3 ms·

The market works in mysterious ways. I feel the same when comparing Apple to MS. MS is more diversified. If Apple royally screws up the iPad, they can do a lot

The market works in mysterious ways. I feel the same when comparing Apple to MS. MS is more diversified. If Apple royally screws up the iPad, they can do a lot of harm to their business. If MS screws up Windows (and they have, a few times), they have so many other revenue streams that they can survive.

rbanffy 13y ago
It's not as much other revenue streams than the steady business of corporate IT. When Microsoft released Vista, companies continued to deploy (and pay for) XP. When 8 didn't get the stellar reception Microsoft expected, enterprises kept on deploying Windows 7. The same goes for every version of Office, with the added "benefit" (for Microsoft) that documents created by version n are usually not compatible with version n-1, thus forcing full user base upgrades of Office (or holding Office upgrades back when it can't run on the official corporate Windows). The same also happens with servers: if your company has a dozen critical apps developed in ASP.Net, it's very likely that, when a server upgrade is due, it will be a Windows server.
- scholia 13y ago
  Not necessarily. There's a free compatibility pack that lets you open new docx etc documents in much older versions of Office, and in some cases, edit them. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3 This support goes back to Windows 2000 SP4 and Office 2000, which is ancient in software terms. There are also free viewers if you don't have a copy of Office. In any case, Office supports dozens of file formats so you're not obliged to use the latest. You can create files in old Microsoft formats and some non-Microsoft formats.
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    > open new docx etc documents in much older versions of Office, and in some cases, edit them Well... There is partial functionality. That makes it even more difficult to support the stack as you have to keep track of which versions of what can edit which documents. > You can create files in old Microsoft formats Try explaining that to the average Office user.
    - scholia 13y ago
      What's the average cost per year of employing an average Office worker? $50.000? What's the cost per year of buying a copy of Office? (I'm still on Office 2007 and it's 2014...) People whose time is worth so little that they can't afford to update Office can spend time on workarounds instead.

rbanffy 13y ago

It's not as much other revenue streams than the steady business of corporate IT. When Microsoft released Vista, companies continued to deploy (and pay for) XP. When 8 didn't get the stellar reception Microsoft expected, enterprises kept on deploying Windows 7. The same goes for every version of Office, with the added "benefit" (for Microsoft) that documents created by version n are usually not compatible with version n-1, thus forcing full user base upgrades of Office (or holding Office upgrades back when it can't run on the official corporate Windows). The same also happens with servers: if your company has a dozen critical apps developed in ASP.Net, it's very likely that, when a server upgrade is due, it will be a Windows server.

scholia 13y ago
Not necessarily. There's a free compatibility pack that lets you open new docx etc documents in much older versions of Office, and in some cases, edit them. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3 This support goes back to Windows 2000 SP4 and Office 2000, which is ancient in software terms. There are also free viewers if you don't have a copy of Office. In any case, Office supports dozens of file formats so you're not obliged to use the latest. You can create files in old Microsoft formats and some non-Microsoft formats.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  > open new docx etc documents in much older versions of Office, and in some cases, edit them Well... There is partial functionality. That makes it even more difficult to support the stack as you have to keep track of which versions of what can edit which documents. > You can create files in old Microsoft formats Try explaining that to the average Office user.
  - scholia 13y ago
    What's the average cost per year of employing an average Office worker? $50.000? What's the cost per year of buying a copy of Office? (I'm still on Office 2007 and it's 2014...) People whose time is worth so little that they can't afford to update Office can spend time on workarounds instead.