[JorgeA]

CharlotteTheHarlot, on 15 February 2013 - 05:16 AM, said:

Quote

With Friends Like These …

Microsoft’s biggest PC maker partner HP is prepping a new line of Android-based tablets, according to a report by ReadWrite that cites anonymous sources. If true, this will be the worst betrayal since Boromir tried to steal the One Ring from Frodo at the end of “The Fellowship of the Ring.” HP, which also recently announced plans for a Google Chromebook-based laptop, is apparently working with NVIDIA’s upcoming Tegra 4 chipset and is also exploring a potential Android-based smart phone release. I fondly remember the days when HP would follow Microsoft blindly down every technological rabbit hole it cared to dig, but those days are clearly over. Maybe Microsoft should pump a few billion more into Dell and put HP out of its misery.

Thurrott's statement makes zero sense on its own terms. If I read this correctly, he's saying that HP should follow Microsoft blindly down every technological rabbit hole (Thurrott's words). Umm, last time I checked, "blindly following" someone down a "rabbit hole" implied that it was a bad/stupid thing to do. So Paul, tell me exactly why HP should keep doing this??

Far from a "betrayal," it's a sign that HP finally got tired of going along with Microsoft's folly and is at long last coming to its senses.

I'm going over there to see what people have said about this. Maybe I'll even register on his site so I can make this point.

--JorgeA

[Formfiller]

My fruitful discussion about the Office 2013 licensing on channel9:

http://channel9.msdn...icrosoft?page=3

I guess you will like that.

Don't forget, I am wastingtimewithforums there.

[Formfiller]

The discussion there got interesting. I urge you to read the channel9 thread. Evildictaitor is fanboyish, but apparently quite the insider at MS (I think he has friends there).

If you want to know the future of Office, read the thread!

This post has been edited by Formfiller: 15 February 2013 - 03:07 PM

[HalloweenDocument12]

JorgeA, on 15 February 2013 - 12:54 AM, said:

Welcome to the discussion!

Thanks, long time reader of this thread.

JorgeA, on 15 February 2013 - 01:01 AM, said:

Windows 8 may well manage to kill the PC -- but it would do so because so many people would rather hang on to their current PCs with an acceptable OS, than buy something preloaded with Windows 8.

Speculation: were Microsoft to discontinue sales of Windows 7 or put enough barriers in place to make it practically unobtainable, look for a significant rise in piracy. Bootlegging Microsoft stuff will become the new "OK" thing to do, like Napster was in the 90s. This would continue until the end of 7's viability, which could take a number of forms, including corrective behavior by Microsoft.

ciHnoN, on 15 February 2013 - 01:03 AM, said:

Thing is, they have lost the trust of their core developers. People like me. When that trust is gone, people like me will not develop for their platform. With Windows 8, they sealed the deal.

The Verge started a rumor that Windows 8 API will be obsolete as soon as this summer:

http://www.theverge....update-low-cost

Quote

Once Windows Blue is released, the Windows SDK will be updated to support the new release and Microsoft will stop accepting apps that are built specifically for Windows 8, pushing developers to create apps for Blue.

It's unclear whether or not this change involves more than a recompile. Simple recompilation would ordinarily be a logical default assumption, but given Microsoft's recent behavior one almost needs to assume that it is a radical change.

[HalloweenDocument12]

Regarding Steam, I posted these thoughts on another forum, with an expletive changed to comply with this site's profanity clause. I left in the word 'tard' because I think its meaning is reasonably understood in this context and can't think of an alternative. 'Fanboy' isn't close enough in my opinion, and I see 'tard' is used elsewhere in this thread.

Quote

When the rumors first started floating around (over a year ago?) I thought the idea was ridiculous. Then Newell chimed in with specific complaints against Windows 8 and its ecosystem; I thought he was half right, half tard. Now, though, I actually think Steam on Linux is a good idea. I don't expect it to generate significant sales nor do I think it is intended to but it does offer something of an exit strategy if/when Microsoft ups the ante regarding its "app" policies and/or the potential removal of desktop altogether.

In fact, Steam is potentially the best thing to ever happen in terms of creating a de facto Linux base. If this goes anywhere you can expect to see "Steam standard" distros that other developers will need to target if they expect their software to be used. They'll like it, too, because now they won't need to release 100 versions of RPM, DEB, and tar.gz files.

There's even potential of displacing X and crappy video drivers if it gets big enough. The end result would basically be a Steam-on-top-of-Linux platform like Android but with more "grassroots" origins, which may or may not appease the tard purists. Probably not once they see where things are going. Stallman will complain loudly for sure. Sorry guys, you had your chance to take SDL (which was gifted by the last big porter of Linux games, Loki) and make it into a GPLed Steam but of course without the corporate entity it never went anywhere and is basically the same now as it was in 1999.

The worst is reading about all this on tard websites. They've been wrong for 15 years but are right about this one thing (Steam for Linux exists) and they're all over themselves about it. Even a squirrel finds a nut and all that.

However, these guys are just too excited over the availability of 10+ year old relics like the original Half-life and its derivations like Counter-Strike. Come on, that's not exciting at all. Team Fortress 2 is available now, but that's still over 5 years old.

[HalloweenDocument12]

CharlotteTheHarlot, on 15 February 2013 - 02:53 AM, said:

Microsoft's Surface Pro Shortage Sham ( Dvorak 2013-02-12 )

Almost forgot this one, now a few days old. Dvorak comments on the obvious marketing stunt with the Surface Pro.

The discussion on Thurrott's site on launch day was atrocious. One person after another from all over the U.S. posted to say they called every Best Buy and Staples in the state with all of them saying they received zero or one 128 GB Surfaces and/or two or three 64 GB models. One apologist went as far to assume that every big box retailer in the country received 150, the number received by some Microsoft Stores, and proclaimed that Microsoft moved over half a million units the first day. Thurrott himself was fuming at the people who did their due diligence and couldn't find a retailer within a 200 mile range that received more than a handful of the things.

It's sad we even need a wealth of articles crying "hoax" to see through this.

[HalloweenDocument12]

CharlotteTheHarlot, on 15 February 2013 - 05:16 AM, said:

WinInfo Short Takes: February 15, 2013 ( Thurrott 2013-02-14 )

Quote

With Friends Like These …

If true, this will be the worst betrayal since Boromir tried to steal the One Ring from Frodo at the end of “The Fellowship of the Ring.” [...] I fondly remember the days when HP would follow Microsoft blindly down every technological rabbit hole it cared to dig, but those days are clearly over. Maybe Microsoft should pump a few billion more into Dell and put HP out of its misery.

[...] Now seriously, who talks like that, unless they are actually on the payroll? What person not on the payroll would be so wrapped up in Microsoft like that?

It's so deluded it doesn't even make sense. HP doesn't just sell desktop computers or whatever. Their revenue is $120 billion! "A few more billion" isn't nearly enough to take on a company like this. Microsoft itself pulls in $74 billion by comparison. HP's profitability is down but that doesn't mean you can bully it around. Assets between the two are close enough: $109 billion for HP vs. 121 billion for MSFT. This is like saying ExxonMobil should put Shell Oil out of its misery. Not gonna happen!

And since when is blindly following someone around a virtue? I have news for him: it's not "blind", HP did it because it was profitable. Now that it isn't, they're doing something else. Hard concept to grasp, I know.

The Boromir quote reveals the kind of person he is. Viewing that act as straight up betrayal is myopic at best. Thurrott seems to be the kind of guy that would put you on his enemies list if you borrowed a pencil and forgot to give it back. Graphite Betrayal: A Tale of a Wooden Friend Disappearing into the Ether.

This post has been edited by HalloweenDocument12: 15 February 2013 - 02:31 PM

[HalloweenDocument12]

CharlotteTheHarlot, on 15 February 2013 - 05:16 AM, said:

Office 2013 Gotcha: Standalone Products are for One PC Only ( Thurrott 2013-02-14 )

Subtitle ...The standalone versions of Office 2013 aren't necessarily a good value

[...]

Even most of his commenters are having a tough time with this. Several of them called Microsoft support and got different responses, they're worth a read.

I liked the first comment:

Quote

$99.99/year is simply too expensive for your regular consumer. Mom and Pop don't know what "licensing agreements" are. They'll just see the price tag and subscription and compare it to spending ~$60 for 3 apps that they'll have forever. Office at that price is too much of a difficult sell for your average non-techie consumer.

The real fear here is that Microsoft has waited so long to deliver Office as their "Halo" app on other platforms on the misguided notion that that would somehow stop the growth of said platforms that consumers have simply "moved on" to lighter, cheaper apps such as Google Docs or iWork. Honestly, I believe that Office is still strong, especially in enterprise, but has lost so much mindshare in the consumer space that asking for $100 a year is simply too much.

The part about losing mindshare resonates especially. Over the past decade, Office has become something enshrined in the business user's ivory tower, and the "mom & pops" that have it either bummed it off friends or family in IT or their nephews got them a "don't ask" copy. People used to ask for Office whenever they bought a new computer but they're so used to it being a pain that they've given up.

Microsoft is really losing a core group of people: "natural evangelists" who push their stuff up into a corporation and to the general public because the product quality is good. The way to get these people is to sell personal licenses on the cheap. That Microsoft is going in the opposite direction shows how out of touch they've become. It's probably too late to get these people back. In fact, I think part of the tablet-mania craze is that the exploratory group of IT users have nowhere else to go. They've even moved on from desktop Linux after 20 years of statistical insignificance. Mac OS is also stale, and over there people are also complaining about the OS becoming dumbed down and moving away from content creation in favor of content consumption, with even the flagship product Final Cut Pro jumping the shark.

[HalloweenDocument12]

Formfiller, on 15 February 2013 - 12:51 PM, said:

My fruitful discussion about the Office 2013 licensing on channel9:

http://channel9.msdn...icrosoft?page=3

I guess you will like that.

Don't forget, I am wastingtimewithforums there.

Does "Steve Jobs Head" post in EVERY topic on Channel 9? I swear he's been there every single time I've been linked for the past five years. Anyway...

http://channel9.msdn...77aa1660137dd0c

evildictator said:

This isn't about deprecating Office in favour of Office 365. It's about deprecating shrinked wrapped CD installs in favour of OEM and MSDN web installs.

This can be done quite easily with account-based licensing and web downloads. Simply stop manufacturing the CDs. No draconian licensing scheme required. Hasn't this guy ever heard of iTunes or Steam?

This post has been edited by HalloweenDocument12: 15 February 2013 - 03:14 PM

[Formfiller]

You should read further. The masks come off so to speak.

http://channel9.msdn...4d6a166015d1c77

This post has been edited by Formfiller: 15 February 2013 - 03:32 PM

[HalloweenDocument12]

evildictator said:

I see it more as a "Google Chrome, Firefox and all of Apple only have to support one version (the latest) of their software, and yet we're supporting versions that are nearly a decade out of date

Easy solution: stop supporting them, and, even better, shrink the support window and take it out of the price (we all remember that the support cost is included in the price, right?). What do these monthly patches contribute anyway? If I rollback to Office 2003 SP3, which came out 5.5 years ago, would I really notice a difference?

evildictator said:

which makes it expensive for businesses to upgrade (because they become dependent on the product),

So we admit that Microsoft breaks functionality between versions, thus adding to the motivation to actively resist upgrading. Protip: breaking the product more often with more releases doesn't reduce support and development costs, it increases them!

evildictator said:

and expensive to fix (because we have to security fix the product multiple times for every vulnerability we find)

This is a problem of Microsoft's own making. Stop supporting products for 10 years and stop building said support into the price tag and then we can talk. Part of the selling point of Office used to be its long support window. Take that away but keep the price the same or higher and what's the motivation to buy?

evildictator said:

and it's expensive to support (because we have to train customer support how to do stuff in the customer's version of Office).

I thought Microsoft was supposed to hire the best and the brightest. Even at the basic support level I'd expect to find people who could handle multiple versions of Office. Hell all you really need is Google and some patience for most things. But I know how things are. Microsoft low level support staff is clueless about even the latest version of Office so I don't see how not training people for other versions increases cost.

It's becoming alarming that the #1 argument these days is, "You should put up with these regressions because Microsoft makes more money from them." Oh, okay. So when Honda sells me a $30,000 car with no seatbelts, radio, or A/C and puts a 3 cylinder engine in because it's cheaper, I should let them slide because it's easier for them and they make more money.

[Formfiller]

Imagine the bright future in the biz - Every year a new Office interface, because MS has killed off everything except Office 365.

And breaking VBA macros to boot! And breaking third party software! Actually, it would be a liability developing for Office in the first place.

[HalloweenDocument12]

Can you even use old software with 365 or does it need to be rewritten? Does 365 support the calls used by scripts, like "objExcel"?

[Formfiller]

HalloweenDocument12, on 15 February 2013 - 04:36 PM, said:

Can you even use old software with 365 or does it need to be rewritten? Does 365 support the calls used by scripts, like "objExcel"?

As far as I know yes. Office 365 is splitted into two parts. Web and desktop. The web version is totally gimped, but the desktop version is pretty much Office 2013.

Anyway, targetting Office for development is now madness. Oh, Microsoft is making quite a track record in scaring devs!

[Formfiller]

HalloweenDocument12, on 15 February 2013 - 04:01 PM, said:

It's becoming alarming that the #1 argument these days is, "You should put up with these regressions because Microsoft makes more money from them." Oh, okay. So when Honda sells me a $30,000 car with no seatbelts, radio, or A/C and puts a 3 cylinder engine in because it's cheaper, I should let them slide because it's easier for them and they make more money.

I find the cutification of corporations (especially the big IT three, MS, Apple, Google, because there it's so prevalent) pretty much disgusting. They make more money than the GDP of most countries on Earth, yet the customers are supposed to feel bad about them supporting a product you paid for. And if they screw up, we're are supposed to cuddle up the poor corp, it's a goodly good conglomerate after all, and promise that we will pay up for the next fabulous product. And if you don't do this, then you're an enabler of "legacy".

"Legacy" is the dirty word par excellence anyway. How dare you to let your investment amortize! That's EVIL!

This post has been edited by Formfiller: 15 February 2013 - 05:03 PM

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Archos Intros Platinum Tablet Line; Two Now, One in April ( Tom's Hardware 2013-02-15 )

Archos was one of the solid alternatives in MP3 players against iPods and Zune and made some cool devices. They appear to be very competent at these form factors and will become yet another hurdle for Microsoft to try to pass up the ladder to marketshare. So this is more bad news for Microsoft and their ridiculous Plan A to Destroy Windows and force everyone into Metro where they will fall hopelessly head-over-heels in love with Windows 8 and abandon all others flocking to everything Ballmer and company have to offer.


Nokia to focus on Lumia phones in Barcelona. Windows 8 Pro tablet to follow later? ( Windows Phone Central 2013-02-15 )

Quote

Reason for the tablet delay? We've heard from some industry insiders who believe Nokia, like Samsung, are moving away from an RT tablet strategy and instead are opting to 'go Pro' meaning a full Windows 8 device. That certainly seems plausible as the Surface RT appears to have locked up that market.Suh a change in focus could also explain the delay as presumably Nokia would need more time in working with a full--fledged desktop OS.

This is actually a followup to the upthread Nokia discussion ( Nokia Mistakenly Reveals Lumia Windows RT Tablet ) which Thurrott first noted was a fake. I guess Nokia is trying to avoid making the potential mistake I pointed out ...

CharlotteTheHarlot, on 14 February 2013 - 09:34 PM, said:

... But now they know, and will have no excuse if the thing ships and dies, especially considering the fact other OEMs scrapped their RT products, and with the x86 Surface Pro finally released which will attract most potential buyers, except for the handful that only care about battery life or for some reason want ARM in particular. The point being, by merely glancing at the list below, one can easily see that Nokia cannot afford many more mistakes.

EDIT: typos

This post has been edited by CharlotteTheHarlot: 15 February 2013 - 09:47 PM

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Office 2013 EULA prevents users from moving software to another PC ( NeoWin 2013-02-15 )

Office 13 Retail May Be Bound to One PC Forever ( Tom's Hardware 2013-02-14 )

Office 2013 retail licensing change ties suite to specific PC forever ( ComputerWorld 2013-02-15 )

Retail Copies of Office 2013 Are Tied To a Single Computer Forever ( SlashDot 2013-02-13 )

Big changes in Office 2013 and Office 365 test Microsoft customers' loyalty ( Ed Bott 2013-02-15 )

And the fallout is just beginning for Microsoft over their latest blunder which is a clearly cynical stunt aimed at forcing people into Office 364. They really are out of control. This is the all-in strategy, going for the end-zone even as they are only recently out from under the government oversight from around 2000. They are un-handcuffed and unrestrained now and are going whole hog and no-one will tell them otherwise. No wonder they scoffed at over a year's worth of intense criticism about the Start Menu and Metro, they have a huge corporate strategy in place and that was but a small piece of the plan. This should really get interesting, but also very sad because I don't think there is any trace of sanity left up there and we will likely see the end of Microsoft as we knew her in the next couple of years. Windows would have been saved if Microsoft had been broken up many years ago, set aside as a firewalled spin-off company. Can anyone still believe that the OS division isn't completely intertwined with all other aspects of the company now? Do independent developers who do not pay duty and tribute to the Redmond overlords really have a fair shot at the computers that use Windows? If yes, for how much longer? Once the OS is treated the same as an application then it is no longer an operating system, but is a Microsoft software facilitator. Windows 8 and Metro are nothing if not enablers for Microsoft, the company. They are for their benefit alone.


In the last link above, Ed Bott is once again battling Paul Thurrott in a steel cage deathmatch for title of World's Foremost MicroZealot ...

Quote

Ed Bott ( admitting their Cynical Plan ) ... That last restriction is the one that has Office users howling the most. And Microsoft’s answer is simple: If you want to move Office licenses between PCs, buy one of the subscription editions, which makes the process practically painless.

Well there it is in plain English. Interesting how Microsoft has to get surrogates to clearly spell it out rather than doing it themselves. Maybe they are afraid of Ballmer yelling out: "Subscription! Subscription! Subscription!"

Quote

Ed Bott ( drinking while posting ) ... The biggest losers in this product transition are software pirates, who have grown fat and rich buying multiple product keys from Microsoft services like TechNet and MSDN and then reselling them to unsuspecting customers. The new retail editions aren’t available through those IT-focused channels.

Yep, got it. Software pirates will feel the pain, sure. So when all is said and done, will the new evil plan cause more or less piracy? D'oh. Pretty crazy thing to say really, it is self-evident that legitimate owners are going to be negatively impacted, not a chance a pirate will be affected nor would they even care. If anything they will soon multiply in number many times over and probably earn profit selling the same stupid thing that Microsoft used to sell. At the end of the day, just as with Windows 8 they will net gain more ill will than ever before, turning lifelong customers against them.

Quote

Ed Bott ( parroting the Company Line ) ... For PC traditionalists, the sticker shock that comes with trying to buy a conventional perpetual license for Office is sure to cause some anger. From what I can see, Microsoft is fully prepared for that reaction and plans to stick to its guns. It sees perpetual licenses as a dying business, one that it can’t wait to drop.

This sudden shift in strategy is emblematic of the new Microsoft, which isn’t afraid to make big changes that would never have been tolerated at staid old Microsoft. In fact, what Microsoft is doing with Office 2013 and Office 365 is disrupting its own business, before someone else does it to them.

It is so much better to bleed them like stuck pigs, yay, subscription models!.

IMHO, this is a very bad trend and is apparently Business 101 at schools now ( Ethics 101 is an elective ), where the concept of a quality one-time product is considered old-fashioned and un-sustainable ( e.g., the vendor that sells crafts he carved by hand, who is directly accountable to the customer ) being replaced with the subscription service idea of money sucked directly out of an account subject to changes later that are non-beneficial to the customer. I believe this used to be called spreadsheet economics where bean-counters sit around stuck in spreadsheets all day juggling numbers by tweaking formulas in cells to "maximize" revenues, the results coming from doing only the easy things: reduced service, quality, warranty, R&D, etc, and all naturally coming at the expense of the customer. The problem is that this business model makes them impervious to customer feedback since the customers are little more than a name heading a row of cells. A "Product" literally becomes the classical "Widget" and what it is happens to be truly irrelevant. The other problem is that the company that goes this route also becomes indistinguishable from all others since it is all a big blur of competing corporate headquarters more interested in Wall Street than Main Street, none having any character or soul, and literally existing only on paper where with a few strokes of a pen the whole structure is re-arranged again, making believe they have changed something and the cycle repeats all over. There is no longer any accountability from company to customer, and this is exactly how they like it. Watch later for employee headcount reduction as a sure sign that the company is suffering from Plan A failure after having run out of "easy things" in their spreadsheet to do. Layoffs, reduction of employee benefits and other frills will get them some temporary headroom in the stock price. After that Ballmer leaves no doubt with all his billions intact while Gates remains and they bring in an external CEO to fix things up who will know nothing at all about the intrinsic problems rooted in Redmond, and the cycle repeats until people figure out the fish rots from the head down. These kind of actions can keep them on life-support for quite a while, in the meantime the computerized world captive to their monopoly continues to suffer at their hands. Welcome to Big Blue, The Next Generation.

P.S. A few sites notably absent thus far, PC Mag, The Register and The Verge. But I suspect articles are in the works. Pretty much all the commenters are aghast over this, including commenters even at NeoWin! ...

Spoiler

original

EDIT: updated image URL, and again

This post has been edited by CharlotteTheHarlot: 06 May 2013 - 07:47 AM

[JorgeA]

CharlotteTheHarlot, on 15 February 2013 - 09:46 PM, said:

Big changes in Office 2013 and Office 365 test Microsoft customers' loyalty ( Ed Bott 2013-02-15 )

If I were the maker of an alternative commercial office applications suite, I'd be budgeting extra advertising $$$ right now. This is the time to pounce, the moment when the shock is biggest.

--JorgeA

[Formfiller]

As I said on Channel9, what I find so funny, is that they are at their "most evil" towards the customers, when they have finally got some competition.

Quite the strategy.

This post has been edited by Formfiller: 16 February 2013 - 01:36 AM

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

JorgeA, on 15 February 2013 - 10:23 PM, said:

CharlotteTheHarlot, on 15 February 2013 - 09:46 PM, said:

Big changes in Office 2013 and Office 365 test Microsoft customers' loyalty ( Ed Bott 2013-02-15 )

If I were the maker of an alternative commercial office applications suite, I'd be budgeting extra advertising $$$ right now. This is the time to pounce, the moment when the shock is biggest.

One can hope. I tried LibreOffice recently ( and had a few versions of OpenOffice previously ). I just cannot shake the feeling that it is not ready yet, but that may just be me. Still, I have all the MS Office versions and frankly doubt Microsoft will ever develop something further in Office requiring a purchase of a later version. They'll have to do much more than a fancy ZIP file disguised as an Office .XLSx to get me interested again.

Can you believe what has elapsed just in the past year and a half? They have taken their two most important cash cows which just happen to be the two most formidable juggernauts in all personal computer history, Windows and Office and not only destroyed them but simultaneously declared war on their most loyal users!

I know I can't believe it. The only thing I remember of this magnitude before was when IBM turned the industry upside down with MCA in the PS/2 and open hostility erupted eventually killing their leadership finally resulting in them selling off the PC division and exiting completely. If you lived in the Apple universe then perhaps Jobs being squeezed out was a large event also. But this one with Microsoft is absolutely stunning to me. It wouldn't be such a big deal if they hadn't first elbowed their way into the OS monopoly and assumed leadership. This is what makes this so distasteful. It is a violation of their position of responsibility and now borders on criminal.

I hope some day the tale is written and we learn who were the architects of this disaster. I want names.