Office 2016 Is Microsoft's Best Hope to Show It's Changed
wired.com
wired.com
I did play with the beta version of Mac Word and it was beautiful but buggy right up until the last release. And honestly, I was editing primarily bulleted lists and was enraged that it somehow to this day couldn't do that consistently (copy/paste across lines does unexpected things, indentation seems to differ on every single line, and the, er, list goes on).
And then the final version came and a LOG-IN screen appeared after Word's characteristically-long launch (presumably because they have to launch an entire Windows VM or something on the Mac). That's it; you can't do anything else. So I enter what I think is my log-in ID and password and it sits there spinning for a LONG time with no functional way to cancel aside from force-quitting, and then it eventually says the log-in is incorrect. Apparently I needed some other account but it wouldn't tell me why my choice didn't work.
So, Office became pretty but worse in every practical respect and far worse in some brand new ways. Seems to me Microsoft is about the same it has always been.
So, it tightly follows their other popular recent product shipped then.
If I'm performing simple text edits I shouldn't be surprised by anything it's doing in terms of formatting. And if I have to wait several seconds for it to open a trivial document in its own file format that even TextEdit can open immediately, that's a problem.
What's known (and can be independently verified and reproduced) are search queries, crash reports, hardware specs and new executables. Mostly, if appropriate settings are not disabled. And performance metrics, but their sensitivity is mild at best. Don't get me wrong - it's not any small deal and it is already quite sensitive, but this is nowhere near "all secrets". There are a lot of outcries about serious spying - on the order of webcam shots, audio streams or even hard drive scans on typing in movie names, yet I haven't seen any details and highly suspect those are rumors and speculations at best.
Is there anything like those rumors - a private data leaks that can't be justified (i.e. not usual "search improvements" or "malware protection" stuff), but that can be verified and reproduced? I bet, many would love to hear about some, check the facts and went to police and/or court with those.
We do have state-of-art decompilers, protocol analyzers and IDS software. Yet I'm somewhat bothered by the gap between the rumored privacy implications and analysis published.
... not a word from Microsoft on the matter.
I'd expect them to conclusively defend themselves from such allegations, but no, the marketing mill is still going on non stop.
To be honest it's like a toddler talking incessantly to avoid talking about the puddle of piss he/she is trying to hide.
This whole thing started because three things happened at once:
- Cortona got released (with a bunch of privacy options, since they want to support the same functionality as Google Now, so email access, location, etc).
- Microsoft moved tons of privacy settings from previous versions of Windows into one unified location.
- Microsoft is trying to do continuous development so wanted analytics related to how people are using their software (so they know what to focus on).
The ironic thing, to me, is that Microsoft unlike Google/Apple/et al decided to put all of the privacy settings in a single location (the new Privacy category in settings), and it was THAT which really got them into trouble. If they had left the privacy settings scattered all over the place, I doubt we'd be discussing this right now.
Ultimately it is up the accusers to show what Microsoft is doing wrong. It isn't up to Microsoft to respond to vague hand waving and FUD. So far I am yet to see one shred of evidence that they do anything beyond what the privacy settings screens claim.
If this is true, why are the same analytics and telemetry slowly being back ported to Windows 7/8 where no continuous development is happening?
Microsoft release an update for it to gather more metrics. It is still an optional program to provide Microsoft information about how you use your computer.
Information about people who are sticking to Windows Vista-8.1 is valuable. These are people who have rejected Windows 10, so understanding what 10 might be missing could help determine future development.
Why is it in 2015 that people are suddenly having a moral panic about an optional program started in 2006 that still exists in 10?
Snowden happened. Also many would be pleased if those "metric gaining features" would be opt-in and mean it, not having to hunt it down through the system to disable it.
Vista largely got criticised for:
- Higher memory usage (than XP).
- Driver issues (in particular graphics and sound). Because Microsoft made changes to the Windows Driver Model, and big name manufacturers (Nvidia, Creative, et al) weren't ready at release, and produced either buggy drivers, or no drivers at all.
The reason why Windows 7 was better received is:
- It wasn't called "Vista." It was/is fashionable to bash Vista. They could have literally re-released Vista without one change and it still would have been treated better than Vista was (which is essentially the 7 strategy).
- Hardware moved forward. Vista and 7 don't run well on 1 GB of RAM. By the time 7 shipped most new PCs had 2 GB or more.
- Drivers were fixed/improved. When 7 shipped it ran Vista compatible drivers which were time tested by that stage.
Ultimately I just roll my eyes at people who continue to be critical of Vista. At least 8/8.1 I understand their perspective (Start Screen, etc), but trying to bash Vista while holding up 7 as this incredible release is just strange given how similar the two are.
I'd say that Apple could have had a similar issue with going from OS9 to OSX, though they at least had a long period of some degree of backwards compatibility. They, however, handled the transition much better since they controlled all of the hardware and drivers.
How did it turn out to be a load of crap? They changed the UI to cater to user preferences. What was missing for you?
On the subject of the UI, it does precisely nothing that anyone wants or asked for. People wanted a stable, reliable desktop operating system but the just marched forward with pushing "modern apps" which are all incoherent, buggy, slow, suffer major usability problems with both touch and mouse and are brow beating this into people at every available opportunity as the next best thing.
So basically everything.
2) Windows still supports Local Accounts as well as it ever has, and with feedback it's now much more obvious how to create one if you don't want "cloud lock-in". With the latest build out to Insiders even Cortana allows you to use a Local Account and opt in sign in to a Microsoft account only for Cortana features. Certainly seems to me that Microsoft is listening and trying to balance the feedback of the paranoids like you and the people that appreciate the convenience of cloud features such as myself...
3) Giant Enterprise "Threshold 2" release is expected to drop November-ish with greater support for GPO, BYOD, LTS, and all the Enterprise appeasing buzzword acronyms that "admins" love and users live with and/or hate. Microsoft appears to be collecting a lot of feedback to work on to build this Enterprise push, including a lot of feedback from the few companies to actually try and use Windows 8 (as opposed to all the ones steadfastly "Windows XP or Death"/"LTS for Life"), which had a lot stronger Enterprise capabilities than people seem to have given it credit for...
4) The UI is doing a lot of things that people want and ask for: better handling different DPI across multiple screens, better handling touch, better handling DPI in general, increasing better access to good typography and design principles. Apple does it and gets applauded, Microsoft tries to do it and people call them tyrants and "brow beating". Here again, Microsoft is clearly doing everything they can do based on the feedback they are getting. So much so that they've even backpedaled on many of the things that once made "Modern Apps" truly "Modern" in terms of fresh, smarter approaches to common problems (I was a fan of the Charms bar and what it tried to accomplish, may it rest in peace; also, hamburger menus, sigh). Apple never had to deal with as much "who moved my cheese" hatred in the transition between Carbon and Cocoa as Microsoft seems to be working with here.
Right. And let's face it, what fraction of 1% of enterprises are doing anything other than proof-of-concept for Windows 10 at this point anyway??
It's interesting too the people complaining about the Windows 10 approach to LTS shortening the decade-plus-long window of abuse that XP suffered (and 7 is likely to also see) to something more akin to the 5 years of Debian LTS... and Debian is considered one of the most conservative of the Linux distributions with respect to LTS!
I was not a fan of Windows 8, but Windows 10 is worse! I'm not sure which users they were catering to in this regard.
As for the tablet/desktop UI... Win10 is leagues ahead of Windows 8. All of Microsoft's apps work better with a mouse and keyboard, and the tablet mode does still exist if you're using a device that would benefit from it. The only meaningful change is that you now have to press a button to switch from normal, resizable windows to fullscreen tablet mode.
Yes, a group of people could invent workarounds such as using Dropbox and copy files to new names such as PetroleumContractVersion1.docx, PetroleumContractVersion2.docx, PetroleumContractVersion3.docx, etc. Other manual methods of sharing could be blasting email attachments back and forth and CC'ing collaborators. Those methods are tedious and error prone.
Another option is to install a SharePoint server and use its document sharing features. That's probably overkill and many folks would think the Sharepoint "cure" is worse than the disease.
Since many folks find GoogleDocs sharing feature to be useful, it seems logical that adding such capabilities to a desktop word processor would help many workflows.
[1]https://www.google.com/search?q=office+2016+collaboration
The Dropbox 'badge' as they call it adds a bit. It'll tell you who else is editing, let you comment/annotate, do 'automatic' versioning (i.e. not make you save versions manually), and share from within Word/Excel. It's about as much 'cloud' as you'd want. Maybe the realtime collaboration will work well, hard to tell. That would be a major selling point, if they manage to sync edits well.
When we looked to switching away from Office to something else people would say 95% was covered by say Google Docs or another tool and people would go hmmm and see that as a negative. I asked for the person to tell me what the 5% we were missing and maybe we could fulfill that need with another tool. One week later we made the switch since no one could find a single thing anyone would be missing. One year later no one is missing anything and we were covered for 100% of our work needs.
On the the offline front, ODF[1] is taking over country by country because you can't beat free.
[1] http://mrpogson.com/2015/09/17/libreoffice-installations-in-...
I would say our company of 400 people have very little need for Word and they don't know how to use Excel besides making budgets with no real complected formulas.
Did you explore using Mail Merge?
Depends on whether you want the data to be easily reusable or not. Is there no need for any summarisation of the data on these reports? Is the layout of these reports standardised in any way?
Mail merge isn't exactly an advanced feature, all you need is a basic Excel spreadsheet containing the data you want to insert. Takes 10 minutes or less to teach someone how to use it.
I am certainly not trying to say mail merge is an advance feature. I am just saying MOST people can not do a mail merge, THE VAST majority.
Does anyone really want to become dependent on a web app, where you have no control over whether you move to the next version or not?
I can ask all sorts of questions to make people move away from Google Docs. Just because you manipulated some people into making a bad decision doesn't mean you're right.
Uh oh.
They released a programing tool in LINUX for one.
I wouldn't have imaging that in the past, mostly because the microsoft product were so unpolished that were terrible to use (although sometimes very advanced).
microsoft IS changing, and I think they are moving in the right direction. (I don't agree in all of their choices, but I like the result).
Unpolished compared to what? Open office? Apples offerings? Surely you are joking. MS Office is probably the most polished and feature rich office suite out there. For me nothing else compares, the only factor that was off-putting about using office was the cost. The cost deterrent has largely gone away, so for me there's almost no reason to use anything else, other than to investigate future alternatives.
Aside from this thing office has always been the de facto, but it wasn't until office 2007 (ribbons? I don't recall if it was 2007 or 2003) that the office suite was revamped from an UI point of view. That really was the moment microsoft made a difference that wasn't matched (and still isn't). Before the 2007, even though the open office suite was inferior because of the compatibility issues, the interfaces weren't so superior (IMHO).
The ribbon bar (loved or hated) was the first step towards the recent UI improvements. The same OneNote has vastly improved.
Also, I am specifically not talking about feature-richness. It's obvious that there are not so many competitors to office in this regard, but still with many features comes complexity, and complexity comes at a price. Microsoft found a great way to reduce that complexity without sacrificing features. (a totally different way compared to apple, which _usually_ start with less features and adds them over time).
Look at any thread about OS X desktop setups and you'll see people recommending tools that add features from Windows like changing the way Alt-Tab works or adding tiling commands.
However there are many features that you simply can't have (besides the cursor color that I mentioned above.) You can't have a proper taskbar even though many people want one because Apple doesn't let you use a certain API that the Dock uses to change `NSScreen.visibleFrame`.
In Windows there is a simple uniform way of controlling the entire OS with the keyboard whereas in OS X, you have to remember a million secret handshakes. Windows also has a vastly more robust file browser compared to the ailing Finder that everybody hates. It's no wonder that there is hardly any software for extending Finder in OS X like TortoiseGit. Most people just recommend to replace it with a better app like XtraFinder, TotalFinder or PathFinder.
The only reason anyone uses it around here is because it's got Unix and it's not from Microsoft. If it wasn't Unix, most people would be making fun of the klunky interface just like they made fun of the Mac interface back in the 90's.