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MS is changing, and make no mistake, this has started with Ballmer. If you watch(ed) the press conf, it's quite apparent. App store for Android, Office for iPad

MS is changing, and make no mistake, this has started with Ballmer. If you watch(ed) the press conf, it's quite apparent. App store for Android, Office for iPad, AD for Azure.. quite nice stuff, that's what we expect from a software giant: just release stuff for everything, everywhere, and make things be able to work with each other nicely. Good to see that, competition is always good for the users, and Apple, Google and MS all seem to be quite strong on their fields (although Google is the most fashionable nowadays).

mortenjorck 13y ago
That Microsoft is broadening where and how customers can use Office is interesting. But what's shocking is that the first tablet-optimized version of Office is arriving not on Windows RT, but on iOS. That speaks volumes about the state of Windows today – and about how Nadella is under no illusions. Office for iPad may have started under Ballmer, but it's hard to imagine it getting this high a priority without his successor making what I'm sure was a tough call.
- skrowl 13y ago
  You know that the RT versions of Microsoft Surface (and other RT tables) come with Office and have since they launched, right? https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/home-and-student/office-2013-rt-office-for-windows-tablet-devices-FX103278460.aspx https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/home-and-student/office-2...
  - yulaow 13y ago
    He stressed "tablet optimized version" The office on my surface is just the desktop one without any optimization for touch screens. Edit: and yes, I do not think that the "touch optimized features" they are describing on that site is enough for a real rt app.
  - aroch 13y ago
    Yes, and the RT version is a pile of poop and neither version performs particularly well in a touch-only environment
  - jwcooper 13y ago
    The Office for iPad looks much more optimized for touch screen devices, rather than having minor adjustments made to Office for desktop that RT looks to be using. I'm guessing the usability differences are night and day between the two devices.
  - Maarten88 13y ago
    But what is still missing is a Metro version of Office. Historically, Office has always been the showcase on how to build proper Windows applications, it's where UI innovations are first introduced: i.e. embedding, multiple document interface, icon bar, ribbon. Since the introduction of the Metro ('modern') UI, Microsoft has not been able to really show the power and possibilities of it. Office for Metro should fix this, and show people how Metro is superior to the iOS and Android UI. Supposedly Office Metro has been in development for years (project Gemini), but as it turns out: it's not ready. And Office for iPad is. I hope we'll hear more about office for Metro soon, maybe next week at Build?
    - dep_b 13y ago
      I read that the Office branch of Microsoft allows exactly zero libraries and lines of code that they do not control. They use their own C-compiler, everything. That also means that they first need to copy Metro before they are prepared to use it. I can imagine that is quite a big task.
- kyllo 13y ago
  I think that it's a good strategy for Microsoft to make its software run on other platforms. This isn't the 1990s anymore where Windows is the dominant platform. It's not even the early 2000's with the "I'm a Mac vs. I'm a PC" meme. Now there are multiple popular platforms (at least in the consumer market), none with clear dominance, and meanwhile Microsoft's software only works on their own platform. They have to compete now, and their software should sell on its own merits, not because of platform lock-in network effects. This will make Microsoft a better company with a higher quality product.
  - jamesbritt 13y ago
    Hasn't Office always been available for the Mac?
    - stingraycharles 13y ago
      I believe that is more because of Apple than because of Microsoft. Apple has a history of being pretty convincing towards these crucial applications. I believe Microsoft got out of a anti-trust suit from Apple if they agreed to release Office for Mac. And Apple has a love/hate relationship with Adobe too, in a similar way. It's kind of funny, though. Jobs was pragmatic enough to realize that it was better to get Microsoft to "open up" than to win the lawsuit. It's hard to say, but I definitely think it paid off.
    - kyllo 13y ago
      In a limited way. Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, and Communicator (i/o Lync) are available for Mac, but they are not even close to the Windows versions in terms of feature parity. VBA support has been on-and-off. Access, Infopath, and Publisher are not available at all. They're written in Cocoa and on a different release cycle. There is no Office for Mac 2013, current version is 2011.
      - selectodude 13y ago
        OneNote for Mac just came out, and it's really good. So they're obviously doing something in the MacBU.
amaks 13y ago
It's not changing, expensive subscription for editing is the proof. Same greedy corporation which cares about its cash cows.
- Xdes 13y ago
  So corporations aren't supposed to make money from their products? Google docs does not work well on the iPad and I would love something that conforms to the iPad properly.
- blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago
  Are they a greedy corporation, yes. They are in business to make money. Is that "evil"? No. Does the new Office look good? Yes.
- ApacheEcho 13y ago
  Oh yea they should just give you the software for free. Because that's the way a business works right?
- kayoone 13y ago
  same for Apple or anybody basically, just different cash cows.
- ihuman 13y ago
  Microsoft is a software company, and Office is one of their biggest products. Why would they make it free? While they do give out OneNote for free, it is not a major part of Office. Making Word, excel, and PowerPoint free would hurt them much more than it would help them.
  - smacktoward 13y ago
    The same reason a friendly drug dealer would offer a first hit free: to get you hooked. Once you have a bunch of important documents locked up in Office file formats -- which Office is the only app guaranteed to be able to read reliably -- you have a great incentive down the road to start sending money to Microsoft so you can continue to access them.
martinald 13y ago
I agree. The most exciting thing would be Mono becoming a first-class citizen for .NET. I think this is likely for two reasons: 1) They may well acquire Xamarin, which would result in them 'owning' Mono. 2) The new CEO has been extremely forward thinking vs the rest of Microsoft on supporting open source software on Azure. 3) Increasing amounts of ASP.NET and other .NET technologies are open source now I would love for them to do this. I think they'd also do very well out of it, as Azure is great platform.
- gum_ina_package 13y ago
  This would be an incredibly interesting development. I personally love c# and would be thrilled if it became a mainstream language outside the enterprise software crowd.
  - skrowl 13y ago
    It's not so much that I love C# as I hate Objective C (iOS) and Java (Android)
    - wtetzner 13y ago
      To be fair, there are many language choices that compile to Java bytecode. They can be used for Android development.
- yulaow 13y ago
  I was really happy seeing that azure sdks are released not only natively for windows but also for osx and linux. Imho, their strategy for asp.net can be easily what you described here.
  - pionar 13y ago
    asp.net is open source, and it should run on any CLR.
    - 13y ago
nakor 13y ago
"App store for Android," What does this mean? Looks interesting.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  He's talking about one of these two things: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Microsoft+Corporation https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Microsoft+Co... http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/12/5404098/microsoft-considering-android-apps-on-windows http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/12/5404098/microsoft-consider...
  - Geee 13y ago
    Or, that Nokia has Android app store.
guelo 13y ago
Unless you're Apple in which case everything is locked down to your platforms.
- chrisdevereux 13y ago
  http://www.apple.com/iwork-for-icloud/ http://www.apple.com/iwork-for-icloud/
  - vvhn 13y ago
    well, you still need an Apple device to sign up for an iCloud account :)
    - foldor 13y ago
      http://www.apple.com/itunes/ http://www.apple.com/itunes/
adventured 13y ago
I know it's not a huge deal, but I was always impressed they offered Linux for Azure.
- andyzweb 13y ago
  embrace, extend, extinguish
- r00fus 13y ago
  I think Microsoft has realized that Linux isn't the danger they feared.
megablast 13y ago
Is this good to see? They are changing because they had to, or they risk becoming irrelevant. Windows Mobile is not taking off as fast as you would expect, so if they don't move to iOS or Android, someone else will fill that void. And office is becoming worse, merging is awful, online editing is completely broken (saving.... saving.... saving....)
- jpatel3 13y ago
  Its better than closing the options by limiting stuff to yourself when you seeing that users are not where you think they are.
malandrew 13y ago
I agree, but it still has a ways to go. They are embracing open-source more and more, but they need to spend time making it easy for open source developers to make their projects work well on windows. Usually with multi-platform development, vagrant is one of the best solutions out there, however the support for using Windows VMs with vagrant is horrific. If anyone at Microsoft is reading this thread, please for the love of god spend some time on vagrant-windows, the WinRM gem and making it easy for us to make open-source projects available on windows. It's a nice gesture to make InternetExplorer VMs available for website testing, but if you can't easily automate the testing via tools like vagrant it's really only half a solution.
- abuqutaita 13y ago
  Yep, we're listening, and it's actively being worked on. See this: http://msopentech.com/blog/2014/02/25/vagrant-and-hyper-v-provides-managed-devops-work-environments/ http://msopentech.com/blog/2014/02/25/vagrant-and-hyper-v-pr..., and there's more like it still to come.
  - malandrew 13y ago
    That's a step in the right direction, but don't make us use Hyper-V when most of us are already using VirtualBox. That's one more thing to add to my stack that is different than my tooling that works with all other operating systems I test on. Most developers using vagrant use VirtualBox. Now I have no problem if you make things work with Hyper-V, but please make things work with VirtualBox as well. Does hyper-v even run on Linux or OS X? PS that link isn't loading for me. PSS if you are an MS engineer working on this stuff, can you please contact me via the email in my profile. I didn't see an email in yours.
    - voltagex_ 13y ago
      Hyper V is Microsoft's answer to VMWare's ESX, not to VirtualBox. VirtualBox can be godawful at times. What's not working for you?
      - 13y ago
ekianjo 13y ago
That will be interesting to see if they actually release Office on Linux distros should the Linux desktop become more popular (and that's kind of expected).
- ksk 13y ago
  They'll go where the money is. But its not been established that Linux is anything other than a services sector. So far nobody has managed to sell consumer software on Linux in a big way. Maybe some tiny games and whatnot here and there, but, Microsoft will (and probably should) ignore any market that won't bring in atleast a hundred million in revenue.
- slowmotiony 13y ago
  How is that expected?
shmerl 13y ago
You mean started with Ballmer gone?
NicoJuicy 13y ago
And they are changing good... For example, i'm Bizspark and i have 115 €/ month sponsored by Microsoft for using Azure (for a max of 3 years)... And it's a great platform to.. I needed help from some of them to transfer management (have my own domain name now). He called me within 2 hours, the same evening he watched my screen and we followed the additional required steps (wouldn't have found those steps solo i'm affraid). Great and fast support, i guess that's why Microsoft is "enterprise". (ps. Subscription wasn't hard, you have to explain your idea and what you're trying to build. Then you get access to Media Services, Virtual Machines, ...)

mortenjorck 13y ago

That Microsoft is broadening where and how customers can use Office is interesting. But what's shocking is that the first tablet-optimized version of Office is arriving not on Windows RT, but on iOS. That speaks volumes about the state of Windows today – and about how Nadella is under no illusions. Office for iPad may have started under Ballmer, but it's hard to imagine it getting this high a priority without his successor making what I'm sure was a tough call.

skrowl 13y ago
You know that the RT versions of Microsoft Surface (and other RT tables) come with Office and have since they launched, right? https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/home-and-student/office-2013-rt-office-for-windows-tablet-devices-FX103278460.aspx https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/home-and-student/office-2...
- yulaow 13y ago
  He stressed "tablet optimized version" The office on my surface is just the desktop one without any optimization for touch screens. Edit: and yes, I do not think that the "touch optimized features" they are describing on that site is enough for a real rt app.
- aroch 13y ago
  Yes, and the RT version is a pile of poop and neither version performs particularly well in a touch-only environment
- jwcooper 13y ago
  The Office for iPad looks much more optimized for touch screen devices, rather than having minor adjustments made to Office for desktop that RT looks to be using. I'm guessing the usability differences are night and day between the two devices.
- Maarten88 13y ago
  But what is still missing is a Metro version of Office. Historically, Office has always been the showcase on how to build proper Windows applications, it's where UI innovations are first introduced: i.e. embedding, multiple document interface, icon bar, ribbon. Since the introduction of the Metro ('modern') UI, Microsoft has not been able to really show the power and possibilities of it. Office for Metro should fix this, and show people how Metro is superior to the iOS and Android UI. Supposedly Office Metro has been in development for years (project Gemini), but as it turns out: it's not ready. And Office for iPad is. I hope we'll hear more about office for Metro soon, maybe next week at Build?
  - dep_b 13y ago
    I read that the Office branch of Microsoft allows exactly zero libraries and lines of code that they do not control. They use their own C-compiler, everything. That also means that they first need to copy Metro before they are prepared to use it. I can imagine that is quite a big task.
kyllo 13y ago
I think that it's a good strategy for Microsoft to make its software run on other platforms. This isn't the 1990s anymore where Windows is the dominant platform. It's not even the early 2000's with the "I'm a Mac vs. I'm a PC" meme. Now there are multiple popular platforms (at least in the consumer market), none with clear dominance, and meanwhile Microsoft's software only works on their own platform. They have to compete now, and their software should sell on its own merits, not because of platform lock-in network effects. This will make Microsoft a better company with a higher quality product.
- jamesbritt 13y ago
  Hasn't Office always been available for the Mac?
  - stingraycharles 13y ago
    I believe that is more because of Apple than because of Microsoft. Apple has a history of being pretty convincing towards these crucial applications. I believe Microsoft got out of a anti-trust suit from Apple if they agreed to release Office for Mac. And Apple has a love/hate relationship with Adobe too, in a similar way. It's kind of funny, though. Jobs was pragmatic enough to realize that it was better to get Microsoft to "open up" than to win the lawsuit. It's hard to say, but I definitely think it paid off.
  - kyllo 13y ago
    In a limited way. Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, and Communicator (i/o Lync) are available for Mac, but they are not even close to the Windows versions in terms of feature parity. VBA support has been on-and-off. Access, Infopath, and Publisher are not available at all. They're written in Cocoa and on a different release cycle. There is no Office for Mac 2013, current version is 2011.
    - selectodude 13y ago
      OneNote for Mac just came out, and it's really good. So they're obviously doing something in the MacBU.

amaks 13y ago

It's not changing, expensive subscription for editing is the proof. Same greedy corporation which cares about its cash cows.

Xdes 13y ago
So corporations aren't supposed to make money from their products? Google docs does not work well on the iPad and I would love something that conforms to the iPad properly.
blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago
Are they a greedy corporation, yes. They are in business to make money. Is that "evil"? No. Does the new Office look good? Yes.
ApacheEcho 13y ago
Oh yea they should just give you the software for free. Because that's the way a business works right?
kayoone 13y ago
same for Apple or anybody basically, just different cash cows.
ihuman 13y ago
Microsoft is a software company, and Office is one of their biggest products. Why would they make it free? While they do give out OneNote for free, it is not a major part of Office. Making Word, excel, and PowerPoint free would hurt them much more than it would help them.
- smacktoward 13y ago
  The same reason a friendly drug dealer would offer a first hit free: to get you hooked. Once you have a bunch of important documents locked up in Office file formats -- which Office is the only app guaranteed to be able to read reliably -- you have a great incentive down the road to start sending money to Microsoft so you can continue to access them.

martinald 13y ago

I agree. The most exciting thing would be Mono becoming a first-class citizen for .NET. I think this is likely for two reasons: 1) They may well acquire Xamarin, which would result in them 'owning' Mono. 2) The new CEO has been extremely forward thinking vs the rest of Microsoft on supporting open source software on Azure. 3) Increasing amounts of ASP.NET and other .NET technologies are open source now I would love for them to do this. I think they'd also do very well out of it, as Azure is great platform.

gum_ina_package 13y ago
This would be an incredibly interesting development. I personally love c# and would be thrilled if it became a mainstream language outside the enterprise software crowd.
- skrowl 13y ago
  It's not so much that I love C# as I hate Objective C (iOS) and Java (Android)
  - wtetzner 13y ago
    To be fair, there are many language choices that compile to Java bytecode. They can be used for Android development.
yulaow 13y ago
I was really happy seeing that azure sdks are released not only natively for windows but also for osx and linux. Imho, their strategy for asp.net can be easily what you described here.
- pionar 13y ago
  asp.net is open source, and it should run on any CLR.
  - 13y ago

nakor 13y ago

"App store for Android," What does this mean? Looks interesting.

sliverstorm 13y ago
He's talking about one of these two things: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Microsoft+Corporation https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Microsoft+Co... http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/12/5404098/microsoft-considering-android-apps-on-windows http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/12/5404098/microsoft-consider...
- Geee 13y ago
  Or, that Nokia has Android app store.

guelo 13y ago

Unless you're Apple in which case everything is locked down to your platforms.

chrisdevereux 13y ago
http://www.apple.com/iwork-for-icloud/ http://www.apple.com/iwork-for-icloud/
- vvhn 13y ago
  well, you still need an Apple device to sign up for an iCloud account :)
  - foldor 13y ago
    http://www.apple.com/itunes/ http://www.apple.com/itunes/

adventured 13y ago

I know it's not a huge deal, but I was always impressed they offered Linux for Azure.

andyzweb 13y ago
embrace, extend, extinguish
r00fus 13y ago
I think Microsoft has realized that Linux isn't the danger they feared.

megablast 13y ago

Is this good to see? They are changing because they had to, or they risk becoming irrelevant. Windows Mobile is not taking off as fast as you would expect, so if they don't move to iOS or Android, someone else will fill that void. And office is becoming worse, merging is awful, online editing is completely broken (saving.... saving.... saving....)

jpatel3 13y ago
Its better than closing the options by limiting stuff to yourself when you seeing that users are not where you think they are.

malandrew 13y ago

I agree, but it still has a ways to go. They are embracing open-source more and more, but they need to spend time making it easy for open source developers to make their projects work well on windows. Usually with multi-platform development, vagrant is one of the best solutions out there, however the support for using Windows VMs with vagrant is horrific. If anyone at Microsoft is reading this thread, please for the love of god spend some time on vagrant-windows, the WinRM gem and making it easy for us to make open-source projects available on windows. It's a nice gesture to make InternetExplorer VMs available for website testing, but if you can't easily automate the testing via tools like vagrant it's really only half a solution.

abuqutaita 13y ago
Yep, we're listening, and it's actively being worked on. See this: http://msopentech.com/blog/2014/02/25/vagrant-and-hyper-v-provides-managed-devops-work-environments/ http://msopentech.com/blog/2014/02/25/vagrant-and-hyper-v-pr..., and there's more like it still to come.
- malandrew 13y ago
  That's a step in the right direction, but don't make us use Hyper-V when most of us are already using VirtualBox. That's one more thing to add to my stack that is different than my tooling that works with all other operating systems I test on. Most developers using vagrant use VirtualBox. Now I have no problem if you make things work with Hyper-V, but please make things work with VirtualBox as well. Does hyper-v even run on Linux or OS X? PS that link isn't loading for me. PSS if you are an MS engineer working on this stuff, can you please contact me via the email in my profile. I didn't see an email in yours.
  - voltagex_ 13y ago
    Hyper V is Microsoft's answer to VMWare's ESX, not to VirtualBox. VirtualBox can be godawful at times. What's not working for you?
    - 13y ago

ekianjo 13y ago

That will be interesting to see if they actually release Office on Linux distros should the Linux desktop become more popular (and that's kind of expected).

ksk 13y ago
They'll go where the money is. But its not been established that Linux is anything other than a services sector. So far nobody has managed to sell consumer software on Linux in a big way. Maybe some tiny games and whatnot here and there, but, Microsoft will (and probably should) ignore any market that won't bring in atleast a hundred million in revenue.
slowmotiony 13y ago
How is that expected?

shmerl 13y ago

You mean started with Ballmer gone?

NicoJuicy 13y ago

And they are changing good... For example, i'm Bizspark and i have 115 €/ month sponsored by Microsoft for using Azure (for a max of 3 years)... And it's a great platform to.. I needed help from some of them to transfer management (have my own domain name now). He called me within 2 hours, the same evening he watched my screen and we followed the additional required steps (wouldn't have found those steps solo i'm affraid). Great and fast support, i guess that's why Microsoft is "enterprise". (ps. Subscription wasn't hard, you have to explain your idea and what you're trying to build. Then you get access to Media Services, Virtual Machines, ...)