Just watched the keynote thing from last night and the one thing that struck me was their new pricing strategy, everything for free: OSX, Office Apps, Online Office Apps, iLife etc.

Seems to me to be a direct strike at Microsoft, lowering the market value of SW knowing that MS don’t have a HW business line (of any size) to make back up the numbers on. In the long term it’s going to be hard to charge for Office 365 and Windows etc if their biggest rival offers it all for free…

Much as I like apple (and I’m writing this on my macbook, as I use my iphone for a dictaphone for work and my wife is using her iPad, i’m an apple certified trainer in Logic and use them every day at work) I don’t think that Apple can realistically compete with MS Office – not for grown up tasks. Even if you look at simple stuff – mail merges for example – you can’t do that with mail/pages, Numbers has none of the serious data manipulation tools of Excel and word is the baseline standard for all other word processing software – office is simply in another league to iWork, and I think Apple know this.

The reality is that Apple Iwork stuff doesn’t compete with Office because it can’t – what it does compete with is google drive, and Zoho and open office – and in order to do that effectively, it has to be free.

In terms of the OS side of things, yes, there is every possibility that making the OS update free will help to drive hardware sales, and that is absolutely where they make their cash, but they don’t make as much on the OS X side as they do on the IOS side, they are much more competitive with Andriod than they are windows. OS X users are very much a niche, and not part of the mainstream, not like iOS users.

I think it’s more that they are developing a load of “cloudy” services and want to get the maximum take-up that they can. Free means most of their users will update and suddenly everyone’s using iCloud, photo streams, Pages, iTunes match whatever.

I’d see it more as a strike against Google and Amazon – Microsoft can keep the boxes installed in offices but Apple wants you to be buying your music and sharing pictures and movies from within the apple cloud.

I was going to start a similar thread.

The fact is Numbers, Pages and Keynote are free to everyone even those without a Mac via the iCloud. At this point, numbers especially, doesn’t offer direct replacements for the full power Excel and Word. But for most people they are sufficient and with more investment they will catch up. Microsoft makes £20bn a year from Lffice, take that away and they are in very big trouble.

Free Maverocks OSX 10.9 was genius and a real show of strength, Apple don’t need the incremental revenue from upgrades (I would have paid for it, cheap at £15 vs £100’s MS used to charge) and by offering it free it’s a huge challenge to Microsoft to do the same and it gets people talking and it more and more people upgrading to latest offering and hooking them into the Apple iCloud

Microsoft is weak and getting weaker. The Phone OS will die out, they could be left with XBOX and a terminal decline in Office. They only bought Skype to stop Facebook getting it. The CEO has finally gone and shareholders want Gates to stand down, IMO it’s too late for them to change direction.

The reality is that Apple Iwork stuff doesn’t compete with Office because it can’t

I’d agree 100% right now as a Power Excel user, nothing touches it, but 99% of users aren’t power users and I suspect the gap is closing fast esp as Microsoft 365 Excel is a cut down version (AIUI no VBA etc).

OS X users are very much a niche, and not part of the mainstream

But closing every year as PC sales are in decline whereas Macbooks are growing year on year (I think).

I’d agree 100% right now as a Power Excel user, nothing touches it, but 99% of users aren’t power users and I suspect the gap is closing fast

Aye same goes for Word I think. 99% of users just use it to bash out letters and small documents. Even pretty basic features like Contents tables, Styles and cross-references are a mystery to most folk.

Googles in the game too: the Google Docs spreadsheets are pretty good and offer enough functionality for most folk.

Possibly it will force MS into becoming a laptop company, which will be quite amusing….

The biggest comparison I saw was surface pro 2…. Now c£900 with keyboard, and more if you want office.
Compare against a mcabook pro 13″ with lots of bundled software and a nicer screen for £1100.
Think my money would go macbook.

With the exception of the Xbox, I don’t think MS has ever made a decent HW product.

I’m with euain – Mavericks is free for the simple reason it’s so focused on iCloud and will lock more and more people into Apple services and subsequently devices. It’s a very smart business decision.

Every time I get stuck with Open Office or Google Docs I’m reminded just how good Word and Excel really are – there’s a reason they’re the standard.

But for home use? I can certainly see that giving the software away is a pretty smart decision, much like a dealer giving kids the first dose free 🙂

I wish Apple would include a # key on their Macbooks.

the # key is the same number of presses on a mac keyboard as it is on a PC keyboard, you just have to remember it. 😉

I wish Apple would include a # key on their Macbooks.

+1

Hijack – can you buy licenses for MacOS on its own, without a Mac?

The # key is there, hold option and then 3.

The rest of the world would call 10.9 a service pack…

the # key is the same number of presses on a mac keyboard as it is on a PC keyboard

[quote]The # key is there, hold option and then 3[/quote]That’s twice as many.

#######yay a # key, cheers rob2 ######### My Macbook is twice as good now.

The rest of the world would call 10.9 a service pack…

I think it is a bit more than that. Granted it is an incremental upgrade from Mountain Lion but for those of us on Lion it’s a great opportunity to have the latest OS free.

Fair point, I’d forgotten it was a normal key on a PC. Apple have sucked me in and off.

@flaperon now now ! Mavericks has major changes including more efficient memory management and efficiency improvements leading to improved battery life on the portable devices. Apple does its equivalent of service pack releases, this isn’t one though.

🙂
Free software is nothing new, as pointed out Google & Open/Libre Office has been there for a while apple just catching up with those really. Considering any office doc I have in chrome open’s up with no need for office is great.

footflaps – Member

With the exception of the Xbox, I don’t think MS has ever made a decent HW product.

Disagree, the original two button mouse was mint(!).

######### hash key!!! ace 😀 ##############

Apple have sucked me in and off.

Really? What’s the keyboard shortcut for that feature?? 😈

its the one when you enter your apple id and cc details!

Really? What’s the keyboard shortcut for that feature??

Apple outsourced that to Grinder due to it being so popular. I think there is an app for that.

With the exception of the Xbox, I don’t think MS has ever made a decent HW product.

which was butchered out of a mac g5

It’s worth noting that it’s not limited to their mainstream software portfolio – logic (audio software) and Final Cut (previously pro level video, but now less so…) led the crash in prices a long time ago (4 years?), logic 9 in particular was the first in the field to come as a big complete bundle at a real knock down price – the others have slowly followed, but not to the same extent, and the big players – Pro Tools for example in the audio world – where they still make a much more “power user” focussed product, have maintained the upper price point in the market, whilst logic and some of the others, dominate the “ease of use” end of the market.

It might also be because the surface rt comes with a free version of office. Add that to the ability to edit office docs online using sky drive and Microsoft suddenly have a niceproduct at the low end as well as business end.

I thought this thread was going to be about scrumpy. 🙁

Insider dealing

@footflaps

Possibly it will force MS into becoming a laptop company, which will be quite amusing….

They are… devices and services company now, see Nokia 2520 and Surface

With the exception of the Xbox, I don’t think MS has ever made a decent HW product.

except for keyboards and mice?

Microsoft are loosing the plot – having a rant at Apple here ! Official Microsoft Blog

I suppose in fairness until I read this I didn’t even know Microsoft made a tablet 8)

My first computer was a mac, 1991 or 92, had them for years until mortgage/family came along and suddenly more bang for the buck PCs took over. But having just got an iphone I rediscovered why I love them and I’m back in the market, ok may have to buy cheapest kit used at that, but the compatibility and ease of use is very attractive. I can see me taking my house all mac in the next year. So the point being may be this free tactic is to win back folk like me…and I’d say it will.

Just need to find an 09 or later Mac mini at a good price first.

I suppose in fairness until I read this I didn’t even know Microsoft made a tablet

It’s rumoured they have sold as many as two in the first six months since launch, they know Balmer bought one and they’re stilling trying to find out who bought the other one……

# is shift 3 on a US/internations k/b on windows
same number of keypresses as a Mac

they know Balmer bought one and they’re stilling trying to find out who bought the other one

They had to pull the update to 8.1 and repost it. So which one reported the bug?

Certainly a clever move. Ultimately it’ll be marketing, and presumably locking people in.

M$ won’t be kicking the bucket any time soon, nor will full featured apps be disappearing. May not need full featured for home use, but in business there are so many custom VB stuff tied into Office apps, and people actually do use features and desktops, that it’d be suicide to kill that off.

You can’t design a tablet on a tablet, that’s for sure.

So which one reported the bug?

They traced the IP to a lakeside mansion overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington. They tried to contact the owner, but he denied knowing what Surface was saying ‘I wouldn’t buy that PoS even if I owned 15% of the company’.

Developing software, Microsoft has the market with this one