MS Office For Android: Pretty, But Woefully Incomplete 174
mattydread23 writes "The new Office 365 app for Android, launched a week ago, has a super nice UI, but lacks a bunch of basic features and has some really weird oversights — including a classic Microsoft dialog box that offers a choice that makes no sense. 'Overall, it still feels like Microsoft is still trying to funnel people toward its own Windows Phone if they want a better experience. In fact, in a question on an FAQ about how the Android Office app compares to the Windows Phone Office app, Microsoft says this: “Office Mobile on Windows Phone 8 provides a richer, more integrated experience,” and goes on to specify how. That’s a losing strategy when so many other apps — many of them free — offer a richer experience on Android and iOS.' "
Should be called Office Lite (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the number of people on Android, they could get the impression that Office 365 is a poor hack and opt for something else. Stupid, short-sighted move by Microsoft.
Re:Typical Microsoft approach (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Typical Microsoft approach (Score:2, Insightful)
like they have some dominant market position
They do, but despite mathematics being compulsory for most CS courses .. geeks just don't get it.
Re:Typical Microsoft approach (Score:5, Insightful)
They do, but despite mathematics being compulsory for most CS courses .. geeks just don't get it.
Microsoft have a dominant market position in the smart phone and tablet markets?
You must be using some new branch of mathematics that I wasn't previously aware of.
Re:Just Perfect in Windows Phone (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand that microsoft wants to serve their user even in android mobile but their software is only perfect when it is applied in their own os and not in other OS.
The OS is irrelevant. Windows, OSX, whatever, it doesn't matter. The problem is trying to put an application like Office on a phone. Sorry, but that's just stupid.
Another Nail In An Abusive Monopolist (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft still has not learned to compete without being abusive monopolist, especially in a market with many competing products. People buy office for compatibility Insurance...Cue scenarios where a power-point document not working justifies the cost to a home user of £8($12) A month...The cost of a top of the range 7" tablet every two years. Competing products are free or equivalent to a one off payment about the same as Microsoft one month from Microsoft. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.office.officehub [google.com] read the reviews the product is simply annoying what should be potential customers by overcharging for an Office product.
The fact that this software is impossible to find on the play store(unlike 365 Sex positions...seriously there are not that many)...its incompatible with my devices, and doesn't work on the more useful tablets!? Microsoft do not understand that people will buy into there ecosystem if you offer them a great product...at great value. If those exist, potential customers may be more willing to look at Microsoft's hardware offerings as something more than a sad joke.
WinCE was once big (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple and Google rule the smart phone world now, but before the iPhone you wanted WinCE devices like the XDA and iPaq. They had the chance and the market position but failed to conquer the iPhone successfully. By the time there was "Apple, BlackBerry and the rest" Google got in and by combining google accounts and multiple vendors offering the same OS, they got their current position. MicroSoft kept trying combining their desktop business model and apps with mobile, resulting in expensive phones that lacked features people wanted and came with features people weren't interested in at that price point. Developers were angry because all their apps needed to be rewritten for newer winCE/windows phone versions and if you wanted a newer windows phone version, you had to buy a new phone with it. There was a lot of inconsistency and doubt about how future proof an investment in the mobile windows phone platform would be for almost any party in the smart phone economy, resulting in people betting on other horses.
MicroSoft had the position, they created it themselves and then lost it once the smart phone really started taking off as a platform. MicroSoft had their way, they worked hard for it but they thought that they could pull another MS-DOS on the organizer-turned-smart-phone and then messed it up.
Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you want with an office package on a phone or tablet anyway? Are there really any people who write lengthy documents on their glossy, greasy tablet touch screens?
Really, this telephone and tablet hype bullshit is just becoming ridiculous.
Re:Typical Microsoft approach (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Typical Microsoft approach (Score:2, Insightful)
"Once again this underscores the incredible luck Microsoft have been riding for decades, after big businesses opted to standardize micro computers on MS-DOS PCs. Microsoft never had to claw their way to the top, they just bundled, bought up and drove other competition to ruin by immoral business practices."
You were clearly not around in the 80's.
"Big businesses" did not standardize on MS-DOS, they standardized on IBM and specifically on PC-DOS. MS-DOS was not the same and PCs that couldn't run PC-DOS were failures. Ask AT&T and TI. IBM was the company, MS was a cling-on. They would have been snuffed out if they didn't earn their way elsewhere.
On the OS front, MS has to compete with several alternatives for the PC dekstop, Topview and GEM to name a couple. It created a fully virtual windows product, Windows/386, that was the first truly useful desktop 386-specific product. It created a worthy adversary (NT) to the 286-OS/2 disaster. It created a viable, portable OS that ran on RISC workstations while still running DOS apps. That countered the threat of a dominant Intel. It had to take on IBM while partnering with them and produce a truly excellent product in Windows NT while doing so. It established Win16 and Win32 as the dominant programming interfaces while IBM was pushing their own lock-in. It accomplished all this while Novell had an absolute stranglehold in networking. It sent Novell packing at the same time, not something that people might have predicted at the time. Netware was THE product, LAN Manager was a toy. How times changed.
Meanwhile, Word quickly became a technically excellent product and their office suite competed well with another huge competitor with dominant marketshare. That market wasn't gifted to MS, they earned it and put down Wordperfect in the process.
Finally, Microsoft's bread and butter comes from software for which the industry has never produced viable competition. That's not MS's fault. As the de facto sole supplier of software platforms, it's MS's job to shepherd the industry and drive standards. By and large they do a grim job of that, but MS did PnP which was revolutionary for PCs. They, more than anyone else, create the technical umbrella under which companies like Apple can pluck off-the-shelf components and pretend to be superior engineers. PCs work because of astronomical efforts by countless engineers. MS plays a big role in that.
Sure, MS was/is ruthless and unethical, but to say MS is a product of nothing more than incredible luck for decades is simply ignorant. MS was methodical and technically excellent. They made consistently the best development tools and developed viable offerings in every area that mattered. They destroyed their competition on the field even as they stabbed them in the back off of it. MS fought their way to the top in multiple simultaneous markets.