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Do you have the desire to run PowerPoint on your Android smartphone? Good news:
Five weeks ago, we announced the Office for Android phone preview. We are so grateful to our preview users, and with their help we were able to test the apps on over 1,900 different Android phone models in 83 countries. During the preview, we heard from thousands of these users, and over the last few weeks we were able to incorporate a lot of their feedback into the apps we're launching today. For example, we made it easier to connect to other popular third-party storage offerings like Google Drive and Box, as well as many usability adjustments to make it easier to navigate commands within the apps.
You can download the Word for Android, Excel for Android and PowerPoint for Android apps from the Google Play store beginning today. We hope you enjoy using them as much as we enjoyed making them.
At AnandTech and The Register.
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday June 26 2015, @01:33AM
Or maybe its because MS Software has actual features and usability, unlike the open source alternatives which have just now caught up to 2002 if not 1986.
With regard to the desktop, it's the applications, stupid. Perhaps if all the real talent in the open source world weren't so preoccupied with adding another scheduler or file system or fixing niche bugs in OS shit nobody cares about, and instead devoted at least a smidgen of time to high-performance open-source feature-rich applications (hell, maybe even games), people wouldn't be making dumb "year of the Linux desktop" jokes because that year have been long past by now.
The Kernel and OS distributions are more than good enough for desktop use. Nobody else is going to write decent desktop applications for open source systems until viable alternatives start eating their lunch.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 26 2015, @01:38AM
Those features and usabilities comes with a cost that is payed when your to invested in the system to leave.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday June 26 2015, @02:20PM
Man, your writing is nearly unreadable. Here it is in English:
Those features and usabilities comes with a cost that is paid when you're too invested in the system to leave.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 26 2015, @02:26PM
Sorry and thanks.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday June 26 2015, @04:00PM
Glad to be of help!
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday June 26 2015, @01:46AM
Have to agree: we have too many distros and need more people/money working on the applications (but then again, how do you get MS format compatibility when MS keeps messing with the compatibility to the point where one version of a MS product won't open another...). If only the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation would toss some money in that direction (instead of being just a scam philanthropy organization/tax loophole)... i'd PAY to see that, lol.
Love that steam is powering ahead with promoting linux games.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday June 26 2015, @03:38AM
Let's be fair and acknowledge the fact that both, Libre and Open Office came a very long way in the past few years, though.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday June 26 2015, @03:18PM
Yes, I wrote my books using Open Office and am working on another three in it. I've hated Microsoft Word ever since they introduced that horrible ribbon interface.
Too bad Oo and Lo's spreadsheets are nearly useless.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Saturday June 27 2015, @03:51PM
You should consider writing big documents in LaTeX instead... Any WYSIWYG editor sucks for such endeavors.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lentilla on Friday June 26 2015, @07:33AM
Perhaps if all the real talent in the open source world weren't so preoccupied with adding another scheduler or file system or [...]
There's a reason for that. If I designed a "word processor" the interface would behave like Emacs and there'd be a strong TeX influence. As a result nobody would use it.
You see, most people have a strong aversion to anything with a learning curve. Left to their own devices, they quite often end up using sub-standard tools that take twice as long and many times the effort, simply because it was initially easier to use.
If I am writing Libre software, it really will be because it "scratches a personal itch" (per esr's The Cathedral and the Bazaar). I'm not going to much care about what "normal" people think of my software because I'm not making software to be popular, I'm writing it to be functional and pleasant for me to use. Which is unlikely to translate into "accessible" for normal users.
One of my greatest gripes with "usability testing" is that it priorities "easy" over "functional". That's how we ended up with GNOME and that horrid "cog icon" in all our interfaces. It's the exact opposite of Perl's maxim "make easy things easy and hard things possible" - instead we have "easy things are easy, mildly difficult things might be possible, and everything else is completely out of the question".
When the Linux kernel developers come up with a new scheduler or file system they know it will be subjected to tests and the objectively best ones will be chosen for inclusion in the next kernel. User-facing applications don't have the same kind of purely objective tests - because they interface with users, we have to make do with "user acceptance testing". Unfortunately, we rarely test the users after they have been properly trained in using software that does complex tasks. Quite often ten minutes of training results in a far more productive user in non-trivial software than alternative software that is "easy to use" in the first thirty seconds of use. The productivity effect is then compounded for the rest of the time the users are using the software - which can well be forty hours a week for decades. It's not an insignificant difference.
I'm not arguing that software should inherently be difficult to use or inaccessible to non-developers. I am; however; suggesting that the interface should be appropriate - and sadly first-time users are rarely the best judge of that. That's why libre software programmers don't write user-facing applications. There's little point because people wouldn't use them and nobody likes wasting their time.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday June 26 2015, @02:17PM
"Actual features and useability"? Office has been completely unusable since they introduced that damn ribbon interface.
Unfortunately, often you're forced to use Word because others demand it. I've been using Open Office but when I decided to start submitting short stories to magazines, I discovered they all want Word formats. Oo allegedly reads and writes those formats, but I can't open a Word document in Oo and I can't save it as a Word document and have Word read it. So Installed the probably crippled version that came with the notebook, getting the text in by copy/paste.
Also unfortunately, Oo's spreadsheet is garbage. I'm glad I don't need spreadsheets.
... instead devoted at least a smidgen of time to high-performance open-source feature-rich applications
The only Linux app I've seen that's lacking is Oo's spreadsheet. The only two things wrong with GIMP is its retarded menu structure and lack of a decent color picker; I use it to produce my books' covers. No way am I paying a thousand bucks for a copy of Photoshop (note that all of MS's photo editors are garbage).
Powerpoint? That productivity draining monstrosity should never have been on the market. I'm glad I'm retired so I don't have to sit through any more boring Powerpoint presentations that did nothing but waste time.
Note that a lot of companies are free of Microsoft, the Ernie Ball Corporation (they make the world's best guitar strings) being one. After the BSA dragged their name through the mud over some accounting errors, its CEO said he wanted all Microsoft out of the factory "and I don't care if we have to buy 10,000 abacuses, I will not do business with a vendor who treats me badly."
Pray tell, what can't a Linux desktop do that Windows can besides run MS software?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org