Quickoffice files save into Google Drive
Ah. Never mind, then.
Google has reduced the price of its Quickoffice tool to nothing on Android and iOS, a move Microsoft won't appreciate. Google scooped up Quickoffice about a year back and made it a part of Google Drive. Doing so meant Drive users could edit Microsoft Office documents. The Chocolate Factory has now made Quickoffice available …
Google is still a tax - just on your time and privacy...
Yup, that is a payment in a different currency. It may be worth noting in that context that you pay MS once for the product, whereas Google you'll pay the rest of your life - your personal data isn't returned when you stop using their service, and you have agreed to a license to your IP into perpetuity (read the ToS - you'll find it soon enough).
I'm in two minds about the cloud wars that have started.
They're both wanting to collect and hold a huge quantity of personal data about people.
Whilst I rarely touch MS with anything less than a cattle prod I'm inclined to think their offering might be better simply for the reason that I don't think they're competent enough to do anything with the data.
"Anyone who had the danger os on their phones will know just how good Microsoft are when it comes to backing up and recovering data."
You mean Windows Phone? Not sure why that's the danger OS - it's far more secure than the other current options, and Microsoft don't SPAM you for life with the contents of your data, and there is no Malware like on Android - and as far as we know the NSA can't remotely control your camera / microphone like they can on Android...
You are correct about the backups though - If you logon to a new Windows Phone it restores pretty much everything including all of your applications from the last automatic cloud backup....It's really fast and completely seamless.
Almost - they killed its financial viability and locked lots of corporations in to a now-regretted dependency on IE5/IE6 which even MS can't/won't port, even as 2nd class application, to later versions of Windows.
But Netscape's legacy is still around as Firefox, and doing not too badly.
All I can remember about IE 5/6 was their shitty and inconsistent support for HTML and CSS and a complete determination to keep them outside the standards the rest of the world was working to. I think the biggest legacy of those versions of IE is the fixed width WEB site...
I'm sorry Steve. Could you put carriage returns before char 80
on all your lines please. Only you see I'm reading this on a portrait
screen, and the fixed width of the bloody website means I keep
having to scroll left and right to see.
All I can remember about IE 5/6 was their shitty and inconsistent support for HTML and CSS and a complete determination to keep them outside the standards the rest of the world was working to
Funny that. I've seen that happen with the MS Office formats too, so even that wasn't *cough* innovation *cough*
Office is going to go the same way as VisiCalc and WordPerfect.
They dragged their feet about windowizing their interface and lost market share to office.
As less PCs are being sold and surface is a damp squib Office is now losing market share to both QuickOffice and iWorks, to the point where outside the desktop they'll be irrelevant :o
Really? So you're too young to remember the MS-haters spouting exactly the same bumph about how StarOffice was just CERTAIN to kill MS Office when it was given away as Open Office? QuickOffice will be nothing more than a reader for documents produced in MS Office, as phones (and even most tablets) are good for consumption but crap for production of documents. Production will still largely be done on desktops and proper laptops, and MS Office (or Office365) will still be the tool of choice.
"Not even with Google Docs, which can ALSO access Google Drive...." Apart from the fact Office365 already has this with the real productivity suite, not the shallow clone, have you read the terms on the Google Drive license? Google gets to use your docs as they like, in perpetuity, even after you delete them, which implies they keep copies of all that stuff you may have decided was too embarrassing/incriminating to keep.
"Google gets to use your docs as they like, in perpetuity, even after you delete them, which implies they keep copies of all that stuff"
I suspect that's just butt-covering in the event that a Google employee cocks up and lets people's files out into the wild somehow. Remember, Google has a lot of lawyers, and T&C documents get written by those lawyers. They'd be thinking of the worst cases and covering their arses. Particularly after that WiFi thing people got all upset about (over what was essentially nothing).
I'm not saying Google's all rainbows and candy, but I seriously doubt they want to keep the worlds files on, er, file just so they can sneak a look next Tuesday when the programmers are bored.
"Office is now losing market share to both QuickOffice and iWorks"
Clearly you would like to think so, but that simply isn't the case. Office is still growing revenue - especially via Office 365 which is growing rapidly:
http://betanews.com/2013/06/03/shock-survey-37-of-orgs-plan-to-adopt-office-365-within-24-months/
Depends, many older options did not work very well, maybe Quickoffice will work to a "good enough" standard?
Still, has MS not been in "protect Windows cash-cow at all costs" mode the last few years, it could have make Office properly available on IOS (at least) and Android and seen much more sales. Oh, and saved 1B$ in write-down on the unloved WinRT fondlslabs...
Most office apps on Android are complete arse, barely more sophisticated than Wordpad or at a pinch, MS Works. I've got Polaris baked into my Asus Transformer and the bloody thing doesn't even recognise half the keyboard navigation keystrokes forcing me to poke at the screen to move the cursor around any appreciable distance.
I think if I were expecting to do any serious word processing or spreadsheets on the go I'd just buy a Windows tablet.
I've found Documents To Go to be pretty good. I first tried it out because at the time there was no PDF viewer worth a damn, but since then I've found it's pretty good for Officey stuff too. I've not done anything hugely complicated with it, but thus far it hasn't had any problems with the random selection of documents I've put through it.
+1 for Documents To Go - I've used it since first switching from the older Windows Mobile platforms when the HTC Desire first came out, and got it direct for about £6 back then. Polaris looks all fancy, and shows a few things that DTG doesn't, like cell outlines on spreadsheets (but at least those that are there are maintained when saving). However, DTG is easily good enough to use in place of the Mobile Office apps on the old HTC Kaiser et al that T-Mobile use to rebadge as their Vario range.
"if you wait long enough you'll be able to get one free with a burger :)"
I'm not talking of Windows RT, I'm talking of Windows. There are already Windows tablets running x86 processors with similar battery life as ARM chips. If I was looking for something for word processing I would pick one of those over an Android tablet any day of the week.
It's not just the quality of of the office suites on android which is an issue but lack of a proper printing infrastructure. And keyboard / mouse support is generally terrible. All things that seriously impact on the ability to produce rather than consume information.
"Google's just taken away any reason for Steve Ballmer to consider productivity apps on non-Microsof mobile devices before his departure."
I don't agree. People will pay money for MS Office on Android and iDevices even if the competition is free, for the same reasons that they pay for MS Office on Windows and OSX even though Libre Office is free.
People will pay money for MS Office on Android and iDevices even if the competition is free, for the same reasons that they pay for MS Office on Windows and OSX even though Libre Office is free
And, i think, if they've gone for the subscription model of Office 365 then (at least the phone version) is free already.
Except they can't because they used the VERY generic term "Office". They can trademark the complete phrase "Microsoft Office", but not the word "Office" because it's too broad. Therefore, QuickOffice (which is different enough in name and logo to MS Office) would get a pass. Also, Microsoft would have to answer why they didn't make such an assertion with StarOffice/OpenOffice/LibreOffice previously (there is IIRC a statute of limitations for filing a trademark infringement claim).
Not all their products start with Sky, you have The_Cloud and NowTV but the court's decision was based on the fact that customers could be confused because it sounds like Sky's other products not because it had the company name in the title.
The Sky result was primarily done under the concept of "passing off" which Microsoft could apply to this situation;
http://www.humphreys.co.uk/trademark-infringement.htm
In order to succeed in an action for passing off the claimant needs to establish that:
(a) the claimant's products have acquired a goodwill or reputation in the market and are known by some distinguishing feature. That feature can range from a lemon shape container - Jif Lemon (1990) to a telephone number - Law Society v. Griffiths (1995);
(b) in using a similar feature the defendant makes a misrepresentation leading or likely to lead the consumer to believe that the defendant's products belong to the claimant or are in some way connected with the claimant. The defendant need not act intentionally;
For (a) Microsoft Office has a built a reputation in the market under which it is reffered to as "office" not just "Microsoft Office" or "MS Office" and that can be considered a distinguishing feature.
For (b) by using Office in the product's name (the company is now Google so can't use the company name as a defence) and providing a service that interacts with Microsoft Office, it can be construed that Google are un/intentionally misrepresenting QuickOffice as being in some way connected with Microsoft's Microsoft Office.
The other thing with the "Passing Off" infringement is that the claimant does not have had to register the trademark for it to be infringed.
The couldn't go with Microdrive, because a hard drive manufacturer owns that trademark. It was originally IBM. They sold there entire hard drive division including the Microdrive trademark to Hitachi. Hitachi then sold most of it to Western Digital and some of it to Toshiba. I don't know who got the Microdrive trademark, but I'm guessing it is Western Digital because Toshiba got the 3.5" bit of it.
Trademarks CAN be shared if they're differnt enough from each other.
For example, in America, the term "Cracker Barrel" is trademarked twice. One is for a line of natural cheeses from Kraft (don't knock them here--the cheeses here are real, just not fancy). The other is for a restaurant/novelty store chain with a distinct 19th-century motif. There has been no complaints from the USPTO over the matter since they are essentially non-competitive.
US law does have laws against that, too (here we call it "dumping"), but since alternatives already exist that are not only free but FOSS, trying to assert dumping is going to be a hard sell, especially since the tie-in to Google Drive means they can claim competition by a different business model.
But most countries competition laws prevent the use of a profitable arm of a company funding a loss-leading part of the company for the purposes of stifling competition or preventing a competitor from being competitive which would over-ride the competition by a different business model that you mention.
It makes a hard sell a 50/50 sell as Microsoft would only need to prove that Google had no intention of profiting or at least breaking even purely from Quickoffice's link between MS Office and Google Drive (including advertisement revenue).
>It makes a hard sell a 50/50 sell as Microsoft would only need to prove that Google had no intention of profiting or at least breaking
Google could make the same argument about Microsoft Surface or Windows Phone 8 - now well over $billion written off to those and zero change of earning anything.
Google Search, mail and drive are ad based, there's a profit model associated directly with those services/products so they aren't loss leaders they just work on a different business model.
Android is an awkward proposition and doesn't neatly fit into competition rules and is likely why the EU haven't started any form of anti-competition over Android. Google are using Android as a loss leader to get OEMs licensing its products and this would bring down the wrath of the EU as it puts those who's business is licensing the OS at an unfair disadvantage. The reason it hasn't is because its open software, Google own the name but they don't own the software and there's nothing preventing competitors from using the OS, altering it to their needs and putting their own services on if much like Amazon did.
Yes, I got the same. It appears it can't edit Google docs but can excel ones. Bit of an own goal that. Still, its a freebie. At least graphs are rendered into the PDF on the phone which is more than Google drive/docs can do on a phone/tablet.
Give it 6 months and it will all be good. Can't moan when its free.
Good for iPhone/iPad users too given that Apple has only made its office suite (Keynote, Pages, Numbers, iPhoto and iMovie) free with iOS hardware purchased after Sept 2013 -- ie. everyone else (the vast majority) still have to pay. Perhaps Apple will feel compelled to make their suite free for everyone rather than see more of its user base move to Google products?
"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others."
People moan and complain about the MS monopoly. What about WordStar? WordPerfect Suite? OpenOffice? iWorks? There have been (and still are) other competitors but until they come up with a better experience, MS Office is the best of the lot. No doubt MS made use of undocumented API calls, but that's a story for another day.
If they can sort out an easy way of printing from Android, I'd even be tempted to invest in a keyboard for my Nexus 7 - granted, it won't completely replace a PC, but it'd be ideal for bashing out the odd letter and maintaining my gas/electric spreadsheet. MSOffice is overkill for the home user.
I don't get it... I've had QuickOffice Pro for years on my iPad and use it lots. I hdn't realised Google now owned the brand. I checked and my QOP is v 5.something whereas the new google one which is free is v6.1. Downloaded it and as above can't edit Word docs... Which I have always been able to do (from DropBox which I also can't do now..)!
Makes the app pretty useless!!
So... take out a heap of functionality and start giving it away for free...
Sorry to pee on the party here but someone mentioned Microsoft Works, mostly derogatory, but for me it was an uncomplicated suite of programmes that was adequate for my needs. Much like that other underrated Microsoft piece of software, Office One Note, its an amazing piece of software and because its Microsoft its written off. No I'm not a Microsoft troll or apologist but I do believe that occasionally they do get things right and One Note is in that category.