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Microsoft to Continue Office on Mac
LiMikeTnux wrote to mention a CNN article giving details about the five year agreement now in place between Microsoft and Apple to keep Office alive on the Mac platform. From the article: "Though Apple clearly benefits from having the widely-used Office software available to its users, it may seem less obvious what Microsoft stands to gain from continuing its relationship. But according to Greg DeMichillie, a senior analyst with Directions on Microsoft, an independent consulting and analysis firm focusing specifically on Microsoft, the business is still a profitable one for Microsoft. While it's not a huge part of Microsoft's business, given the company's sheer scale, 'Apple's 3 to 4 percent market share doesn't hurt them either,' DeMichillie said. 'Also, to have them be seen going out of their way to hurt a competing operating system is not really helpful from an anti-trust perspective.'"
Microsoft's announcement explains why we haven't seen the rumored "Numbers" spreadsheet app added iWork yet. It's being worked on for sure - we know Apple is happy to keep teams working on "just in case" projects, like they way they've had an OS X on Intel team working for the last 5 years. So part of the deal is probably that Apple keeps Numbers on the backburner for now, but having it ready to go probably helps Apple negotiate. And for now, having office available on the Mac is better for everyone.
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Of course, I think the most important aspect of this deal is that if Microsoft stops making office software for the Mac, then even the most Windows hardened of the IT guys is gonna have to learn about the alternatives available. Macs are deployed in a great many IT environments (cuz the Graphics people love em, for one thing), alongside a 95% windows operation. If there's no Mac Office, then Office Documents can no longer be a perfect "standard", like most of the IT guys consider them now. Suddenly, compatability will be a concern for even the most timid Windows-junkie Administrator, and Microsoft would soon be facing an even greater pressure to provide some semblance of interoperability. I think this move is much more about protecting Office as a "standard" than it is about the profit (which is probably not a great amount when weighed against Apple's competition in the Desktop OS market).
Ok, so it's true that they're allowing people to use Apple laptops and computers while still receiving the benefit of Microsoft's Office Suite. But let's consider that the average Apple user just plain doesn't like Windows. Sure, there's some people running both Windows and OSX in their homes right now but I'm guessing that's pretty rare. I would say these users are about as polarized as the last U.S. presidential election.
With the advent of sub $500 macs, I know quite a few people who have both at their homes now. To me, the windows PC is a must have evil for work a few selected applications.
A year ago, If you had told me that I would be typing this on a Mac Powerbook, I would have told you that you was out of your mind. Now I enjoy OSX, And I painfully submit to my windows based PC's, and graciously do both without a lot of fanfare and complaint. There is a lot that both platforms offer, and more and more people are realizing this. Thus more and more people are becomming 'dual users'.
How many hundreds of thousands of licenses have they lost worldwide to Star Office or Open Office. They aren't doing Apple any favors here. They are just trying to prolong their time on top.
Not all too many, really. What they are trying to avoid is that there is a non-neglible minority that people will demand interoperability with. Look at Firefox, it's still a dwarf compared to the 80-90% marketshare of IE, but it has made very many websites follow W3C standards. I use Opera which hardly registers, but because it is standard that too has become a far more pleasurable experience in recent years, and I don't mean just because of the product.
If you can't win, bundle. That has been the way to sell IE, it's been the way to sell WMP, it's been the way to sell Zip/Unzip, movie editing, cd burning and the list just goes on. The windows platform is the key to everything. They are fighting very hard to avoid alternatives. They lost the IE-specific web, they seem to be losing the Office-specific document format, so far it seems the media codecs are their greatest success. Next up will be the "great firewall" of DRM. Even if Microsoft loses every battle, they seem to win the war because for every lock-in broken there seem to be two new, like a hydra.
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There's another reason for continuing to produce Mac versions of Office, which is that this market usually pays full retail. In the Windows/Linux world, it either comes preinstalled, or you steal it, which is to say, borrow it from your pals or at work. Since it is so ubiquitous, it's easy to find copies. When Linux was my sole desktop, I always had "borrowed" copies of office running on crossover office, for when openoffice.org compatibility wasn't good enough, or when I had to look at some access database. I don't have it on my Mac laptop, because I would have to pay handsomely for it.
Microsoft don't make any money on Media Player or IE, unless it has been bundled with Windows. You have to pay for Office, and if they can make good money out of the product, then they will continue to sell it. It is likely that Microsoft make more money out of Office than any other product.