John Gruber talking about Microsoft’s Frank Shaw:
Betting against the iPad as a device on which people can work, for any meaning of “work”, is a bad bet in the long run. Shaw though, is doubling down on just that bet.
Shaw would do better by getting Microsoft to make a product that people actually want to buy.
Shaw is making it a zero-sum game. Typical MS attitude: to win, we have to own it all.
And the version of Office included for free with the Surface RT / Surface 2 is still the non-commercial version, right? If you want to do any real work you have to have a full license:
As sold, Office 2013 RT is not designed for commercial, nonprofit, or revenue-generating activities. However, organizations who purchase commercial use rights or have a commercial license to Office 2013 suites that include Outlook can use Office 2013 RT for commercial, nonprofit, or revenue-generating activities.
Yes, remember when Ballmer was saying that even ONE iPad in existence was “too many”? It’s always zero-sum for them, and they must have ALL of it.
And at the same time, they really seem to believe that their brand is well-loved, not merely tolerated. So strange.
The last gasp of the monopolist…
“You vill luff us… or ELSE!!!”
Comes across very defensive…which is odd as Pages etc is no real threat to Office given how entrenched the latter is.
Not at all strange for a company that’s run by Sales guys.
when Microsoft has no significant market share in phones or tablets, their Office monopoly is ripe for disruption, both in mobile and in the traditional PC market.
The point was that Microsoft thought that withholding Office from the iPad would give them a competitive advantage with their solution. Unfortunately for them it just taught everyone that they didn’t need Office.
You know why Microsoft’s not cool? Because relentless focus on work instead of play. This blog post from Frank Shaw is a perfect example of that.
That’s Microsoft’s fault for not releasing Office on the dominant mobile platform.