
Two Microsofts - bobbles
http://stratechery.com/2014/two-microsofts/
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Spearchucker
I'm not sure I entirely agree with this. Office on iOS and Android is (in my
opinion) geared at being able to read and maybe edit Office documents. While
these apps can certainly create Office documents, they're not really suited to
it. One would ideally do that using a laptop or PC. And that then simply makes
mobile a way of further entrenching Office - people who use it at work can now
use it on their devices. People who use it at work _and_ on the road are
(again, my opinion) more likely to use it at home. Win for Microsoft.

On the devices side? Sure, Surface and Lumia are nowhere near as successful as
the iPhone, iPad and Android. That was Microsoft coming late to the party. But
come to the party they must. Before Windows Phone shareholders screamed for an
iPhone competitor from Microsoft. After Windows Phone shareholders screamed
for an iPad competitor from Microsoft. Windows Phone is good, and has some
loyal fans. Windows 8 didn't do much for Surface, or Microsoft. Surface
hardware is however also good, but new.

Ultimately the devices strategy strikes me as being sound - it's a platform to
showcase the services side of Microsoft, and in time may be profitable to a
point where the critics are satisfied.

~~~
roc
> _" That was Microsoft coming late to the party."_

Late? They _threw_ the party. Damn near a decade ago.

~~~
jjoonathan
Apple released the Newton in 1993. Palm released the Pilot in March 1996.
WinCE/PocketPC was released in November 1996.

Microsoft didn't throw the first party _and_ they didn't throw the party that
mattered.

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georgemcbay
"by releasing most of the functionality of Office for free, Microsoft is
giving up on the iPad as a growth driver for Office 365, but it seems like
they can’t quite wean themselves of incremental income from Office diehards.
The problem, though, is that not only could this limitation manifest itself as
incremental annoyance, it also limits the defensive utility of this move
(members-only)."

This paragraph stuck me as funny as it is decrying Microsoft upselling premium
subscriber only features for Office 365 and then it ends on a link that is a
"members only" upsell to a $10 a month subscription feature for this blog.

Ha, ha. wut.

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Aloha
I think the guys enterprise map is off - while the future might be the cloud,
the current is still firmly rooted in windows desktop, windows server, active
directory and exchange.

~~~
tracker1
While I don't completely disagree, I think with the relative success of Azure,
and with the opening up on .Net itself (just announced) that MS is clearly
hedging some bets on being a tools/application stack provider as well as it's
services.

I actually really like Office 365 and their hosted mail offerings, though I
think Outlook has become a bit more annoying with the changes for scalability
that MS needed to make. The world is moving away from windows as a platform,
so it makes sense to double-down where they have a lot of hold...

Developing end to end solutions with VS is usually more pleasant than
competing options, and windows licensing has been their bottleneck. With the
push to cloud hosting, MS is in a better position than most to leverage their
tooling... Though I really hated the early marketing of Azure within the .Net
community, for a while it seemed like every MS tech presentation was an
advertisement for Azure. (which kind of pushed men out)...

That said, actually using Azure is pretty nice, and imho quite a bit easier,
even for Linux than using AWS and others. I'm not developing new solutions
with MS's windows+.net in mind. But opening up .Net more may change my stance
there.

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mbillie1
> I don’t think any company should have both horizontal (i.e. services) and
> vertical (i.e. devices) businesses.

I find it curious that Microsoft is the target of this criticism, and I am
further curious what the author thinks about Apple.

~~~
monkbent
Apple is a hardware company. Your confusion comes from not following the
money.

Their software and services exist to differentiate the hardware and allow for
a profit margin.

The Microsoft corollary would be if Apple offered iTunes, iCloud, etc for
Android.

~~~
padmanabhan01
//Apple is a hardware company.

How is a company that makes OS X, iOS, iCloud services not a software company?
Sure it sells hardware, but not hardware that's a brick.. People buy the
hardware so they can use the software which pretty much means they sell a
package that includes both hardware and software..

~~~
jmduke
Ben means that the end goal of OS X, iOS, and iCloud are to sell more
hardware, not to be individually thriving SKUs (as evidenced by the declining
price of any non-hardware offering by Apple over the past decade). Every (or,
at least almost every) decision made at Apple is made with the goal of
improving the experience of owning Apple hardware, which is their main profit
center.

This is a useful way to understand Apple, but not companies in general. Movie
theaters make the majority of their profit off of concessions, but they are
not popcorn companies.

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vcjohnson
>he problem, though, is that not only could this limitation manifest itself as
incremental annoyance

Eh I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of mobile office users don't need
unlimited cloud storage (especially with 15GB free anyway) or advanced editing
capabilities. Both of those features would be well served in an enterprise
environment, but there are Office 365 Enterprise subscriptions for that. Maybe
no dropbox integration is an annoyance, but I question whether that would be
enough to push out existing office users.

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ha292
Does anyone else think that MS folks are just plain and simple desperate and
are trying new things ?

I think it is entirely feasible that they haven't really thought through what
they are doing. It feels that they are simply streamlining and opening up
without an end game in mind.

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bretthellman
More like the opposite. They should be more tightly integrated.

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cwyers
"The line of demarcation, though, is not services and devices, but rather
enterprise and consumer."

They didn't keep this a secret, man.

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davidgerard
MS is heading off LibreOffice on devices at the pass. (And are lucky LO on
devices is running way late.)

