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Comment by cleverjake | Hacker News Reader

I think the aurthors point isn't that there is no point for Office, it is that for a lot of people, they do not need a full suite. My father was a die hard 'I need Office' person, and then he got an HP Touchpad during the firesale. Turns out he just needs basic word processing/spreadsheeting capability, and hasn't opened office on his laptop since.

If Microsoft would have had an app for the Touchpad, he would have bought it, and wouldn't have seen how overpriced and over featured it was for his needs.

This is a crack in Microsoft's armor, and could lead to long term issues.

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Office runs into tens of millions of lines of code. Porting it to webOS is a laughable proposition with the amount of devices it sold. And calling it an 'app' is disingenuous, it's a full fledged suite.

Microsoft is right in waiting for things to settle down before wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on such excursions. Do you know there they aren't already working on Office for the iPad? After all, they seem to be actually bundling Windows 8 ARM tablets with Office applications.

You are missing the point.

This is branding.

"Office runs into tens of millions of lines of code." I am aware of that - my father doesn't give a shit. He wants "to download Office". I know it takes a lot of time and investment, but even if they released a subpar editor that was able to view it, they would have got his money and I highly doubt he would have complained.

"Porting it to webOS is a laughable proposition with the amount of devices it sold." I agree, and I understand why they wouldn't. My point is that they lost a recurring customer by not creating it. Think of it similar to the police response to a bank robbery. I can guarantee that the cost of the response is several orders of magnitude greater than amount even in the bank, let alone what the thieves are actually able to steal. That is because they are not reacting to the cost of the money being stolen, but to the long term costs of making it seem like anyone can rob a bank. If Microsoft made an App for EVERY platform, regardless of cost, it would be hard for anyone to even penetrate into the marketplace, therefore ensuring longer term success.

Secondly, Microsoft loses over 2B a year with Bing. They are a huge company with very deep pockets, and I highly doubt hiring a few dozen swissarmy programmers would make much of a dent comparatively. Theirs is not a finical issue, but one of leadership, and culture.

"And calling it an 'app' is disingenuous, it's a full fledged suite."

Agreed, was only done for the sake of brevity. Easier than writing "an office app, a powerpoint app, and an excel app"

"Do you know there they aren't already working on Office for the iPad?" Yes, several /years/ after its initial release, despite making up over 90% of the tablet market. Docs to go, a fully featured suite, was released within a couple weeks.

"After all, they seem to be actually bundling Windows 8 ARM tablets with Office applications." Not sure what you mean, iPad !== Windows arm tablets. And again, everyone expects Windows software of windows hardware. The discussion at hand is Windows software on non windows hardware, which is how they made their millions to begin with.

>"Office runs into tens of millions of lines of code." I am aware of that - my father doesn't give a shit. He wants "to download Office"

Unquestioningly bend to the capricious whims and desires of non-technical users, a winning strategy for any tech business.

Last month a user told me I should add full-fledged accounting and payroll management to my niche software so he doesn't have to buy QuickBooks. Better get cracking!

Obviously I do not believe that you should listen to all user requests, in fact I think that most can be ignored. However, I do not think my dad is unlike a lot of our dads/cousins/in-laws/familynontechie. I truly believe that a majority of non technical people would by "Office™ for X" simply because of the first word, and /that/ is when you start to listen to your customers.

Microsoft is not a niche software company. They dump billions down holes every year for completely fruitless projects. They could have easily bought dataviz, called documents to go Office Mobile, and called it a day.

> My point is that they lost a recurring customer by not creating it. Think of it similar to the police response to a bank robbery. I can guarantee that the cost of the response is several orders of magnitude greater than amount even in the bank, let alone what the thieves are actually able to steal. That is because they are not reacting to the cost of the money being stolen, but to the long term costs of making it seem like anyone can rob a bank. If Microsoft made an App for EVERY platform, regardless of cost, it would be hard for anyone to even penetrate into the marketplace, therefore ensuring longer term success.

I don't think shareholders would appreciate MS throwing money at every platform at launch.

>Secondly, Microsoft loses over 2B a year with Bing. They are a huge company with very deep pockets, and I highly doubt hiring a few dozen swissarmy programmers would make much of a dent comparatively. Theirs is not a finical issue, but one of leadership, and culture.

That is because the search market is huge, whereas Office software for a tablet that only sold when it was a final firesale.. not so much.

And if you think porting Office to a tablet can be done by a few dozen swissarmy programmers... I am sorry. Even HP didn't make a office suite for it for launch.

"I don't think shareholders would appreciate MS throwing money at every platform at launch."

The "Office" market is huge, as well. And they like what makes them money. I am not saying they should do this on every platform, I am saying that they risk losing customers with every platform that comes out that they do not have one for. While my specific example was the touchpad, the same argument applies to the iPad and Android markets.

"And if you think porting Office to a tablet can be done by a few dozen swissarmy programmers... I am sorry. Even HP didn't make a office suite for it for launch."

HP didn't make the touchpad, Palm did. Palm was not an office oriented company, they were a device oriented company. Secondly, Docs to go does it regularly, and has done it for over a decade. Again, this is not about bringing over the codebase to new platforms, it is about branding a product with similar functionality on every platform.

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