Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Luckily, there is a patch and you can download it here. (It's not really a library, btw.)
According to whom? On what evidence?
Metro is a pile of shite, the 'designers' are idiots who are simply trying to justify their positions, by ruining everybody's user experience.
Is queer eye for the straight guy still on? I honestly thought this was going to be an article about Ballmer bringing the queer eye team to Redmond and having them do some work on Microsoft's headquarters...
Palm trees and 8
This is one of those really dumb ideas that I hope catches on. Like... well... I can't think of another example.
The reason why it's dumb should be obvious: they're trying to port a program with an input that's 99% keystrokes over to a device that has no keyboard.
The reason why I hope it catches on is that it might encourage tablet hardware designers to start seriously considering adding some kind of hardware keyboard to their devices. No, the on-screen keyboard doesn't count. I have a touchscreen netbook and I still claim it's superior to tablets in almost every respect, but its weaknesses (shorter battery life, bulkier than a tablet, takes too long to power up) keep me from just keeping it in my pocket and using it whenever I have a spare 5 minutes.
Between the addition of a keyboard and a some of the tablet designers finally getting it through their heads that the only way to beat Apple is on price, I might just break down and buy a tablet.
I remember a feeling coming over me
I was hoping you might change your mind
I remember hating you for changing things
Riding on the Metro
with apologies to Berlin
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
After Ribbons, it has become extremely difficult to think up ways to make MS Office worse. Continuing to do so shows an unbelievable level of commitment and effort.
Does Microsoft understand that different form-factor requires different GUI design? They try to shove the one-size-fit-all approach to all the devices that they design, that's why they fail so hard. You can't take a PC interface, with mouse and keyboard, and copy it directly over to a tablet, where an icon is too small to be touched precisely by a stylus. You can't do serious document editing or spreadsheet on a phone / tablet so design those apps with a "good enough" feature set and let go. You can't copy a panel-based interface to a keyboard and mouse environment. Apple knows how to do those things: they have a scroller for the phone, a pop up for the tablet, and a plain old drop down for the computer. They make them "consistent" but far from identical, cause your interaction with them are different.
...and still being ignored by 99% of consumers.
Someone will figure out how to attract the generic consumer at some point. Compare average user awareness of Linux five years ago versus today. People have actually heard about it by now.
The general perception is probably something along the lines of, "I know it exists. I don't know why I would want it. It's over my head."
Give users a reason to switch and they will as long as they remain comfortable with an OS switch. Android seems to be doing well. LAMP seems to be doing well (not really a consumer product, but it does have a consumer facing aspect since it is an option when purchasing web hosting, which many average people are doing today).
All Linux needs is a good spokesman. Someone with a marketing degree and not an engineering/CS degree. Or, what seems to be the most likely, a wrapper around Linux that tells the user a lot in a simple snappy name. Android did that and it's worked quite well.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Apple can do this in a blink by the way. They have a powerful desktop OS they can just integrate straight into their mobile stack. They're already laying out the groundwork in fact - notice how you can show your iPad screen on an external display wirelessly? Notice how the "PC" was demoted below the cloud? Or how iDevices no longer require a PC tether? Think how useful it'll be when your iPhone is running real desktop stuff in an app. And driving an external 30'' display and keyboard wirelessly.
Interesting scenario, but it is more likely that the phone will be a slave rather than a master. People lose phones and they get stolen, and there will always be terrifying pressure to extend battery life. It is more likely that everyone will have a a compute appliance of ever increasing horsepower somewhere in the relatively secure perimeter of their home or office to which their growing horde of devices are wirelessly connected, at least when their are nearby. More and more horsepower and storage, and damn the wattage. Many people do things like play games, create and edit digital content, and other things that continue to soak up compute cycles without any foreseeable limit. Google isn't stupid or shortsighted. I suspect they and Apple have a very good idea of what role phones will play over the next 20 years or so.
Microsoft, however (those dedicated stock price masturbators), are almost certainly clueless. If anyone is going to screw it up and forcibly, tenaciously extract failure from the jaws of success, it will be them.
Handwriting and typing each have their place. Typing is typically done at a desk or on your lap. Handwriting is good for when you're standing up or in the field. Further, you can handwrite things you can't type. Ever try to type an equation or a chart?
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.
Apple and iPad are slowly, but surely, fracturing Microsoft's monopoly. When "does it run Windows apps?" becomes irrelevant, because you can do what you want to do and need to do on any platform, Microsoft's whole house of cards will start collapsing.
It will be years yet, but MS is losing its monopoly, and that's all it has. Being a cheat and bully is all they know how to do now.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
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.
Hi, this is your new car. The controls are dynamically adaptable! The radio station display is large and bright and shiny but the stations have no numbers or text labels. And the gas pedal is mouse-driven. Now, if you want to accelerate, use the 'accelerate gesture' with your hand in the air and move the cursor on the windshield forward, unless it's rainy, and then you have turn on 'rainy day cursor' which makes it about a foot wide at the top of the windshield. If you have any problems, click the "Ford Office' icon at the upper left corner being careful not to cause an accident in the process. Sometimes people outside may think you're giving them the finger, hahah. But our marketing department says 9 out of 10 people think this is cool to do 20 times a day, hahah. Okay now, if you have to brake, 1) don't click the 'Brake' tab, that's not where we put braking, instead, click the 'Alter Velocity' tab and select the unlabeled small 'Reduce Gas Flow' Icon and then select either the 'Handbrake?' button or the 'Footbrake?' button. Now move the braking slider which is located under the passenger seat. If this does not work, click "Ford Internet Help' and go online to see how to brake before you reach the end of that offramp.
Ford Bob: I see you're trying to avoid an accident. Do you want to write a letter?
Someone will figure out how to attract the generic consumer at some point.
The only way this will happen is by changing Linux, not changing the message.
Android seems to be doing well.
Android isn't Linux. It merely uses a highly modified Linux kernel.
LAMP seems to be doing well (not really a consumer product, but it does have a consumer facing aspect since it is an option when purchasing web hosting, which many average people are doing today).
Exactly. Every single consumer success for Linux happens everywhere *except* the desktop.
All Linux needs is a good spokesman.
Linux's problem has absolutely nothing to do with marketing. People just simply don't give a shit about free (libre), because there's no practical value to them. And commercial operating systems aren't expensive enough to make people care about free (gratis).
What they care about is that the system works with their stuff, and is easy enough to use. Linux fails both criteria for the vast majority of consumers. Who cares if it's "better" if you can't use it?
Or, what seems to be the most likely, a wrapper around Linux that tells the user a lot in a simple snappy name. Android did that and it's worked quite well.
Right. Android was a success in no small part due to throwing out everything that makes Linux recognizable as Linux.
So what exactly are they copying?
Apple's tablet OS design ideas.
Which OS design ideas? Be specific because it can't be the GUI which is completely different and follows completely different principles (yes I'm just talking about Metro, of course the fact that it can still run a Windows 7 alike desktop is completely different).
So what is it? Lower level OS architecture? Can't be. E.g. Apple managed to barely fix ASLR only in Lion. Microsoft has it working since ages.
It must be gestures then. Who would have thought that once touchscreen technology advanced, things could be operated touching a screen. No, it can't be, concepts have been around for a decade and something real was already around: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface (besides all sort of other tablets, I refer to the surface because from a design concept standpoint has been by far the richest).
Uhm, maybe is the design concept of having a matrix of icons? Pretty looks like my Windows desktop since the last 15 years. Thanks, I'll stay with my Metro tiles that actively display something useful and don't look so Win3.1
No, but WP7's redesign is a direct result of Apple's 2007 entry into the market.
Yep, then they invented a time machine and went back to 2006 to release the Zune with an interface that looks like the genesis of Metro. But the point is another one, so, after all, they didn't copied, they were only forced to re-design? And the big part of that re-design of WP7 vs WP6.5 was the interface?
Like I said, the tablet design ideas. Those tablets that have been around since 2001 simply used the standard Windows GUI. That's why they were a market failure.
So now you switched from OS design to general tablet design. And the failure was the Windows GUI. Not that batteries lasted nothing. Not the weight (couldn't even be used to make a presentation, your arm would hurt if you had to keep it in hands for 1 hour). Not that they were slow as hell. Not that touchscreen technology was a joke. Nope. Nothing. Just the GUI. Everyone was waiting fur such an inspired GUI from Apple. Just swipes, pokes and tons of small apps.
I tell you what: iPads right now are good for coach surfing, watching some videos, reading books (although I prefer e-ink), playing a limited set of games, casually reading e-mails. That's pretty much it (ok, there are some niches like music composers and such, but I'm talking about the mass. If you want to write something seriously, you need an external keyboard. For some some other stuff, a pen would be very useful. We'll see what happens when MS tablet will be released on different form factors with the best of both worlds (Windows Desktop and Metro). I predict that once Excel and Outlook will ship on Metro, a lot of managers will throw their iPads out of the window.
As for the Newton, not sure why you seem to think it doesn't apply, since you seem to be talking about the form factors and not the designs behind them.
Because we are talking about who copied who and if we go back to PDAs then even there Apple was not the first one and the Newton was pretty much a failure. MS came later with CE devices and that was a lot more successful. Not even only in the consumer space, all over different devices (warehouses, hospitals etc.)
Matrix of icons in the GUI? ROTFL...
What?
You struggle to keep focus? We are talking about MS copying Apple, so where is the matrix of icons in Metro? You know, Metro tiles are not just square/rectangular icons. They actively convey information. Yet, in the iOS world a matrix of icons seems to be such an innovation (Apple even put it in Lion). How could MS fail to copy such a fundamental innovation! FWIW the ROTFL was a huge laugh at all the innovation from Apple. Icons. Lots of them.
You don't need to use C++/CX to write a WinRT application - WinRT is COM at heart, after all. It helps a lot, because you don't have to deal with a clusterfuck of smart pointers like CComPtr<T> and CComQIPtr<T>, or macros like COM_INTERFACE_ENTRY to implement your QueryInterface, or checking HRESULT return values after every call for error codes. But for an old code base, you're good as is.
Matter of fact, even for the new apps, the official recommendation is "use ISO C++ for all your code that doesn't directly call WinRT" (from Herb Sutter's talk). That way most of it is immediately portable.
Cash cow? I doubt it.
You don't need to doubt it, just read the financial statement. Windows brings in $12B/year; Office+SharePoint+Exchange is $14B/year.
. In my territory, MS Office is selling at a slightly lower price than Windows. And not only that: it comes with 3-seat license, so it's effectively less than one-third the cost of a Windows license. Sure, this is the vanilla version that comes without the "enterprise" goodness of Access and the groupware tools, but for most people and small businesses having something to print out a quick report or do a spreadsheet of the week's expenses is more than enough.
Thing is, a single large business that buys several thousand, or even ten thousand, seats of enterprise edition "compensates" for a lot of those small home/office users in terms of income. And there are very few businesses with users in thousands that don't license Office for a significant proportion of their employees.
Metro is absolute garbage on a desktop with a mouse. That being said, it's also no worse than anything done on iPhones, Android, or Windows Phones. But it should be only for touch-screens, preferably smartphones. Just as long as they KEEP IT THERE.
Only marketing would ever want Office to be run in Metro. But the Windows 8 devs on msdn, if you read their blogs, are very in-tune with things. Whatever culture that was spawned after the Halloween-documents in 1998 (yes, 13 years ago) is very much active there, and they're neither close-minded nor stupid. They hate things like IE6 and love jQuery as much as anyone here would. Not surprising, considering MSFT have hired a lot of smart OSS-minded people in the past decade.
My guess is that they're only trying to vet unifying the interface part of Windows 8 as hard as they can currently. Despite the new DX9-level graphics requirements, Win8 is otherwise seriously fast enough to be run on modern smartphones. If you stripped out that crap, it'd be faster than Win7, probably faster than XP.
And since ribbons were brought up, Office 2007's ribbons sucked, just like Vista did. Office 2010's actually worked and is what it should have been. Digging through tons of 1980s-Macintosh style menus in Office2k3 or OOO to do things like data bars or text-to-columns a spreadsheet plain sucks. Tabbing through common tasks is far nicer. Four tabs and nothing's buried in Win8 explorer.
Metamoderate more often. When I metamoderate, I usually get about 15 +1/Likes the next day.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
*gets out a real keyboard*
As for previous interfaces, have you ever used Windows Mobile or CE? Especially in the Pre 6.5 days. The interface was basically just a small version of desktop windows - which also is horrible on a touchscreen. All the buttons are tiny. Stupidly simple things like that, for some reason nobody bothered to do anything about it until Apple released iOS. I knew that the interface was the weakest point in my smart phones, but Windows Mobile was still the best option for me until Android came out.
Capacitive touchscreens made a big difference too, and not just because of multi-touch.
which is totally what she said