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.' "
Typical Microsoft approach (Score:5, Interesting)
There are people in the organization who understand where things are heading in the future, and have convinced the company leadership that they need to be on iOS and Android or get left behind. But the old school mentality dies hard, and Microsoft has painted itself into a corner by making Office one of the fundamental selling points for its tablets (which is flawed thinking anyway, and shows they still don't grasp the market). So this is what you end up with - a crappy office experience on iOS and Android that only serves to make the company look bad.
Re:Typical Microsoft approach (Score:5, Insightful)
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Google is doing much the same on iPhones. It provides late or diminished google apps like mapping compared to the enhanced and first out features on android. Likewise google's new chromecast feature only works in the chrome browser.
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Google is doing much the same on iPhones. It provides late or diminished google apps like mapping compared to the enhanced and first out features on android.
Not really comparable. iPhone apps go through a very rigorous approval procedure, so it should come as no surprise that Google can launch new/enhanced features faster on their own platform than they can do on iOS, I would also be little surprised if certain features get blocked by Apple if they are perceived as competing with a native application/feature.
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So....
* if Google publishes something 'decent but much better on android' then it's Apple's fault.
* if MS publishes something decent but much better on WP8' then it's MS's fault.
What's with all the MS hate here anyway... if you don't like it don't buy it and just walk on. Do people get some kind of ego-boost out of bad-mouthing every single MS-product or decision ? Sjeezsss...
Delay is curator's fault (Score:2)
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So.... * if Google publishes something 'decent but much better on android' then it's Apple's fault. * if MS publishes something decent but much better on WP8' then it's MS's fault.
What's with all the MS hate here anyway... if you don't like it don't buy it and just walk on. Do people get some kind of ego-boost out of bad-mouthing every single MS-product or decision ? Sjeezsss...
Obvious troll here! If Apple prevents Google from releasing something as good as they have on Android, then yes it is Apple's fault. But you probably think that makes the Apple system better anyway. Google is doing nothing to prevent MS from publishing, but they purposely choose to make a sucky product. The only thing MS would make that doesn't suck would be a vacuum.
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So.... * if Google publishes something 'decent but much better on android' then it's Apple's fault. * if MS publishes something decent but much better on WP8' then it's MS's fault.
What's with all the MS hate here anyway... if you don't like it don't buy it and just walk on. Do people get some kind of ego-boost out of bad-mouthing every single MS-product or decision ? Sjeezsss...
And you're completely missing the point. Microsoft is not even trying to put forward an equivalent on the Android AND iOS platforms of what is has on its Windows platforms. They're deliberately making inferior products on other platforms to try to steer customers to their preferred platform - Windows. So yes, it's 100% MS's fault.
This would be like Google making an app that used their services on Android, but used a degraded experience (Apple Maps, Bing, etc) on iOS and Windows.
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Not quite mutually exclusive, but I've heard how horrible Google's iOS apps are compared to other iOS apps. Crashing is the biggest complaint (it's almost as if Apple sees "Google" in the title and just approves it blindly - there have been MANY Google apps that simply crash on launching. So much so that Google has h
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My grandfather used to call it "Tripping over nickels to pinch pennies."
my GREAT grandfather used to say, don't trip over the farthings to pick up the tuppence!
From my memory of pre-dismal coinage there are 16 farthings in tuppence. Did you perhaps make a transpositional error?
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Eight. A farthing is a quarter-penny and tuppence is, well, two pence.
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Eight. A farthing is a quarter-penny and tuppence is, well, two pence.
You are correct Sir. My gray matter must be failing ...
Re:Typical Microsoft approach (Score:5, Interesting)
There are people in the organization who understand where things are heading in the future, and have convinced the company leadership that they need to be on iOS and Android or get left behind. But the old school mentality dies hard, and Microsoft has painted itself into a corner by making Office one of the fundamental selling points for its tablets (which is flawed thinking anyway, and shows they still don't grasp the market). So this is what you end up with - a crappy office experience on iOS and Android that only serves to make the company look bad.
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. They haven't lost their way, they never had it to begin it. Apple and Google have carved out the smart phone and tablet markets and made them what they are - a war for supremacy. Microsoft are still playing silly games, like they have some dominant market position.
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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:Typical Microsoft approach (Score:5, Funny)
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No, Microsoft has proven it statistically, the proof just involves extensive use of i - and a couple of NaN's.
Re:Typical Microsoft approach (Score:5, Funny)
You must be using some new branch of mathematics that I wasn't previously aware of.
Or Excel for Android.
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.
Old tactics, really (Score:3, Interesting)
And much of their old dominance was founded on their monopoly of the OS through windows, and they were not shy about (ab)using it.
For example, they allegedly tweaked Win95 to kill WordPerfect [techweekeurope.co.uk]. Novell sued but lost the court case.
To kill off Netscape, they not only bundled IE with ev
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Microsoft never had the position and WinCE devices were never wanted. Prior to iOS and Android there was Blackberry and Palm (and Symbian). Microsoft was only an alternative and always a pretty crappy one. You need to get your history straight.
Fact is, Apple only had an opening in smartphones because none of the other vendors could make a product that worked. Palm had nice apps but its OS was primitive and unstable. Symbian was the opposite, good OS but terrible apps. MS was bloated and slow with bad hu
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No, I very seriously did not. For years I nursed along an old Psion PDA running an early version of SymbianOS, holding it together with tape and paper clips (literally), rather than use a "wince" device. (I tried and gave up on a PalmOS device too.) The original iPhone allowed me to retire that old unit, because there was finally a modern piece of hardware with software I found usabl
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MS has long had some of the most effective sales teams of any software company in the world. To claim otherwise, or to say that ALL their success was based on "luck" or "immoral business practices" is a serious stretch of the imagination.
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"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
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"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.
I was there in the 1980's. The PC was the platform of choice, despite some alternatives. Even the Mac preceded the disaster known as Windows 95, but IBM didn't take desktop PCs very seriously.
The IBM PC XT and PC AT were starters, but clones were everywhere and there was a thriving upgrade market from nearly the beginning from 3rd party vendors. Then the PS/2 line came out and was a monstrosity, particularly if you wanted to upgrade anything, which you pretty much couldn't - you had to buy a higher model
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There are a lot of companies out there that are looking for ANY way to cut costs. They are skating along, still in business, but any place to save a dollar or two or ten thousand - they will do it now just to get by. They are in a long-term pinch not a sudden drop out.
I predict with 100% made up certainty that in THIS climate, more so than any other, there will be many businesses of all sizes absolutely DITCH microsoft. There will be companies move to open office, or the like, in droves.
IT people know about
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a crappy office experience on iOS and Android that only serves to make the company look bad
Clearly it also makes the company look outdated and monopoloistic. But I see your point.
Oh no. (Score:4, Funny)
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Is it possible that a port to a Windows phone environment is easier than rewriting it in java aka dalvik? That maybe it is a barely funded trial balloon?
The typical Microsoft approach at play is getting in late and screwing up the first version. Two options now - double down and fix it, or claim lack of interest and abandon the project.
This is not about making office a selling point yet, offering a crippled version for Android. That will make office a non starter, and any other suite wins. Clearly not how M
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Unlike WP7, Android has NDK (Score:2)
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You are leaping too far ahead with your analysis. This is a beta product - clearly not an "end" point. MS has typically done a fair job of improving the user experience over time with their software, and I would expect for them to iron out the bugs in the Office on Android experience.
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Like with Metro, and the Ribbon interface.
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Perhaps you haven't tried the latest version of Office on a PC, but it has become exceptionally crappy there too. The time is ripe for a competitor to finally put an end to almost two decades of Microsoft's complete dominance of the Word Processor and Spreadsheet market.
Typical approach (Score:2)
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I wanted to say what you said but I don't think I could have said it as well.
Microsoft just seems impaired where it comes to thinking in ways compatible with today's environment. It made sense for Microsoft to give "alternative platforms" a cripled version -- Microsoft had dominance and they wanted to maintain it, however illegally it may have been. (It was ruled illegal for them to leverage one product to boost another and that they were in violation of the law in their practice.)
But today, Microsoft is
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Because virtual keyboards on touch screens outright suck to a degree even higher than really bad laptop keyboards.
Maybe half a decade ago, but slide-style keyboards like Swype and Google Keyboard are almost as fast as physical keys. And if you're using them to add field work to office documents, which is a core use-case for a lot of handheld devices in businesses, they win hands-down.
Nowhere near it (Score:3)
Re:Typical Microsoft approach (Score:4, Insightful)
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Multiple users achieving 50-70wps with a few different Android keyboards.
Alright, now show me a testing application where every error has to be corrected (which is trivial and fast on a hardware keyboard) and where the text consists of slightly more complex and less ubiquitous strings of characters than 'dog' and 'pony'. If you add word completion to typing on a hardware keyboard, it becomes even faster than it already is for 'normal' text.
Another great test is using ssh or any other command line on your phone using a onscreen keyboard. You'll be crying in a corner after three c
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I use ssh frequently without much of an issue. Vim too. It's not the best experience but it is tolerable.
The big issue I have is with screen. I can't seem to reliably send a tab (needed for a split console).
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Virtual keyboards suck. There is no sense as to where the hands are resting, no touch feed back to indicate a key press, no short cut accelerators bulk selecting, drag and drop
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Maybe half a decade ago, but slide-style keyboards like Swype and Google Keyboard are almost as fast as physical keys
Try typing a password or a marginally complex URL.
You'll simply give up and go back to browsing YouTube.
They brought back Clippy (Score:5, Funny)
"...including a classic Microsoft dialog box that offers a choice that makes no sense"
Clippy, is that you?
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"...including a classic Microsoft dialog box that offers a choice that makes no sense"
Clippy, is that you?
That .. would actually make sense to the 2 or 3 dozen people who actually miss Clippy.
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That .. would actually make sense to the 2 or 3 people who actually miss Clippy.
FTFY
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1995 called - they want their stale jokes back.
Classic disruptive technology (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft has a long standing, dominant set of softwares (Windows/Office) that has been its cash cow for longer than many of us have been old enough to vote. It's the classic case for disruptive technologies:
1) The old, highly profitable incumbent using old technology and charging pretty pennies for it.
2) The new upstart technology, able to do similar stuff in a new context and dramatically cheaper.
3) Incumbent tries to mash its old technology into the new context to preserve its margins.
4) Incumbent dies a death of a thousand paper cuts as the new context, typically more nimble and with an entirely new, cheaper cost structure, slowly peck at the old incumbent until it's irrelevant.
Many of us old-timers remember when IBM ruled the roost for the PC. Some of us remember when DEC was the dominant force for mini computers. A few of us remember when IBM ruled the roost for computing mainframes, before the mini computer took sway.
We should give Microsoft lots of credit. Microsoft had a *long* time at the helm. It was able to cash in on the entire PC revolution, and even much of the Internet revolution, until the Mobile revolution, which it foresaw a decade or more in advance and tried hard (but hardly) to embrace.
For me, going from Windows Phone 6.1 to Android 2.2 on a Motorola Droid 2 was like going from a rusty riding lawn mower to an LXi Convertible. It's sad, really. Microsoft had its part in the mobile game for several hardware generations, and they were beaten so mightily that they are now basically the upstarts trying to be a halfway, third place contender.
Admire what they've done, but this mobile situation is just sad given how hard they tried.
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Amen to that.
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They tried and I'm sure they know full well their predicament.
What they seem to have been missing though, is a design culture, like you might find in an architect's office or an industrial designer's office. Too many clever geeks are missing that different type of skill it takes to comprehend how and why a gadget would be desirable. Apple seems to have had this culture, but it mattered less on the desktop.
When things shifted to mobile, Apple applied it not just to the shape of the brick, not just as a style
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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.
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The features listed sound more like 'Notepad for Android' to me.
Re:Should be called Office Lite (Score:4, Informative)
... they could get the impression that Office 365 is a poor hack and opt for something else.
Indeed. Such as LibreOffice, which is (I read) in active development, and available in pre-alpha form [libreoffice.org] for Android already.
There will no doubt be a chorus in favour of so-called "cloud"-based office applications, but I don't see any likelihood of localhost programs dying out soon. There are still many (myself included) who don't trust other people's servers, or who (also including myself) who can't count on a permanent connection to the internet.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Seems like a touchy strategy... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can understand that Microsoft doesn't want to leave Windows RT even deader in the water than it already is (presumably this is why their Android application point-blank doesn't support tablets, only phones); but it strikes me that they might be overplaying their hand.
The market for office suites that are identical to Office is quite large, quite lucrative; but also has very high barriers to entry. Even Microsoft has shown limited ability (at least within a useful timeframe) to rebuild such a beast (notably, they had to drag all of Windows Desktop mode, and the supporting libraries, into the otherwise all-Metro Windows RT to support Office, even then lacking some features, because they have no 'metro' Office suite.)
Unfortunately for them, while the market for somewhat-compatible-with-Office office suites isn't nearly as lucrative, it's substantially more competitive, with comparatively low barriers to entry and some competent players.
Microsoft seems to be playing with crippling their offerings of a somewhat-compatible-with-Office software package as though they were working from the position of strength provided by selling a 100% Office office suite. Which, outside of Windows proper, they don't do, and may not even be able to do. That seems like it isn't going to work out exactly as planned...
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working from the position of strength provided by selling a 100% Office office suite
This is all which holds businesses back from using any other office suite. The office suite they use must be compatible with MS Office because everyone else uses MS Office. Every release or two, Microsoft creates a new file format .. it then takes the competitors 5 years to catch up at which time, MS releases a new file format.
If the creators of the other office suites made a 100% Office office suite, there would be no competition. Until that time (which I believe will come), Microsoft will continue to
Re:Seems like a touchy strategy... (Score:4, Informative)
Every release or two, Microsoft creates a new file format .. it then takes the competitors 5 years to catch up at which time, MS releases a new file format.
Microsoft opened the barn doors when they pushed to have the office format declared an Open Standard. They were very nervous that other file formats would be declared the new preferred open format by governments and organizations trying to get away from closed, undocumented, and proprietary formats. This has allowed other office suites to accurately read and write documents in Microsoft's formats. If Microsoft now tries to change their format again, without documenting all the changes, they risk having the Office 2010 format declared the only supported file format users are allowed to use by many companies. Microsoft's last couple of releases have done nothing but change the UI or licensing terms without adding anything substantive.
The horse has left the barn and Microsoft will have a devil of a time getting it back in.
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But did any version of MS Office actually use the ISO/IEC 29500:2008 standard in the end?
There was so much hand waving and so on - especially given the Office spec this was based on used the ECMA standard - and a few ethereal promises later on ...
But did they ever (so far as was possible given the appalling state of the spec) actually get to implementing what was agreed on?
MS built the barn (Score:2)
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"Is it dumb to make a 'not very good' 100% Office suite for Android? Yes, very dumb. Will MS feel the pain of this stupidity? Nope, they'll profit even more from it."
I'm not sure I made this aspect of my argument sufficiently clear: "100% Office" is something that even Microsoft only has one of: Office version whatever on Windows. Office for OSX differs in a number of respects, even Office on Windows RT, which is almost entirely a straight port of 'real' Office is missing a few things unless they've finally
How phones can be defined (Score:2)
I love it! (Score:4, Interesting)
First they killed the Window OS with Windows 8. Then they killed the Windows tablet with Windows RT. Now they're killing MS Office with MS Office For Android.
Is there really anything left to kill?
I love it!
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They tried pretty hard to kill off Windows Phone by orphaning their existing WP7 users and apps with the switch to WP8. It still seems to be limping along somehow though.
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To be fair, there wasn't really a lot to kill there though.
They could do it again with Windows Phone 9 (complete change in direction: forth time lucky?) and hardly anyone would notice.
When the desktop itself loses market share (Score:2)
stupid article (Score:2)
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To be fair, the phone UI looks better than the new Office UI on PCs.
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Can you at least say "less ugly"? "Better" has this ring that it was a comparative of "good".
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.
So wait.. (Score:2)
A microsoft product, not tested properly, telling you a more expensive version is better, and with little common sense, designed for hardware that microsoft didnt design?
So, its a standard microsoft product then right? This isnt actually news.
News would be if it worked and worked well.
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No, that would have been a reason to finally open the window and look up to see whether the sky is falling, and then call the red dude and ask him if he has more acceptable temperatures down there than we have up here.
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Softmaker Office user on Windows, Linux, Windows Mobile (back in the day), Android.
Ironic and funny... (Score:2)
I find it funny that if the same thing happened on iOS with a different company, the comments would be more like "a great app that leaves out the things you don't really need" and "well optimized user interface that doesn't get in the way".
Since it's MS, it's "woefully incomplete" if it doesn't include every single feature of desktop Office, even if 99.9% of users don't use them.
And I really don't understand all the WP8 hate here on slashdot. I've been using a Lumia 820 for about half a year now and it's by
Apple Copies Great Design (Score:3)
I find it funny that if the same thing happened on iOS with a different company, the comments would be more like "a great app that leaves out the things you don't really need" and "well optimized user interface that doesn't get in the way".
Since it's MS, it's "woefully incomplete"....
The bottom line is Metro is not great design. iOS is now unfairly being compared to Vista..when in reality it is simply behind Android, absorbing many much needed Android (and WebOS) like features into iOS. Its difficult to remember with its now "Fuck the American worker" advertisements while spilling design gobbligook that is simply offensive...how awesome iOS was when it was released, and why its so difficult to move on from. Samsung internal 132-page document comparison wrongfully used in the trial shows
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.
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Are there really any people who write lengthy documents on their glossy, greasy tablet touch screens?
Probably not that many. However, there may be more people who edit an existing lengthy document on a portable device.
Android 4.3 breaks some Bluetooth keyboards (Score:2)
I carry a 10" tablet with bluetooth keyboard pretty much everywhere
I too own an Android tablet, and I bought a ZAGGkeys Flex keyboard for it. But what's a good way to work around the fact that Android 4.3 broke a lot of Bluetooth keyboards, such as the ZAGGkeys Flex? (Search the web for Android 4.3 ZAGGkeys.)
Our exper. with ASUS' Win 8 tab was bad enough... (Score:2)
After our disappointment with an ASUS Win 8 tab,
I wouldn't waste my time looking into Office 365.
(I also dislike the annual license fee deal attached
to Office 365... Imagine folks who are about to re-
tire, trying to fit an extra $100 -rent- per computer
for a -software- product!)
A recurring fee (Score:2)
I also dislike the annual license fee deal attached to Office 365... Imagine folks who are about to re- tire, trying to fit an extra $100 -rent- per computer for a -software- product!
Some fans of iOS, which charges a recurring fee for the ability to run self-signed software, claim that a recurring fee like this is a good thing because it helps to keep out the nonprofessionals who more often produce shoddy work. (Ha ha ha, boom boom.)
Good luck Microsoft, you'll need it (Score:2)
There's a couple of problems here.
The first is that Microsoft still assumes that the world wants to do nothing better with their devices that make Word docs and spreadsheets and PPT presentations, and "consume media" (I hate that expression). Meanwhile, the world has found lots of other fun things to do with their devices, and tablets and smartphones are great at doing a lot of them. And those same devices are not that great for doing a lot of serious number crunching, presentation making, and so on. (It
Get King Office ... (Score:2)
If you have an Android device, get King Office.
It'll natively write Doc, PPT, XLS and TXT files. It seems to be a nice interface for a touch screen and isn't ad-ridden, and has integrations to store stuff in the cloud.
Sorry Microsoft, but someone has beaten you to the punch and delivered something which works for me.
If mobile Office really is that important to you (Score:2)
Maybe you really should just get a Windows Phone? And where's the outrage for the nonexistent access to Google services on Windows Phone? Even though there are more than 30 million WPs in the wild, Google is obviously doing their best to drive people to Android. I guess everyone's just crying because Android is the market share leader?
Carry two devices? (Score:2)
Perfect meaning awful (Score:3)
perfect when it is applied in their own os and not in other OS.
What you are implying is that Microsoft cannot code cross platform Applications in a cross platform world. Android has passed 900,000,000 Users and is set to eclipse Windows(On around 1.2 Billion Users) this year. Microsoft need to compete, and to do so they need to produce first class products. Creating poor versions, will further tarnish an already poor brand...All of us use Microsoft's Software, and are more than aware how far from perfect it is on its own platform.
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I take exception to your "all of us use MS software", despite your being somewhat vague about which "us" you are referring to.
Believe it or not, there are a very large number of people that DO NOT "use MS software". In fact the readership of this site probably has a higher proportion thereof than other more "mainstream" sites do.
Unless by "us" you mean "clueless end users living under a rock" or "office drones locked in by their CIO's choice"..
Desktop Monopoly (Score:2)
I take exception to your "all of us use MS software", despite your being somewhat vague about which "us" you are referring to.
I'm sorry I was referring to the Desktop Monopoly that Microsoft has had for the past two decades(Now a Desktop App monopoly). My "everyone technical" had used it at some point I think is simply true...not really sure how using it makes you a "clueless end users living under a rock"
You are simply wrong
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Except the one in Windows 8 RT and Windows Phone are standalone Office.
The office for Android and iOS are front ends to Office365, the cloud version of Office, and a subscription service.
Microsoft should make an effort to making these Office365 clients good because if they're good, they promote usage of Office365 and thus, subscription revenue
Re: (Score:2)
Libreoffice Calc (Score:2)
Seems Microsoft still thinks Office is a killer app. The only one still worth something is Excel. The rest can be replaced with better alternatives for most people.
There is nothing special about Excel. I personally Prefer Calc, although they are very similar.
Re: (Score:2)
Precisely. They are almost irrelevant now, as Apple will be soon. China phone maker Xiaomi took 30,000,000 orders for its new "Red Rice" phone in just 5 hours. http://www.gizchai.com/2013/08/30000000-xiaomi-hongmi-aka-xiaomi-red.html [gizchai.com]
Yes.. 2-3% of China's population ordered that phone within 5 hours of release... I'm sure that press release is completely bullshit free.
If Word were free (Score:2)