Hacker News Reader

Comment by marknutter | Hacker News Reader

Yes, yes, Gruber's pro apple, let's agree on that point and save the bytes.

He makes a very valid point about trying to run regular windows alongside this beautiful interface. MS just couldn't resist the temptation to make it fully backwards compatible with their old software. I can almost guarantee it was some outside, higher C-level person (Balmer?) that "loved the new interface, but could we get it to run windows too?"

If MS knows what it's doing, it will make custom mobile versions of its office apps like Apple did and never try to shoehorn an interface designed for a mouse and keyboard into their mobile operating system again. But, alas, they lack the discipline to do it.

View on HN

Why can't applications do both? Have a touch interface for cases where it's warranted, have a 'normal' interface for when it's not. I expect Office 2012/2013 will do this.

They can; that's what Apple does with iWork.

So did Apple have a touchscreen friendly version of iWork ready a year before the iPad launch? i'm pretty sure that the next office version will feature a native metro UI.

The excel version from the video is just an existing version that hasn't been adjusted to touchscreens yet.

It is also an important demonstration to business users and developers that their billions of dollars invested in keyboard+mouse oriented applications won't be made obsolete over night.

It has been speculated that MS has lost their backwards-compatibility religion, but you still see vestiges of it in their strategies.

Maybe they don't have the discipline to ditch Windows for tablets, but they certainly have the willingness to steal (borrow?) ideas from their competitors. Putting the OS from Windows Phone 7 on lower power hardware (à la iOS and the iPad) is clearly the right decision.

It honestly looks more like a problem with pride and less like a problem with discipline.

I think it has to do with neither pride nor discipline. It's all about business.

Microsoft won't make much money by breaking backwards compatibility; in fact, they'd lose billions if they did. Think of the hundreds of millions (if not billions) of business licenses they have sold. Business customers want their old apps to keep working. Yes, I'm talking about the same people who still use IE6. Whether you like them or not, these are the customers who purchase thousands of licenses each, and there are lots of them. Losing these customers could hurt Microsoft just as much as, if not much more than, losing tablet-toting consumers.

Of course, Microsoft doesn't want to lose either market, so they'll produce a version of Windows that has both complete backwards compatibility with existing Windows apps, and a fancy shell to appeal to tablet users.

I can totally see that "X is great, but can we have Y?" question being asked, and it makes my skin crawl. Why? Because it signals - in the clearest way possible - that the product vision is NOT being set at the top, meaning the "leaders" are leading in name only.

When you say "they lack the discipline", I suspect you're being too kind. After all, discipline means being firm in hewing to your vision - which assumes you HAVE a vision to hew to in the first place.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com