Re: MS Office for Intel Mac?
- From: Kurt <labolide@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2006 19:31:23 -0700
In article <jemcgimpsey-34EF20.11185028052006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
JE McGimpsey <jemcgimpsey@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <labolide-24AC36.08372127052006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Kurt <labolide@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Which belongs to the shareholders, from Bill G to the proverbial widows
and orphans.
Plenty of money for the company.
No. It ALL belongs to the shareholders. The company managers and
directors are responsible to use that money wisely for the shareholders'
benefit.
But money can be alloted for things that matter. You are saying that the
Mac unit is simply not worth the cost of doing what they advertise.
Fair enough.
Burying it in the accounting would, of course, be violating their
fiduciary responsibility.
Didn't mean it like that - meant allocating a tiny portion from a huge
portion somewhere else.
I strongly disagree - when I make an investment in a company, I expect
the management of that company to be diligent and deliberate in using
ALL of that money. While a case can be made that corporate charity can
enhance a company, both by being a responsible "corporate citizen" and
by the fact that a good reputation may lead to future profits, I can't
make a case that providing charity to Apple Macintosh owners
accomplishes either of those goals.
Charity is not doing what they promise in their advertising.
MS management *could* decide that subsidizing the Mac market was in the
best interest of the company. But what makes the Mac market so special
to MS that they'd subsidize it? Where does the obligation to subsidize a
competitor come from?
It's more that they try to give the image of how wonderful they are for
the Mac market and how what they produce is the best possible. The usual
corporate puffery.
Yeah, marketing gets smarmy sometimes. OTOH, I have to give credit where
credit is due: without a Herculean effort by MacBU to produce Office
v.X, Apple's *entire* business today, assuming it survived, would likely
be limited to iPods...
...or a way to circumvent the MS stranglehold. Tough one, I'll agree.
MS calls the shots on this one.
Sorry, never meant this as a personal comment about you - meant it in
terms of the company itself. It controls its pursestrings and can make
any decision it wants.
No, it really can't. Nor should it. Again, I'd love for MS to give me,
and every other Mac user, a gift by subsidizing MacBU. But I can't think
of a justification, nor do I expect any such gift.
Don't see hordes of MS techs flooding the their newsgroups with
insightful solutions.
Nope - MS techs mostly work on product, though they do monitor the
groups. A few post occasionally. Support techs work in providing paid
support. The newsgroups have always been about peer support.
You'd figure that out of 200 employees, they could rotate a few around
for an important part what they tout as "customer support"
Their own website is tedious (and often lacking) at best with respect
to easy customer support answers.
Have to agree with you here.
Other software companies do properly moderated discussion forums
quite successfully. I can get quick, expert answers from Adobe all
the time.
If you're getting support from Adobe employees (I never got a darned
thing from their GoLive forum - every one of my questions went
unanswered), then *someone* is paying for it. MacBU could certainly
provide tech support in the newsgroups, but then they'd have to raise
the price of MacOffice. How much more will the market bear?
Funny, I use the the forums regularly, GL, AI PS and ID.
Always get a response.
Like I said before, 200 MS MacBu employees and they can't rotate a few
around to man the boards? A multi-billion dollar company. Adobe can set
up a dedicated forum, why can't MS?
I guess for me the bottom line is that, as far as MS is concerned, the
MacBU is the red-headed stepchild of their business. They like the fact
that it returns a profit, but MacBU is on a strict pay-as-you-go
program. There's no obvious justification for the idea that the best use
(i.e., the highest return) of MS's cash is investing in the Mac platform.
Anyone who continues to adopt a platform with a tiny market share, as we
have, is going to have to live with the implications of that status,
including everything being more expensive. If the expense is more than
Mac users are willing to pay, then we have to live with that, too.
Yes, the more it kills the competition, the more we pay them.
More reason to "think different".
Why not sub out the Mac end if resources are so "constrained by
stockholders"?
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