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I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not trolling me; this has been widely discussed for years ... Apple and Adobe do not have the segment market

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not trolling me; this has been widely discussed for years ... Apple and Adobe do not have the segment market share that Microsoft does with Office. More importantly (to me), people buy Apple and Adobe products because they want to. People buy Microsoft Office because they have to. And they feel they have to not because Office has functionality that is so unsurpassed to help them get work done, but for one reason alone: file-format lock in. As if, and again this is hardly original with me, a private company controlled the protocol to make phone calls and forced you to buy their (overpriced, crappy) phones to access the phone network.

OrwellianChild 13y ago
Guarantee I'm not trolling. I simply disagree with your appraisal of the situation. This is the quote I have the most problem with: "People buy Apple and Adobe products because they want to. People buy Microsoft Office because they have to." By what possible criteria could you assert this? Each company exists in a free market with multiple competitors - the very ones that you wish people would use instead of the leaders (e.g. OpenOffice or Google Docs). Furthermore, in certain segments (like cloud-based office offerings), people are migrating in droves to Google Docs. They held between 33-50% user share in 2012 according to Gartner.* This is not the behavior of a locked-in market. *Cite: http://rcpmag.com/articles/2013/04/23/google-apps-vs-microsoft-office.aspx http://rcpmag.com/articles/2013/04/23/google-apps-vs-microso... Finally, an AT&T-style hardware infrastructure monopoly is not in play here. File formats don't lock you out of word processing any more than iOS apps keep you out of the smartphone business. They just offer a perk. I can't get every cool app on my Android phone. That doesn't mean that Apple is exerting a tax on me. It's just a selling point I have to consider.
jules 13y ago
I don't buy this argument. In my experience OpenOffice has no problem interoperating with MS Office's formats, but MS Office is simply a far better program. The reason I use MS Office is that's it's better enough to warrant the price compared to the free OpenOffice, and not any other reason.

OrwellianChild 13y ago

Guarantee I'm not trolling. I simply disagree with your appraisal of the situation. This is the quote I have the most problem with: "People buy Apple and Adobe products because they want to. People buy Microsoft Office because they have to." By what possible criteria could you assert this? Each company exists in a free market with multiple competitors - the very ones that you wish people would use instead of the leaders (e.g. OpenOffice or Google Docs). Furthermore, in certain segments (like cloud-based office offerings), people are migrating in droves to Google Docs. They held between 33-50% user share in 2012 according to Gartner.* This is not the behavior of a locked-in market. *Cite: http://rcpmag.com/articles/2013/04/23/google-apps-vs-microsoft-office.aspx http://rcpmag.com/articles/2013/04/23/google-apps-vs-microso... Finally, an AT&T-style hardware infrastructure monopoly is not in play here. File formats don't lock you out of word processing any more than iOS apps keep you out of the smartphone business. They just offer a perk. I can't get every cool app on my Android phone. That doesn't mean that Apple is exerting a tax on me. It's just a selling point I have to consider.

jules 13y ago

I don't buy this argument. In my experience OpenOffice has no problem interoperating with MS Office's formats, but MS Office is simply a far better program. The reason I use MS Office is that's it's better enough to warrant the price compared to the free OpenOffice, and not any other reason.