks like a mish mash and I cannot even imagine how usable it is. I don't know how an alpha version qualifies as recreated MS Office in 30 days. What they should have done was to start with a single product like you said work on the essential features, get feedback and cruft out all the additional advanced functionality that the MS Office version has so you'd have a cleaner, leaner offering. Although sometimes, at the end of the day, the issue isn't so much the software being the perfect tool but how compatible is the tool with existing processes. We use MS Office on the business side and OpenOffice on the engineering side - so much pain when sending documents across the two divisions with documents not looking the same.

kiiski 13y ago
The article says that it's not ever supposed to compete with MS Office, but to be a basic solution for companies with specific needs ("such as obtaining data from a Java library").
- tylerlh 13y ago
  The article does say, however, that the product is eventually meant to compete with Google Docs..

gus_massa 13y ago

That's the Writely model: Create a "clone" of MSWord with some advantages (online, simultaneous editing, ...) and some disadvantages (not every feature under the sun), and make this one product very useful (and get acquired by Google).

Chris_Newton 13y ago

Want to build the perfect tool, the better alternative? That's great, but why don't you start with a single product, say, a word processor, or a spreadsheet? Or take a step back, look at the ways people need to collect, manipulate and share information today, and consider whether a new application that fits into an established category like “word processor” or “spreadsheet” is still a good tool in the first place. I don’t know what will eventually displace MS Office as the universal toolbox for these things, but somehow I doubt it will look very much like classical office applications at all.