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Ballmer Hints At 'Metro-ization' of Office
CWmike writes "Microsoft's CEO strongly hinted this week that the company will craft a Metro-style version of the next Office suite. 'You ought to expect that we are rethinking and working hard on what it would mean to do Office Metro style,' Ballmer told a Wall Street analyst. Metro, a tile- and touch-based interface borrowed from Windows Phone 7, would be a massive change for Office, one that would dwarf the 'ribbonization' that set off a firestorm of complaints about Office 2007's new look. The criticism died down, and Microsoft later extended the ribbon in Office 2010 and Windows 7. It will ribbonize other components of Windows 8, notably the OS's file manager. One analyst believes Metro Office is a done deal. 'I think they need something in Metro to enable people to work on documents on tablets,' said Rob Helm, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft. 'They need something on ARM.'"
Wonderful! Microsoft saved lots of people a good wad of cash when they pushed the awful ribbon onto everyone's neck - more than a quarter of the people I know now use either OpenOffice or LibreOffice thanks to that clusterfuck. And I expect that ratio will increase as it becomes more mainstream.
As you said, of course Microsoft is working on a Metro version of Office. They'd be crazy not to be. Office is Microsoft's cash cow, the castle that all their other ventures serve to protect, and it's probably the number one reason why people continue to use Windows. They, and everyone else (including Apple), were caught flatfooted by the runaway train that is the iPad, and I'm willing to bet that its incredible success sent deep chills through the executive suites in Redmond, when they realized that an entire vast new market was developing and they didn't even have a toehold in it. People want tablets (the argument over whether they want "tablets" or iPads can wait for another day), and Microsoft is faced with a twofold challenge: to have a viable tablet OS; and to develop a version of Office that can run on it.
Forgive me for not recalling the source, but I read a piece sometime last year about the severe political infighting inside Microsoft, and as an example the writer gave an anecdote about internal discussions concerning the creation of a touchscreen version of Office. The discussions came to an abrupt screeching halt when the head of the Office division at the time flatly refused to have anything to do with it. Try to imagine anyone at Apple telling Jobs that.
The article painted a portrait of a deeply dysfunctional company, riven by rivalries among the various divisions, and of Ballmer's part in the creation of a nightmarish corporate culture where backstabbing and naked ambition rule. One gets the distinct impression that Microsoft under Gates was like the former Yugoslavia under Tito, with only a strong personality holding together a loose confederation of rivals. With Gates's departure (Tito's death in the case of Yugoslavia), all the bitter divisions came bubbling to the surface, and not only was Ballmer incapable of controlling it, he seemed to actively encourage it in order to weaken potential rivals, similar to Milosevic's misrule in Serbia. Now it's biting Microsoft in the ass, as they find themselves culturally ill-equipped to respond quickly to an external threat.
As I said, they're faced with a twofold challenge, to succeed with a touchscreen device, and to have a version of Office that can run on it. Each by itself is an extremely difficult proposition. Success at both may prove to be an insurmountable problem.
No kidding...with my clients I had exactly 1 that is using office 2010, all of the others actually went backwards to office 2003 after the ribbon stuff gave secretaries fits. I had one spend nearly 10 grand only to go back to the old version about 6 months later, they just couldnt adjust macros were broken, templates had issues, it was a mess.