Word is proof that there is no God and that we’re all alone in the cold vacuum of space. Word is every traffic light being red. Word is getting an itchy arsehole because you couldn’t quite wipe yourself properly.
I don’t think anything in the software world has ever pissed me off as much as the fucking ribbon. “We’ve run out of ideas as far as the UI is concerned - just throw everything up there somewhere, menus, toolbars, whatever”. A close second was their genius idea of hiding unused menu items so the locations of the items you do use are constantly changing.
I don’t use MS products any more but my 90 yo parents do and it’s a fucking nightmare trying to help them with stuff. MS Office is certifiable elder abuse.
Office 97 was the last good Office. No auto-adjusting menus, no ribbons, you could actually provide phone support and have confidence that both people were seeing the same thing.
It’s not even that. It’s way smaller potatoes down in the org chart.
People always say “why would large company do this” and the answer is almost always that guy 7 or 8 rows down the org chart needs this to get their bonus this year and that point gets distilled into 1 bullet in a power point presentation that is summarized by chatgpt.
I visited a local Microsoft office in the mid-90s. Their office employee kitchen had a poster of the Internet Explorer logo smashing the Netscape logo to a bloody pulp.
I got recruited by Apple some years ago because of my Stack Overflow account. I’m glad I ignored them, although there’s something to be said for an ungodly salary and Apple stock options.
If large corporations have zero empathy for their competition, why do they have such an easy time coordinating raising grocery prices well above the free market optimum?
Large corporations are owned by capital holders. Often it’s the same set of capital holders owning different corporations because they’ve diversified their assets. It is not in the interest of their owners to have a free market race to the bottom.
So they make deals. And when socialists force the government to forbid those deals, they find Schelling points where they can make deals without making deals. It’s not collusion; it’s covid supply issues; ask anyone. And with neoliberal/neocon dismantling of regulatory agencies they can just do it.
So they have empathy for other large corporations. But it goes further than that. At least for now, capital assets are still managed by people. Those people are flesh and blood. They eat, they socialize, they make friends, and they care about their friends and acquaintances. And this caring is embedded into the choices that they make at work, where they compete against their friends and acquaintances.
So large corporations have empathy not just for other corporations, but also for rich people in general. Golden parachutes, nepotist appointments, favors, massively overpaid C-suite execs and expensive consultancy jobs from each other’s hobby projects.
Corporations bleed trillions of dollars for the sake of empathy with their competitors and with private individuals, they just won’t accept a competitor to bourgeoisie hegemony.
They literally blew billions of dollars and years of developer time just to screw the companies that won the argument of “open internet or Microsoft protocol” back in the day. Yes, petty.
This tells me LibreOffice has become a threat to Microsoft, and I’m here for it.
If anyone else is curious what it’s like, LibreOffice’s site is here. Highly recommend.
using Microsoft Word for too long makes me break out in Tourette’s
Writer is so much more understandable
Word is proof that there is no God and that we’re all alone in the cold vacuum of space. Word is every traffic light being red. Word is getting an itchy arsehole because you couldn’t quite wipe yourself properly.
I don’t think anything in the software world has ever pissed me off as much as the fucking ribbon. “We’ve run out of ideas as far as the UI is concerned - just throw everything up there somewhere, menus, toolbars, whatever”. A close second was their genius idea of hiding unused menu items so the locations of the items you do use are constantly changing.
I don’t use MS products any more but my 90 yo parents do and it’s a fucking nightmare trying to help them with stuff. MS Office is certifiable elder abuse.
Office 97 was the last good Office. No auto-adjusting menus, no ribbons, you could actually provide phone support and have confidence that both people were seeing the same thing.
It tells me microsoft is petty
Large corporations have zero empathy for competition.
What will their quarterly report say? Think of the stockholders. (/s)
It’s not even that. It’s way smaller potatoes down in the org chart.
People always say “why would large company do this” and the answer is almost always that guy 7 or 8 rows down the org chart needs this to get their bonus this year and that point gets distilled into 1 bullet in a power point presentation that is summarized by chatgpt.
I visited a local Microsoft office in the mid-90s. Their office employee kitchen had a poster of the Internet Explorer logo smashing the Netscape logo to a bloody pulp.
I worked for apple
It was creepy. I have been in litteral sex-cults that felt less cultish and close-minded.
I got recruited by Apple some years ago because of my Stack Overflow account. I’m glad I ignored them, although there’s something to be said for an ungodly salary and Apple stock options.
If large corporations have zero empathy for their competition, why do they have such an easy time coordinating raising grocery prices well above the free market optimum?
Large corporations are owned by capital holders. Often it’s the same set of capital holders owning different corporations because they’ve diversified their assets. It is not in the interest of their owners to have a free market race to the bottom.
So they make deals. And when socialists force the government to forbid those deals, they find Schelling points where they can make deals without making deals. It’s not collusion; it’s covid supply issues; ask anyone. And with neoliberal/neocon dismantling of regulatory agencies they can just do it.
So they have empathy for other large corporations. But it goes further than that. At least for now, capital assets are still managed by people. Those people are flesh and blood. They eat, they socialize, they make friends, and they care about their friends and acquaintances. And this caring is embedded into the choices that they make at work, where they compete against their friends and acquaintances.
So large corporations have empathy not just for other corporations, but also for rich people in general. Golden parachutes, nepotist appointments, favors, massively overpaid C-suite execs and expensive consultancy jobs from each other’s hobby projects.
Corporations bleed trillions of dollars for the sake of empathy with their competitors and with private individuals, they just won’t accept a competitor to bourgeoisie hegemony.
I have plenty of thoughts about their majority shareholders.
Its just none of those thoughts are positive.
They literally blew billions of dollars and years of developer time just to screw the companies that won the argument of “open internet or Microsoft protocol” back in the day. Yes, petty.
Probably has something to do with more and more things like this happening:
https://cybernews.com/news/france-lyon-microsoft-office-tech-adoption/