The Occasional Blargh

Juxtaposition

I’m going to steal a bit from Raging Thunderbolt’s probably abandoned blog (Ed.: You’re one to talk. Before today, your last post was from over a year ago.) where she or he places two statements together to contrast each other. And I’ll steal a topic which was done on the website last year. Unlike her or him, I will probably F it up. Both statements appeared on Daring Fireball (the longtime obsession of these pages).

Marco Arment [on the release of various Microsoft apps for free on mobile devices]:

It seems that Microsoft is finally accepting the reality of Office’s market position on smartphones and tablets. To some degree, Office needs to compete with the free Google Docs and iWork, but for many customers, it’s also competing with the idea of simply not using office apps (or using them far less often).

John Gruber [on reaction to a developer’s release of an expansion pack for $2]:

Two fucking dollars. I’m going to the App Store to leave a 5-star review; such a beautiful and original work of art, and the App Store rating is being trashed by cheapskate morons.

The thing here is it hasn’t been a new complaint that the Apple App Store has not really fostered a healthy marketplace where developers can make the money needed to invest in applications more substantial that social media front-ends or simple fad-games. There’s folks who feel this has managed to stunt the iPad’s ascent as the PC replacement it was so destined to be. So, doesn’t it seem weird to celebrate as the natural order of things for one company to be pulled toward free by consumers, while lambasting consumers for pulling another app for free?

Above is what Daring Fireball looked like when I visited Saturday night. The only visible content was two ads, navigation, with only the hint of a blog should I choose to scroll down some more. I am the first to admit that the image above is unfair. I lucked into visiting the site at exactly the wrong time, and that the sponsorship testimonial he wrote was unusually long this week. Still, I note this because of his reaction to his discovery that some bundled apps in Windows 8 displayed ads: “Gross”, which is in line with his general distain for advertisements.

Now, I could point out the various promotional interruptions that sometimes greet your Mac or iPad-using day, but I thought it was probably already beside the point when now the major operating systems come with actual stores built into them. Windows 8 has the Store tile which loads what I guess is called “Windows Store” which is the only place to acquire and install the new ‘Metro’-style applications.  Ubuntu has reconfigured its package management application and turned it into a store. (Additionally, Canonical altered its desktop search interface to also search Amazon.com and place products it finds from that store into the search results.) And Apple, which had two stores built in since Snow Leopard, has routed its software update feature through the Mac App Store, as well as selling operating system upgrades solely through the store. Thus, you have to interact with the store to keep on top of system security updates, and to get new OS X releases. Windows system updates still come through a separate applet via the Control Panel, but ‘Metro’-app updates have to be downloaded through the store, too. It remains to be seen, though, if Windows will push new OS versions through its store. It seems a bit late to complain about ads here and there, when the OSes already direct you to exit through the gift shop.

★ July 22, 2012

Who gives a shit about Windows apps?

Apparantly, Lytro does. What's Lytro? Oh, it was that camera whose Mac-only support was seen as evidence that Apple was finally winning over Microsoft. Never mind ancient and recent history showed single platform launches that evolve to multiplatform apps. Like the Lytro camera that now supports Windows.

Today, you can get Microsoft Word 2010 — and just Microsoft Word 2010 — for $120 on Amazon.com. It’s not a great deal. For the same price, you can buy Office Home and Student. However, if you are a stickler for reading and following End User License Agreements to the the letter or the agreement, and you use Word (and just Word) for business or commercial use, this is the version you’d buy. If this is strange, you got to realize this is how Microsoft soaks up from companies their economic surplus. It is near impossible for anybody to buy massive quantities of Home and Student,  whereas enterprises get heavy discounts for buying huge site licenses with things like imaging and license management features. (Universities tend to also buy through site-licenses.) That would still cost them thousands of dollars, but it is still cheaper than retail and they don’t fear a BSA audit for trying to subvert EULA  by buying cheap home edition.  Sadly, for the one-man writing business, you’re stuck with the $120 Word-only edition.

Why did I spend the above paragraph explaining poorly how people buy MS Word or MS Office? Because MG Siegler has praised Amit Runchal at TechCrunch who spent 12 paragraphs telling everyone how Microsoft is doomed because their software is too expensive because people only want Word and Microsoft does not sell just Word. He wrote this without appearing to realize that Microsoft does sell just Word. Or understanding how Microsoft sells Office in general. How Microsoft might have to deal with pricing tablet applications that began from an accurate premise would have been a far more interesting piece to read. Of course, MG Siegler wouldn’t be able to recognise such an article, so he serves you more helpings of “Microsoft is going to die,” empty calories they may be.

MG Siegler has half a thought on Windows 8.

Newsflash: “No compromises” is actually a huge compromise.

Actually, to most computer users, having access to the old as well as the new is not a compromise. It’s considered ... well, it’s considered having access to both the old and the new. It’s when one has to give up the old to use the new, that is when compromises have to be made.

For an example, let’s just look at how one computer user is coping with the removal of a command that has been integral to his workflow over the years:

I’ve been irritated by the new Duplicate thing, but I can’t tell if it’s because I actually prefer the old Save As workflow or simply that the new Duplicate workflow is going to take some time to get used to. I suspect it’s the latter, so I’m sticking with it for now.

Another user has to build a hack to comfortably use his computer again. MG Siegler, these are actual compromises. “I want to use the great new features provided by OS X Lion such as automatic versioning, but I have to contort my workflow around the removal of the Save As command — a staple of computer science for decades — or I have to develop a script that brings back said functionality; a script that I must maintain for as long as I am unable to grok the new Duplicate/Save a Version paradigm.”

Links come to me via Stu Parker’s piece on this.