7 ms·

Two Microsofts

164 points by bobbles 12y ago

bretthellman 12y ago
More like the opposite. They should be more tightly integrated.
Spearchucker 12y ago
I'm not sure I entirely agree with this. Office on iOS and Android is (in my opinion) geared at being able to read and maybe edit Office documents. While these apps can certainly create Office documents, they're not really suited to it. One would ideally do that using a laptop or PC. And that then simply makes mobile a way of further entrenching Office - people who use it at work can now use it on their devices. People who use it at work and on the road are (again, my opinion) more likely to use it at home. Win for Microsoft. On the devices side? Sure, Surface and Lumia are nowhere near as successful as the iPhone, iPad and Android. That was Microsoft coming late to the party. But come to the party they must. Before Windows Phone shareholders screamed for an iPhone competitor from Microsoft. After Windows Phone shareholders screamed for an iPad competitor from Microsoft. Windows Phone is good, and has some loyal fans. Windows 8 didn't do much for Surface, or Microsoft. Surface hardware is however also good, but new. Ultimately the devices strategy strikes me as being sound - it's a platform to showcase the services side of Microsoft, and in time may be profitable to a point where the critics are satisfied.
- chj 12y ago
  Totally agree. MS doesn't really have any choice but to offer office for free in the age of App Stores, and more importantly free alternatives are everywhere. Apple pages/numbers aren't going anywhere outside their garden, but Google docs are real deal. It's painful for MS to take this move, but it is really impressive to see them coming out of the comfort zone. Clearly the strategy of MS is to expand their services across all platforms, and by eliminating differences between platforms, then they can rule again. Interesting to see how this plays out in the next few years.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- roc 12y ago
  > "That was Microsoft coming late to the party." Late? They threw the party. Damn near a decade ago.
  - Joeri 12y ago
    But they were so uncool nobody came, and too proud to go to apple and google's party until quite recently.
  - Spearchucker 12y ago
    Maybe "touch party" would been a better choice. I know, I used to build MSMQ apps for Pocket PC and Windows Mobile. My GPS app from the early 2000's (1) makes me cringe today and yet still leaves me with fond memories. (1) https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=5d4b7d53-a77b-4fa1-b232-34957877f65a https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=5d4b7d53-a77b-4fa...
  - xorcist 12y ago
    They only had a small market share some ten or fifteen years ago. Most people were on Palm and Psion (and Sidekick in the US). They still only have a small share, it's mainly the competition who has changed.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - jjoonathan 12y ago
    Apple released the Newton in 1993. Palm released the Pilot in March 1996. WinCE/PocketPC was released in November 1996. Microsoft didn't throw the first party and they didn't throw the party that mattered.
vcjohnson 12y ago
>he problem, though, is that not only could this limitation manifest itself as incremental annoyance Eh I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of mobile office users don't need unlimited cloud storage (especially with 15GB free anyway) or advanced editing capabilities. Both of those features would be well served in an enterprise environment, but there are Office 365 Enterprise subscriptions for that. Maybe no dropbox integration is an annoyance, but I question whether that would be enough to push out existing office users.
mbillie1 12y ago
> I don’t think any company should have both horizontal (i.e. services) and vertical (i.e. devices) businesses. I find it curious that Microsoft is the target of this criticism, and I am further curious what the author thinks about Apple.
- m0th87 12y ago
  What services is Apple is?
  - kenjackson 12y ago
    ITunes, AppStore, iCloud, to name a few.
    - testrun 12y ago
      Argument can be made that iTunes, Appstore, iCloud is to lock in the hardware (iPhone, iPad, Mac).
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    Apple is a service company. You buy Apple hardware to get access to their services, which are usually exclusive to the platform.
    - ben336 12y ago
      They make their money off the hardware though. And plenty of people use Apple hardware without using Apple services. I have an iPhone/iPad/Mac, and don't use Apple services for email/document/storage/photo backup etc. I appreciate their OS software and hardware, but for the most part think there are better options for pretty much all of their services.
      - ekianjo 12y ago
        Does not matter. When you buy an Apple product, you are basically supporting their services as well. And as far as I know, you are more or less forced to have an iTune account if you have an Apple device, right ? So you are tied in to their services at least for the distribution of applications (on mobiles).
georgemcbay 12y ago
"by releasing most of the functionality of Office for free, Microsoft is giving up on the iPad as a growth driver for Office 365, but it seems like they can’t quite wean themselves of incremental income from Office diehards. The problem, though, is that not only could this limitation manifest itself as incremental annoyance, it also limits the defensive utility of this move (members-only)." This paragraph stuck me as funny as it is decrying Microsoft upselling premium subscriber only features for Office 365 and then it ends on a link that is a "members only" upsell to a $10 a month subscription feature for this blog. Ha, ha. wut.
Aloha 12y ago
I think the guys enterprise map is off - while the future might be the cloud, the current is still firmly rooted in windows desktop, windows server, active directory and exchange.
- tracker1 12y ago
  While I don't completely disagree, I think with the relative success of Azure, and with the opening up on .Net itself (just announced) that MS is clearly hedging some bets on being a tools/application stack provider as well as it's services. I actually really like Office 365 and their hosted mail offerings, though I think Outlook has become a bit more annoying with the changes for scalability that MS needed to make. The world is moving away from windows as a platform, so it makes sense to double-down where they have a lot of hold... Developing end to end solutions with VS is usually more pleasant than competing options, and windows licensing has been their bottleneck. With the push to cloud hosting, MS is in a better position than most to leverage their tooling... Though I really hated the early marketing of Azure within the .Net community, for a while it seemed like every MS tech presentation was an advertisement for Azure. (which kind of pushed men out)... That said, actually using Azure is pretty nice, and imho quite a bit easier, even for Linux than using AWS and others. I'm not developing new solutions with MS's windows+.net in mind. But opening up .Net more may change my stance there.
cwyers 12y ago
"The line of demarcation, though, is not services and devices, but rather enterprise and consumer." They didn't keep this a secret, man.
ha292 12y ago
Does anyone else think that MS folks are just plain and simple desperate and are trying new things ? I think it is entirely feasible that they haven't really thought through what they are doing. It feels that they are simply streamlining and opening up without an end game in mind.
davidgerard 12y ago
MS is heading off LibreOffice on devices at the pass. (And are lucky LO on devices is running way late.)

164 points by bobbles 12y ago

More like the opposite. They should be more tightly integrated.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with this. Office on iOS and Android is (in my opinion) geared at being able to read and maybe edit Office documents. While these apps can certainly create Office documents, they're not really suited to it. One would ideally do that using a laptop or PC. And that then simply makes mobile a way of further entrenching Office - people who use it at work can now use it on their devices. People who use it at work and on the road are (again, my opinion) more likely to use it at home. Win for Microsoft. On the devices side? Sure, Surface and Lumia are nowhere near as successful as the iPhone, iPad and Android. That was Microsoft coming late to the party. But come to the party they must. Before Windows Phone shareholders screamed for an iPhone competitor from Microsoft. After Windows Phone shareholders screamed for an iPad competitor from Microsoft. Windows Phone is good, and has some loyal fans. Windows 8 didn't do much for Surface, or Microsoft. Surface hardware is however also good, but new. Ultimately the devices strategy strikes me as being sound - it's a platform to showcase the services side of Microsoft, and in time may be profitable to a point where the critics are satisfied.

chj 12y ago
Totally agree. MS doesn't really have any choice but to offer office for free in the age of App Stores, and more importantly free alternatives are everywhere. Apple pages/numbers aren't going anywhere outside their garden, but Google docs are real deal. It's painful for MS to take this move, but it is really impressive to see them coming out of the comfort zone. Clearly the strategy of MS is to expand their services across all platforms, and by eliminating differences between platforms, then they can rule again. Interesting to see how this plays out in the next few years.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
roc 12y ago
> "That was Microsoft coming late to the party." Late? They threw the party. Damn near a decade ago.
- Joeri 12y ago
  But they were so uncool nobody came, and too proud to go to apple and google's party until quite recently.
- Spearchucker 12y ago
  Maybe "touch party" would been a better choice. I know, I used to build MSMQ apps for Pocket PC and Windows Mobile. My GPS app from the early 2000's (1) makes me cringe today and yet still leaves me with fond memories. (1) https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=5d4b7d53-a77b-4fa1-b232-34957877f65a https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=5d4b7d53-a77b-4fa...
- xorcist 12y ago
  They only had a small market share some ten or fifteen years ago. Most people were on Palm and Psion (and Sidekick in the US). They still only have a small share, it's mainly the competition who has changed.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  Apple released the Newton in 1993. Palm released the Pilot in March 1996. WinCE/PocketPC was released in November 1996. Microsoft didn't throw the first party and they didn't throw the party that mattered.

vcjohnson 12y ago

>he problem, though, is that not only could this limitation manifest itself as incremental annoyance Eh I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of mobile office users don't need unlimited cloud storage (especially with 15GB free anyway) or advanced editing capabilities. Both of those features would be well served in an enterprise environment, but there are Office 365 Enterprise subscriptions for that. Maybe no dropbox integration is an annoyance, but I question whether that would be enough to push out existing office users.

mbillie1 12y ago

> I don’t think any company should have both horizontal (i.e. services) and vertical (i.e. devices) businesses. I find it curious that Microsoft is the target of this criticism, and I am further curious what the author thinks about Apple.

m0th87 12y ago
What services is Apple is?
- kenjackson 12y ago
  ITunes, AppStore, iCloud, to name a few.
  - testrun 12y ago
    Argument can be made that iTunes, Appstore, iCloud is to lock in the hardware (iPhone, iPad, Mac).
- ekianjo 12y ago
  Apple is a service company. You buy Apple hardware to get access to their services, which are usually exclusive to the platform.
  - ben336 12y ago
    They make their money off the hardware though. And plenty of people use Apple hardware without using Apple services. I have an iPhone/iPad/Mac, and don't use Apple services for email/document/storage/photo backup etc. I appreciate their OS software and hardware, but for the most part think there are better options for pretty much all of their services.
    - ekianjo 12y ago
      Does not matter. When you buy an Apple product, you are basically supporting their services as well. And as far as I know, you are more or less forced to have an iTune account if you have an Apple device, right ? So you are tied in to their services at least for the distribution of applications (on mobiles).

georgemcbay 12y ago

"by releasing most of the functionality of Office for free, Microsoft is giving up on the iPad as a growth driver for Office 365, but it seems like they can’t quite wean themselves of incremental income from Office diehards. The problem, though, is that not only could this limitation manifest itself as incremental annoyance, it also limits the defensive utility of this move (members-only)." This paragraph stuck me as funny as it is decrying Microsoft upselling premium subscriber only features for Office 365 and then it ends on a link that is a "members only" upsell to a $10 a month subscription feature for this blog. Ha, ha. wut.

Aloha 12y ago

I think the guys enterprise map is off - while the future might be the cloud, the current is still firmly rooted in windows desktop, windows server, active directory and exchange.

tracker1 12y ago
While I don't completely disagree, I think with the relative success of Azure, and with the opening up on .Net itself (just announced) that MS is clearly hedging some bets on being a tools/application stack provider as well as it's services. I actually really like Office 365 and their hosted mail offerings, though I think Outlook has become a bit more annoying with the changes for scalability that MS needed to make. The world is moving away from windows as a platform, so it makes sense to double-down where they have a lot of hold... Developing end to end solutions with VS is usually more pleasant than competing options, and windows licensing has been their bottleneck. With the push to cloud hosting, MS is in a better position than most to leverage their tooling... Though I really hated the early marketing of Azure within the .Net community, for a while it seemed like every MS tech presentation was an advertisement for Azure. (which kind of pushed men out)... That said, actually using Azure is pretty nice, and imho quite a bit easier, even for Linux than using AWS and others. I'm not developing new solutions with MS's windows+.net in mind. But opening up .Net more may change my stance there.

cwyers 12y ago

"The line of demarcation, though, is not services and devices, but rather enterprise and consumer." They didn't keep this a secret, man.

ha292 12y ago

Does anyone else think that MS folks are just plain and simple desperate and are trying new things ? I think it is entirely feasible that they haven't really thought through what they are doing. It feels that they are simply streamlining and opening up without an end game in mind.

davidgerard 12y ago

MS is heading off LibreOffice on devices at the pass. (And are lucky LO on devices is running way late.)