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Ballmer Admits Google Apps Are Biting Into MS Office
twitter points out coverage of a discussion between Steve Ballmer and two Gartner analysts in which the Microsoft CEO admits that Google Apps is enjoying an advantage over Office by users who want to share their documents. He points to Office Live as their response to Google, and adds, "Google has the lead, but, if we're good at advertising, we'll compete with them in the consumer business." Whether or not they're good at advertising is still in question, if their recent attempts are any indication. Ballmer also made statements indicating some sort of arrangement with Yahoo! could still be in the works, but Microsoft was quick to step on that idea. Regarding Windows Vista, he said Microsoft was prepared for people to skip it altogether, and that Microsoft would be "ready" when it was time to deploy Windows 7.
Google Apps has the MAJOR advantage of having live document collaboration, which AFAIK isn't even close to available in MS Office or OpenOffice.org. For some people/companies this doesn't matter at all, but for others it'll make it the obvious choice. You can think of it like the collaborative features offered by Sharepoint and the like, but implemented in a way that is actually usable.
On the flip side, you're going to need a lot of love from Gears if a hosted solution scares you. While Docs is fine for what I do most of the time (and the rest of the time I really need more of a layout tool, like Apple's Pages), I envision them seeing a lot more adoption if there were a desktop app that synced up with the cloud (whether Google's, or your own internal setup which could be as simple as a network share). And of course, pretty much anything that's not MS Office tends to have compatibility issues with the MS Office-using rest of the world, whether you like it or not. You can whine all you want about the lack of truly open standards for document exchange (besides plain text) and I'd agree with you all day long, but that doesn't fix the problem.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Linux and OS X are light years ahead of Windows...
Like what? And why should customers care about it?
Well, OS X has drag and drop system services so users and applications can provide universal functionality, like grammar checking in all applications. Linux has more cleanly implemented network services and both have better standards compliance so you don't end up using as many redundant services in mixed OS environments (eg, UPNP and ZeroConf to discover other network services, like when you run Adobe CS on Windows). Both have better and more granular and usable ACLs for userspace applications. I could go on, but I'm not investing a lot of time, especially responding to an AC. Register an account already.
* Viruses - THis is not a OS problem, its a user problem. I could create a .sh file that deleted .config files or something equally evil and tell your grandma to run it and she will... * Malware - Again not specific to Windows.
Let's be clear. Trojans, viruses and worms are all distinct and all problems, but of the three worms are the largest problem and Windows is the most vulnerable due to a variety of design decisions, even if there were no install base disparity. Malware is a theoretical threat on Linux and OS X, but a practical, day-to-day problem on Windows and theories that if market share were to become more balanced are simply that, theories and not applicable to making practical decisions today.
* Applications - All the software in the world at a single spot. i.e. Google for applications. Who addresses commercial software? Who handles payments for this? Who will handle updates? Do users want to download Multi GB Games/Applications? Who pays for the massive bandwidth? What if you're not connected online,etc ,etc. Again. Doesnt scale, buddy.
Don't even understand what you're trying to argue here. Please be more clear.
There are some things that used to be architectural flaws with Windows services that caused security problems but they are supposed to be fixed in Vista now.
Crashes, I have seen a blue screen reference MS-provided code, but upon digging deeper i found conclusively that it was a third party driver responsible for the crash, and removing that driver fixed the problem.
Drivers on Linux i agree, the Linux driver model is flawed as you noted. The effects of this flawed plan are evident, some things work (months after the release of the hardware in many cases, if ever), some don't work at all, and some things sort of work but with caveats. Distros make up for some of the problems by including drivers ahead of their upstream scheduled inclusion, and including closed source drivers, though they get blasted for it by fanatics.
> Enterprise space - along with whatever mission critical application you care to name that isn't available on Linux
LOL, ever heard of Oracle, IBM or Novell? The enterprise isn't a problem for linux, but the home market has large legacy install of peecee software that will take time to replace.
The problem is you can't walk into a store and get a computer with Linux on it, unless you want to go for a netbook.
You can in a free country. My next computer purchase will be a Linux preinstall from Octagon. Or a competitor a few stores down. You can buy Linux preinstalls from anywhere in Manila.
This is coming from a developer perspective, but I think two of these apply (maybe moreso) to your average user:
1. Packages. Specifically, aptitude. It is unbelievably easy to find software to open weird file formats, play simple games, or speak some weird protocol. This is the single #1 feature Linux (BSDs too, possibly) has going for it. Packages are awesome for experienced users and newbies. If you say otherwise, you really haven't tried a well maintained distribution yet.
Now, if a package doesn't do what you want (this is what a lot of power users complain about), compile it yourself. /usr/local exists, use it. Again, grandma isn't going to need a custom compiled version of Wine, but I do. It's therefore not an issue that she is forced to use the one in the repo.
2. $SHELL shell, and the associated core utils. I use bash, but that's probably because it's what I learned first. I know my grandmother, my mother, and my girlfriend don't want to use the CLI, so it's not a major feature for most. I don't care. The Windows shell and core utils suck, and bash, csh, ksh, *sh are better.
3. UI consistency. ZOMFG WUT? Yes; I use KDE, and it kicks ass. There is consistency between the file browser, the archive utility, the media player, etc. You'd be hard pressed to argue that explorer, Windows Media Player (or winamp, or foobar, or whatever), and winrar or winzip all have the same interface.
However, their KDE counterparts Dolphin, Ark, and Amarok all look the same. If I want to change a setting, I know where to look instead of having to try "Edit -> Preferences" then "Tools -> Options" then "Options -> Settings" then... Also, similar settings are grouped under similar headings.
Those are just three things off of the top of my head.
Anyone who says that Linux is technologically light years ahead of Windows is ... wrong. Stuff like OLE, the Com interface, the Jet database (which does the job of SQLite, not the other ones), data sharing API's and so on are much better in Windows that Linux. Yes, I have heard of Wine, and Mono. They are not the main point of of the open source software ecosystem, which has different goals to Microsoft; both technologically and from a business point of view..
Of course, you could say that Linux (and OSX) has a better design, or that more free software works better on Linux, both of which are clear advantages. No argument there.
Or that consumers (non-programmers) need more killer apps to show them the power of plain text (which is the underlying point of Linux), as opposed to embedded applications and 'rich' (ugly) API and data formats.
AutoCad
Or whatever app it is that your industry uses that doesn't run on Linux, will keep the need for Windows for a very long time.
No, but moving away from MS Office does.
Everything you say must be considered a lie. You lost your credibility a long time ago. The only reason this story made it to the front page after your well-deserved yearlong blacklisting is because you had to misrepresent what the article said, and the /. editor happens to be relatively new, so he doesn't know about you.
Why don't you get a blog or something? You can use all those things you learned from the FUDster in Chief Roy like "SweatyB" and "Silverblight", and you won't have to put up with the collective derision and ridicule of the largest free software community in the world.
Really, think about it.
I hate to give a long response to an AC ...
Like what? And why should customers care about it? Your responses will show if you're a troll, or if you have anything technical reasoning behind it.
Linux, like Mac OS X and really all modern Unix-derived systems do not crash. I've only run production quality Linux systems since the late 1990s and I cannot remember the last time I've had the system crash. That equates X Server crashes with system crashes by the way. The last reliable X server crash I had was in the late 1990s when XEmacs was trying to display the Mule hello page. I got patches into XEmacs to fix that side and patches into the X server to fix that side and Life Moved On.
* Viruses - THis is not a OS problem, its a user problem. I could create a .sh file that deleted .config files or something equally evil and tell your grandma to run it and she will.
True, but deceptive. Before Microsoft Windows 95 vulgarized the internet, it was long known that running arbitrary executable code coming across the wire was A Very Bad Idea. The decision by Microsoft to jump into internet support *and* provide default unprompted execute support for that poisoned enough minds to make it an industry standard.
* Malware - Again not specific to Windows.
No, but it was Microsoft Windows that popularized the idea of execute any old thing including malware by default.
* Crashes - Yeah, comeback with real proof.
It's your reputation, not ours. My best anecdotal evidence was something that crossed an internal corporate email group where I wrote something like "Microsoft Windows XP is the most stable O/S they've ever released because it only crashes 1 or 2 times a week." and among the responses I got back were "I wish it were that few ...".
In my opinion, it doesn't really matter where the blame actually lies (perhaps it does lie on enterprise crapware that the Microsoft Windows users are forced to use, but whatever). It's the fact that the platform does crash and people are conditioned to it. The last supposedly all intranet web meeting I had to attend at work, was delayed due to software issues on Microsoft Windows XP. Money was lost while a bunch of highly paid engineers were looking at a blank screen. Says a lot about True Cost of Ownership too...
In the meantime, my desktop machine (running RHEL) has only ever been rebooted on power failure or moving the equipment since it was deployed.
* Drivers - Add all the drivers to the kernel? So the manufacturers of devices have to wait till the kernel maintainer decides on his own sweet time when to integrate patches. AND THEN wait till picks them up downstream. Nice solution. Doesnt scale, buddy.
Greg KH has gotten into the latest Linux kernel a staging area where half-worked drivers can get wider code distribution and more eyes and hands to fix them up. It remains to be seen how well this work, but they are trying.
I used to think the amount of code changes that is currently going on in the Linux was unsustainable with control of the final tree in a single person's hands. Linus proved me wrong.
The amount of code that goes into the Linux kernel every day (on average) is astonishing.
* Applications - All the software in the world at a single spot. i.e. Google for applications. Who addresses commercial software? Who handles payments for this? Who will handle updates?
While I have no problem with proprietary software, like games, on something like Linux or OpenBSD/Mac OS X, I do have a problem with the Software As A Service model. It sucks and I agree with you on this point.
The one and only thing I thank Microsoft for is that at the time it was strangling the PC market, it also killed X terminals, which were cheap, but an abomination to use, in my opinion. I thank them for that.
Google Docs is useful as a collaborative text editor. Almost everything else about it - particularly formatting - gets broken much too often. I've been trying, earnestly, to use it for academic writing, and the results have been ridiculous: as in, depending on what browser I use, wordwrap may not work; internal links don't work; fonts change from time to time, etc.
Ballmer is correct in noting (which, since noone RTFA, I should note contradicts the badly written summary) that Google Apps is not something that is worrying them: Open Office is. I would love Google Docs to step up, but it definitely has not, and seems to be trapped in the Google perpetual beta limbo.
The problem with Linux, is that each app has its own widgets, its own theme, its own file selector etc. And when some programs install they don't even get into the menus so you can't open them. And some apps don't have packages for your distribution. And some apps only come as source. Etc.
When was the last time you saw a (desktop) Linux system in operation? 1998? Try installing a recent version of Ubuntu, for example. You will have a hard time to find a single application in the default install that doesn't fit the basic GNOME look-and-feel; and that includes using the same theme and file selector. Some applications, such as Firefox and OpenOffice, have their own widget sets (also under Windows, by the way), but they have been carefully adapted to the GNOME style and integrate quite well.
I'm a programmer and use Ubuntu as my only desktop system. Since years ago, the only interactive program I run regularly that doesn't fit the look-and-feel is emacs, and that's because I'm already addicted to emacs beyond recovery. But notice that if a wanted to have a 100% consistent environment, all I'd have to do would be switching to Eclipse, which adapts to the GNOME look-and-feel pretty well.
The 90s are long gone. Welcome to the future!
http://www.alfresco.com/ http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/ I'm sure there are more.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
People are fighting K/G naming schemes; claiming it is stupid or childish.
Guess with of these are gnome and which are kde based on name:
GIMP
F-Spot
gThumb
Gwenview
Kde is fairly consistent with the K though, it just could be better. Gnome seams to be heading full steam away from the G.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Yep, and I just bought an AcerAspireOne with linux preloaded, off the shelf, from CanadaComputers on College Street in Toronto! :-)
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=018911&cid=896.862
In fact, I'm posting right now, using it, in a Tim Hortons, of course! :-)