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Post by adamthompson32 on Oct 22, 2012 16:26:14 GMT -8
Apple and VMware sure think it might be possible. www.crn.com/news/applications-os/240009503/apple-vmware-team-on-ipad-microsoft-office-killer.htmA buddy of mine is one of the founders of a company that just got acquired by VMware and he just sent me that link. He said he wasn't at all aware of this initiative until he saw the link. Seems interesting to me. Personally, I don't think I'll ever use anything other than MS Office but I've been surprised before and I'm sure for many people this will be "good enough". This was particularly interesting to me. I had no idea Office was this expensive. One sign of the challenges that Microsoft faces with its Office suite franchise in the current market, said Venero, is the fact that customers can buy a brand-name notebook for less than the cost of the Microsoft Office Professional suite. "If I buy Office Professional online from Microsoft.com, I will pay $499.99," said Venero. "That's a one-user, two-PC license. If I want to save money, I can buy the Professional Version for one user, one PC for $349.99 from Microsoft.com. I can go buy a Lenovo 15.6-inch laptop with 4-Gbyte RAM, a 320-Gbyte hard drive for $299.99 from BestBuy.com." "When the price of the software exceeds the price of the device that the software will run on, you have an enormous challenge of justifying the price of that application when there are alternatives out there like the Apple (NSDQ:AAPL) iWork Suite, Google (NSDQ:GOOG) Apps and OpenOffice."
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Post by Lstream on Oct 22, 2012 16:40:43 GMT -8
The thesis here is that this product will appeal to the SMB market. Where I get stuck is with file compatibility. Small and medium sized businesses must interact with other businesses that have Office. Almost every Office file I open in Pages, Numbers or Keynote has some sort of issue with it. How could a business rely on a productivity suite that can't effectively exchange files with customers, suppliers, or others?
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Post by adamthompson32 on Oct 22, 2012 16:49:22 GMT -8
The thesis here is that this product will appeal to the SMB market. Where I get stuck is with file compatibility. Small and medium sized businesses must interact with other businesses that have Office. Almost every Office file I open in Pages, Numbers or Keynote has some sort of issue with it. How could a business rely on a productivity suite that can't effectively exchange files with customers, suppliers, or others? Makes sense to me. I can't really see it happening but surely Apple and VMware are very aware of this potential hurdle. Maybe they can somehow make opening Office files "good enough"? I have no idea, but if they price it at a fraction of Office prices I have to think they have a fighting chance, especially if Office for iPad is as bad as Office for Mac (or even worse).
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benoir
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Post by benoir on Oct 23, 2012 3:47:09 GMT -8
Almost every Office file I open in Pages, Numbers or Keynote has some sort of issue with it. How could a business rely on a productivity suite that can't effectively exchange files with customers, suppliers, or others? I'm not convinced that this is as big a problem as you suggest. I generally use the iWork suite when opening Office docs. Yes sometimes there are formatting issues, but it is more often the case that the formatting in the original document is so poor or inconsistent that any incompatibility artifacts produced are inconsequential. I will take Pages Numbers and Keynote any day over Office for ease and pleasure of use, than wrestle with clunky Office. Having said that if I wrote contracts all day I would expect I would use Word as it probably is pretty good at writing technical documents. But I really don't think compatibility is a real issue for the majority out there. I think it is largely manufactured... a bit like the Maps fiasco. In a different software sphere I use Vectorworks, in a world so dominated by AutoCAD. So I have to translate files in and out of .dwg all the time. There are compatibility issues but in the end I can do things in Vectorworks that would be a struggle in AutoCAD. For me Vectorworks is my 'productivity' software and it hasn't stopped me from being productive.... Is it really a generally problem out there (not a rhetorical question)? I'm sure Lsteam you have a legitimate grievance but it's really not that much of a problem for what I do.
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Post by Lstream on Oct 23, 2012 4:36:50 GMT -8
I'm not convinced that this is as big a problem as you suggest. I generally use the iWork suite when opening Office docs. Yes sometimes there are formatting issues, but it is more often the case that the formatting in the original document is so poor or inconsistent that any incompatibility artifacts produced are inconsequential. Having said that if I wrote contracts all day I would expect I would use Word as it probably is pretty good at writing technical documents. But I really don't think compatibility is a real issue for the majority out there. I think it is largely manufactured... a bit like the Maps fiasco. 1. Customers will not accept the argument that they have done something wrong, by improperly formatting documents. Good luck with that sales strategy. 2. I am not manufacturing anything. Just last week I opened a document created by a colleague in PowerPoint. Real simple stuff with a table in it. Some if the table cells have graphics in it. Keynote could not even keep the graphics in the correct table cells. It was therefore useless. For a business to rely on these products, they need to work every single time. As a business owner I don't care if I spend a few hundred bucks less per seat if it means that my people are wasting their time messing around making their documents work. I am even less inclined to take this risk if my ecosystem partners like customers are going to get files from me that don't work. My people's time is worth way more than the one time saving of avoiding Office. I was very excited about the Apple productivity packages when I got my first iPad. It has since turned out to be a major disappointment due to these problems which happen all the time. Manufactured my ass.
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benoir
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Post by benoir on Oct 24, 2012 4:04:45 GMT -8
1. Customers will not accept the argument that they have done something wrong, by improperly formatting documents. Good luck with that sales strategy. 2. I am not manufacturing anything. Just last week I opened a document created by a colleague in PowerPoint. Real simple stuff with a table in it. Some if the table cells have graphics in it. Keynote could not even keep the graphics in the correct table cells. It was therefore useless. For a business to rely on these products, they need to work every single time. As a business owner I don't care if I spend a few hundred bucks less per seat if it means that my people are wasting their time messing around making their documents work. I am even less inclined to take this risk if my ecosystem partners like customers are going to get files from me that don't work. My people's time is worth way more than the one time saving of avoiding Office. I was very excited about the Apple productivity packages when I got my first iPad. It has since turned out to be a major disappointment due to these problems which happen all the time. Manufactured my ass. Lstream sorry if that sounded as though I was implying that your compatibility issues were 'manufacture'. I believe for you it is a real and measurable problem. I know you're not 'manufacturing' anything I am a business owner myself and as such productivity is key to staying in business. However interoperability has not been an essential ingredient in the success of my business. As a designer I deal with file transfer on a daily basis. Even ten years ago people argued my business would fail because we were Mac based. More recently there have been similar arguments that suggest that if you are not Office centric you will also fail. Whilst this is a critical issue for some like yourself, I just don't think this is a major or real problem for a good deal of businesses out there. So from your perspective it is a very real and tangible problem but from my perspective it is largely immaterial as I see more benefit in productivity gain we get from using iWork. I certainly agree with you impression of the iPad versions.... very flakey. Ultimately interoperability is good thing, but for me and my business it hasn't been an essential ingredient. For you, I hope they fix this issue.
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