I wonder how much of a hit Apple would take if the first $5000 per year per app was rebated.
There's a long tail of mild-moderately successful apps that provide value to some, but may not be economic to continue. With this system, devs could re-invest ~50% more funds into their early-stage product if they could.
It may pay for itself in future success and better products.
It's like a VC: You're small and a small amount of money means a lot to you. We'll give it to you in exchange for 30% of your future sales. The system works.
Netflix does it. AWS does it. GCloud does it.
https://blog.anylist.com/2015/02/open-letter-to-tim-cook-reg...
This would tend to suggest that Apple isn't getting a cut. Normally when they take one, it's on the basis of funds being transferred via their store, which doesn't appear to be the case here. But this is a massive deal between two of the ecosystem's biggest fish, and I'm sure an arrangement has been made to give Apple a piece of the pie somehow.
Favorability in negotiation terms usually tend to be proportional to the size of the parties involved.
brew cask uninstall microsoft-office
- Microsoft sneaked OneDrive into the Office installer. I do not want OneDrive on my system
- All the applications are sandboxed per app store requirements.
- Indeed no more pesky Microsoft Autoupdate.
I just replaced the regular with the App Store version and it went without a hitch. Just needed keychain access to Microsoft identity, and a login to Live.
Then again, Apple's not immune to this. Nine times out of ten, Software Update for Windows has an urgent update for Software Update for Windows.
Also, any time an application is available from both inside and outside the App Store I always prefer the outside one. The sandboxing that the App Store imposes is a massive pain. There's also no reason in my mind that Apple deserves a fat slice of my license payment.
If I had a Mac, I would go to G Suite, which gives better capabilities for 99.9% of the users, and if I was on the .1% I would go and buy a PC.
* BTW- Wine 4 was released this week, and they also don't support any of the O365 apps, especially not their 64bit versions.
It is bigger news than you might think. The Mac App Store has resoundingly failed to attract most "premium" Mac apps. Skype? No. Spotify? No. Chrome? No. Photoshop? No. VMware? No. Steam? No. Minecraft? No. Dropbox? No. Sketch? Left.
The redesigned App Store app was the first signal in years that Apple was starting to take it seriously again, and now they've brought one of the most popular pieces of software to the store. That's a big move.
If you purchase an in-app subscription through the App Store with your Apple ID, the only option is a yearly subscription.
If you purchase a subscription directly from Microsoft's website, you can purchase either a yearly or monthly subscription.
The yearly subscription costs the same in both cases, and is cheaper unless you only want to use the app for a few months.
Is this through in-app purchases? It would seem counterintuitive to let Apple take 30% from the yearly subscription if they've gotten away with distributing outside the app store for so long. (but they may have a special revenue share agreement)
From Microsoft's perspective, now that Windows is sidelined, Office is their primary consumer platform and that means UX outweighs any strategic tax of trying to make the Windows version better.
Have you tried to download Office from their website? It's a horrible, braindead experience. You have to log in to your Live account, then go to a particular page to manage your existing Office installs that is super confusing. Coupled with the poor autoupdate UX on Mac [1], and it's almost like Microsoft doesn't want you to have Office on Mac.
I think the issue finally reached a breaking point there and they shifted to UX > control. This is a positive shift for them, since being on the App Store means features ship faster and users see value in their Office subscription. Aside from update UX this is obviously a way to bump their Mac Office numbers. Seems like a good play from both Apple & Microsoft's perspective.
[1] Right now Microsoft's autoupdate UX is pretty terrible at keeping things up to date. When I visit my parents, they're almost always several versions behind, and as another commenter pointed out, a decent part of that is the autoupdate needing to update itself. They have automated updates but its hard to trust that process won't result in issues when documents are open, and it presents a lot of cognitive load to users on top of the OS & App Store updates.
I don't think we have to imagine that. Apple's been against that sort of thing for a long time, and I don't see that changing any time soon. They don't target the lowest common denominator.
I suppose that the Marzipan project, of iOS frameworks on macOS, should prove me wrong but I still don't think so. The few apps that Apple has given us are ... kinda bad. Their non-nativeness screams out: they don't respond properly to gestures, many macOS Services don't work in them, and the user interfaces are laggy.
Yes, I suppose things will change with the next version of macOS, but there's no real way to avoid the fact that UIKit on macOS doesn't make proper macOS apps --- and developers will have to decide what matters more; time to market or customer satisfaction.
I'm fairly sure Marzipan is a stopgap, not a platform unto itself. Get your iOS apps running on macOS, and slowly move them to native macOS paradigms.
I'm actually hoping that things like Office 365, Lightroom CC (and perhaps the other Adobe apps), BBEdit, etc. help developers see the potential of proper macOS apps (I'll take these big developers' emulations of Cocoa over UIKit-on-macOS any day), and smaller developers will follow suit.
(And if their code is MVC-compliant in the Cocoa way, that should't be too big an issue; you can mix and match views and controllers from AppKit and UIKit!)
> Have you tried to download Office from their website?
If you have an Office 365 account, all you need to do is go to office.com, sign in, and there's a big friendly "Install Office" button right there. But I do generally agree that there is too much friction getting this "must-have" piece of software; I don't care for Office much, but denying its influence and widespread usage is a task best relegated to those who think everybody should write in LaTeX.
Last I heard, Marzipan apps cannot link against AppKit at all.
2. Login
3. Do you want to stay logged in?
4. Is your information up to date?
5. Office / OneCloud homepage ("Good evening"). Press 'Install Office' (its a secondary/white button that blends into background, whereas 'New doc' is a blue button).
(20 URL redirects)
6. Installs page. Press 'Install Office' again.
7. Still Installs page, now with banner that says 'Your Office 365 subscription info has moved to account.microsoft.com. Now there's one place to manage all your subscriptions'. No download happens when you press 'Install Office'. No actual link to account.microsoft.com.
8. Go to account.microsoft.com. No download button.
I'm literally unable to download the Office dmg right now. Also, this is the improved interface. The prior one from last year was even less clear, except for the fact I could download it.
Most other apps have a 1-click download button on their homepage, and guide you through the login/reg process when you launch the app. Oh, that's right, Office ALSO does that, in addition to the aforementioned steps. It's braindead.
I think companies sometimes acknowledge that they've screwed up so badly that they need to rethink how they do things. Microsoft demonstrated willingness to do that since Satya became CEO and have shifted the entire company strategy away from Windows, killing a sacred cow. Whether or not that's what's going on behind the scenes here, the end user experience is severely improved going to App Store.
Regarding UIKit, yes the current Marzipan apps suck, all four of them. They're not mainline apps by any stretch of the imagination, and none were previously on the Mac. They'll get better. Just because Marzipan/UIKit today doesn't have good MacOS affordances doesn't mean it won't in the future, especially since it's not even being offered to developers right now. I don't see why it's difficult to see where the puck is going here. There's certainly some implementation details to work out, but it's better for the ecosystem as a whole - users, devs, and Apple - to have a single framework in the long run. Were you making something from scratch you certainly wouldn't make two frameworks.
To be specific, Apple has been against a 2-in-1 style product. I'm not advocating that, sorry to have caused confusion. I'm saying they'll have same underlying tech (UIKit/marizpan), but different end-user UX affordances based on mouse vs touch.
Remember that iPad is as large a market as Mac right now, and is moving upmarket and attracting more pro apps. There are also way more iOS devs than MacOS devs, 10:1 or 100:1. Devs making technical decisions about Apple ecosystem products right now should be getting the hint, and if they're not they likely will this June at WWDC. Apple doesn't tend to lurch around on product decisions, almost everything they do is a multi-year strategy executed in well-telegraphed steps.
Maybe not _technically_ yet, but certainly in spirit. For example, Apple removed a lot of features from their Photos (formerly iPhoto) and iMovie Mac apps to match the much more limited iOS versions.
Only available on 83% of Desktops worldwide. hmm..
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/30/17179328/microsoft-window...
$ codesign -d --entitlements - /Applications/Microsoft\ Word.app/
Executable=/Applications/Microsoft Word.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Word
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>com.apple.security.cs.disable-library-validation</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.developer.aps-environment</key>
<string>production</string>
<key>com.apple.security.assets.pictures.read-only</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.sbpl</key>
<array>
<string>(allow file-read* file-write*
(require-all (vnode-type REGULAR-FILE) (regex #"(^|/)~\$[^/]+$"))
)</string>
<string>(deny file-write*
(subpath (string-append (param "_HOME") "/Library/Application Scripts"))
(subpath (string-append (param "_HOME") "/Library/LaunchAgents"))
)</string>
</array>
<key>com.apple.security.app-sandbox</key>
<true/>
<key>keychain-access-groups</key>
<array>
<string>UBF8T346G9.*</string>
</array>
<key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.apple-events</key>
<array>
<string>com.microsoft.outlook</string>
<string>com.microsoft.lync</string>
<string>com.microsoft.skypeforbusiness</string>
<string>com.filemaker.client.pro12</string>
<string>com.thomsonresearchsoft.endnote</string>
<string>com.dessci.mathtype</string>
</array>
<key>com.apple.security.assets.movies.read-only</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.security.automation.apple-events</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.shared-preference.read-write</key>
<array>
<string>com.microsoft.autoupdate2</string>
<string>com.microsoft.office</string>
<string>com.microsoft.shared</string>
</array>
<key>com.apple.security.files.user-selected.read-write</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.security.application-groups</key>
<array>
<string>UBF8T346G9.Office</string>
<string>UBF8T346G9.ms</string>
<string>UBF8T346G9.OfficeOsfWebHost</string>
<string>UBF8T346G9.OfficeOneDriveSyncIntegration</string>
</array>
<key>com.apple.security.scripting-targets</key>
<dict>
<key>com.apple.mail</key>
<array>
<string>com.apple.mail.compose</string>
</array>
</dict>
<key>com.apple.security.print</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.application-identifier</key>
<string>UBF8T346G9.com.microsoft.Word</string>
<key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.files.home-relative-path.read-only</key>
<array>
<string>/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/</string>
</array>
<key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.mach-lookup.global-name</key>
<array>
<string>com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.helper.port</string>
</array>
<key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.shared-preference.read-only</key>
<array>
<string>com.ThomsonResearchSoft.EndNote</string>
</array>
<key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.files.absolute-path.read-only</key>
<array>
<string>/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.plist</string>
<string>/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/</string>
</array>
<key>com.apple.security.files.bookmarks.app-scope</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.developer.team-identifier</key>
<string>UBF8T346G9</string>
<key>com.apple.security.network.client</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.security.personal-information.addressbook</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.security.assets.music.read-only</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.security.cs.allow-unsigned-executable-memory</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>I dug a bit and I found this article[1] that says it's now using a common codebase for Office 2016 since January last year, so I guess it's not something new with this new release of Office 365 on mac.
1. https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-aligns-its-different...
I am as much of a cheapskate as the next guy, but it makes sense to pay for services that help get work done and/or make life easier.
I am curious if Microsoft is paying Apple a 30% cut, or if they got a better deal.
I have six family members. $360 / year for GSuite, that's untenable to me.
Support replies were a series of unrelated prefilled replies, it seems whoever is on the other end is just keen to reply with whatever asap (phone is no better)
I don't think i've ever given Microsoft a dollar in my life but i'm strongly considering purchasing their email hosting based on feedback from companies I know using it. I don't mind paying for things, I hate paying for things and then not getting what was advertised.
https://www.imore.com/thrifter-deal-score-50-itunes-gift-car...
Now I use homebrew to install lots of software and fonts internally.