• panda_abyss@lemmy.ca
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    7 days ago

    Why?

    Why is every company right now making it impossible to understand what their app does?

    I swear to fucking god, I’ve been looking for SAAS products at work to fill a role, they’re all branded as AI and not what the companies actually fucking do.

    Office has like a 40 year plus reputation as THE office suite. What the fuck us copilot? That cheap knockoff OpenAI they debuted before it was really?

    • PostProcess@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Because AI on its own doesn’t actually make a return, but by conflating the AI investment with a genuine productivity tool that’s making money, you can start to hide your poor choices.

      • slaacaa@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Wow, you are right. This is a way for them to pump the bubble and their stock price up even more.

        • Elvith Ma'for@feddit.org
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          7 days ago

          Pre AI: Hey, we have 5 billion subscribers to our office suite!

          Start of AI: Hey, we have 5 billion subscribers to our office suite and 3 subscribers to our AI offering (currently in their free testing period, plans already precancelled)

          Now: Hey, we have 5 billion subscribers to our AI services (that also features an office suite)

            • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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              6 days ago

              seems like altman /ms/amazon and google are kinda scammed by nvidia, arnt they less likely to get away less scathed, also oracle.

              • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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                6 days ago

                Except Nvidia’s product works. It’s the shit software they decided they needed Nvidia’s product to run that kinda does something but not in a real world usable state, that’s the issue

                • Amju Wolf@pawb.social
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                  6 days ago

                  They’re being scammed in the sense that NVIDIA is selling a product for a usecase that can’t make them money despite NVIDIA advertising (or at least heavily implying) as such.

                  “Look at all these shovels, you’re gonna make so much money if you dig with our shovels, I’m sure you’re gonna find the treasure any minute!” knowing full well that there’s no treasure, or at least definitely not enough for everyone.

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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        6 days ago

        they are trying hard to peddle it to govt usage since they are likely a guaranteed revenue stream, things like palintir is being peddle hard by thiel to multiple countries.(including israel and defense contracting)

    • pdxfed@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      It’s because when so much money/power has pushed so long for people to make decisions based on money and not logic, we’ve now arrived at the point where even “the emperor’s new clothes” type moments can’t rein in the insanity; executives are bonused off this garbage and most employees who do know better–thanks to orgs’ own internal propaganda and structures–have given up caring and just publish the garbage and clock out(as they should).

    • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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      7 days ago

      I assume it’s for the CEO benefit. “Look boss, we’re pushing AI like you wanted”

    • monkeyslikebananas2@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I think I know why. Microsoft Office was a product. Their new strategy is Services. They want you to lease their services and have vendor lock-in forever. It takes a long time for businesses to migrate.

      This has MBA written all over it. The idea that AI can just do whatever the client needs means that you can say your service does it all!

      It is a scam.

      • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
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        7 days ago

        I think I know why. Microsoft Office was a product. Their new strategy is Services. They want you to lease their services and have vendor lock-in forever. It takes a long time for businesses to migrate.

        They already did/do that and it’s called Office 365 and already have vendor lock-in with Windows, SSO services, Azure, etc

      • tehn00bi@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        It’s going to fall apart and the industries using the tools are going to adopt a Unix philosophy of dedicated tools that do a specific job well. May take a Butlerian Jihad, but it will happen.

        • Serinus@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          It’s already happening, in part because of this and in part because of the unstable, unpredictable US government.

          Several European countries are looking towards investing in open source as a way to get away from American big tech because they’re suddenly considering US sanctions against them a real possibility, or at least a real threat.

          • Taleya@aussie.zone
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            6 days ago

            Ayup. Why build your company on a service with a US company when they can - and have - fuck you on a whim?

            With standalone installs you can keep trucking. Service as subscription? That’s going to very quickly start dying off as the world destabilises.

      • moopet@sh.itjust.works
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        6 days ago

        I’ve seen people mention it elsewhere in this thread. But what is MBA? I get nothing relevant when I search for it.

    • CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
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      7 days ago

      Copilot is love, copilot is life. It’s okay friend - these are copilot times, but I still copilot you.

    • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
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      7 days ago

      FWIW, Office (or more accurately, everything that was part of Office) was renamed Microsoft 365 years ago, in 2020. That was long before the AI insanity.

      • Serinus@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Shouldn’t it be called Microsoft 250? There are 250 working days in a year. As soon as I’m home I’m using Thunderbird or Libreoffice, certainly not the product formerly known as Microsoft Office.

    • Strider@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      It’s not about the user.

      (it’s about sounding innovative and cool with whichever trend to the brainless money people aka shareholders)

  • lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com
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    6 days ago

    Damn, our customers don’t use copilot, but we promised to reach 50% usage in 2026…

    That’s it… Rename the whole thing to copilot and we achieve our goal!

  • pHr34kY@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    It’s been named “Microsoft Office” since 1990. Way to piss 35 years of brand recognition up a wall.

    How drunk are these guys?

    • Domi@lemmy.secnd.me
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      7 days ago

      How drunk are these guys?

      Ask the dude that renamed Twitter to X (formerly Twitter).

    • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
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      7 days ago

      What’s funny is their attempts to rebrand Office have just fallen completely flat. Kind of reminds me of when Willis Group bought the naming rights to Sears Tower and all the Chicagoan’s were just collectively like, “Yeah, No. We’re still going to call it ‘Sears Tower’.” Hell, nobody that I know of calls it “Willis Tower.” Nobody calls Microsoft Office “Office 365”. Nobody is going to call it “Microsoft 365 Copilot.” This is just a huge waste of effort by a tech firm that has long since run out of ways to be innovative.

  • DustyRockford@piefed.social
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    7 days ago

    Microsoft is reporting over 600 MILLION user growth on copilot, basically overnight! Wow, very impressive Mr Nadella. You’ve truly pushed AI adoption forward. Someone get this man a bonus!

  • Pyr@lemmy.ca
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    6 days ago

    Why couldn’t they just stick with Office… It’s 100% explanatory, short, and to the point.

    365 never made sense to me. Is it supposed to represent the year? Like available 24/7 but instead it’s there for you 365 days of the year? And if that’s the case why the fuck would I care? It’s software, of course it’s available to me whenever I want. It’s not a 7/11 hotdog rotisserie.

  • LordMayor@piefed.social
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    7 days ago

    “Let’s take the most recognizable software package name and make it something totally divorced from what the software is supposed to be for.”

    There are probably people for whom Microsoft Office is the only desktop software that they use. There are probably many people in procurement that are going to scratch their heads and think twice about signing off on something that sounds like a flight simulator.

    This is an opportunity for alternate office suites.

    • UnspecificGravity@piefed.social
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      7 days ago

      Its is almost universally the main reason that even a lot of Linux daily-drivers still have a windows install available to them. They fuck up Office enough and there isn’t a reason to even have Windows for most users.

      That’s why they want you to put all your stuff in their dumb cloud, because its the only reason people would keep using this garbage, because they can hold your work ransom in their shitty ecosystem.

      That is the whole business model of tech now. Stealing your shit and selling it back to you. That is it.

      • Taleya@aussie.zone
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        6 days ago

        Do what I did: vm your win machine inside linux. It’s how i solved my legacy software / game saves quandry. Just duplicated the win HDD and virtualised it.

        I dislike dual booting and will go a looong way to be lazy :P

    • dan@upvote.au
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      7 days ago

      I don’t know many people that still call it “Microsoft Office”… They usually refer to the individual apps they use (Word, Excel) rather than the suite as a whole.

      Some people just call it “Microsoft” (“please install Microsoft on my computer”), especially if they’re on MacOS where it’s the only Microsoft software they use.

      Some people assume it’s part of Windows since they’ve only ever used computers that have had it preinstalled.

    • Tony Bark@pawb.social
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      7 days ago

      It’s like they’re trying to alienate their core customer base. Windows 8 may have been salvageable but Office is not.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      For business, they’re locked into Excel, there is no substitute. I can see MS blowing out the remaining home users though.

  • damo_omad@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Office is the last good branding Microsoft have and they’re just getting rid of it, I can’t believe it

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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      6 days ago

      Good?

      It’s godawful, to the point of being barely functional

      My company runs on office and I write everything in Google drive, then export it to a word document and import it into office because working on office web is just a joke.

      Seriously.

      Sometimes it just randomly and quietly deletes some text I just typed

      Sometimes it just changes layouts on other pages where I’m not even working

      Sometimes it says it saved the work and it saved didly squat

      I see Microsoft office as something that only “enterprise” level customers would be stupid enough to use and to pay actual money for.

      • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca
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        6 days ago

        yeah office used to just work (mostly, and ignoring the quirks), but this past year it’s been doing weird shit and generally been unreliable because of cloud sync behaviour for me

      • Katana314@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        I’ve been writing a long work, using Office for web editing. Every so often in proofreading, I find spots where it looks like words were just missing. Now I feel like I may have some explanation…

        • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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          5 days ago

          Apparently word online will just st random drop pieces of text during saving.

          Why?

          Microsoft. That’s why

      • FosterMolasses@leminal.space
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        6 days ago

        Nah, they’re right. The first time I tried Linux I remember how irritated and nitpicking I was with LibreOffice, and how that has always been sort of the dealbreaker for me in terms of becoming a dedicated Linux user.

        The entire world runs on .docx like it or not. If it’s not either close to an exact replica or far superior, it’s a no-go. I remember giving up on Google Docs because of something to do keystrokes and margin formats. Nothing has ever been able to quite replace it up to this point.

        Shame they’ve decided to dump their entire undisputed monopoly for AI lol

    • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip
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      6 days ago

      Not to defend MS’s bullcrap, but their server OS are much better than their fucking aweful office.

      Starting with WinNT back in the days.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 days ago

        Ah, yes, Windows NT.

        I remember how this little operating system with a kernel invented by a Finnish dude and with no real corporate back almost completelly ate their market share in the server space back in the day (not that they’ve had a significant server market for long in between the end of the era of corporate Unixes like SunOS and the beginning of the era of Linux).

        I actual did server-side development and just about every company I worked for in 2 decades and 3 countries had masses of Linux servers and if that much a handful of Windows servers, and that included all sized of company, from small ones to massive corporate behemoths - Linux was simple the best way to get the most use and performance out of your server hardware.

        Whilst I haven’t been doing server side stuff for a few years, I’m actually surprised they still have any server market at all, since the only upside their server solutions have over Linux is perfect integration with their Desktop OS whilst all the rest are downsides.

        I guess that they have some market share because basically their servers serve as glue between instances of to their Desktop OS in a network because of using closed protocols (i.e. a forced dependency on the desktop market rather than superior quality) whilst for any kind of generic computing they’re an inferior solution to even a free OS.

        • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip
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          I didn’t mean to start a what’s-best-for-companies (as i really don’t care, i stopped working 30yrs ago and am doing server-stuff just for fun at home mostly), but just said that their server-OSs are tremendously better than their office-shit and their desktop-OSs. Since NT they surely matured a lot, also i’d argue that with 2019+ i fail to see the appeal anymore. Having said that, of my 15+ machines here, there are only 2 windows left and that is just for that decades-old-domain plus some essentials.

          • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            6 days ago

            I totally agreed with that: their Server OS is superior to their Desktop OS.

            I just think it’s mainly because their Desktop OS has fast enshittified after Windows 7 rather than because Windows server is actually all that great as a server OS.

            In fact, thinking about it, one might even say that Windows Server is better than the Desktop version because it’s to a very great extent a Desktop OS (in terms of having things like having an a complex UI layer and set of support applications integrated) the very thing which is actually a large part of the reason why its an inferior server OS for typical server-side scenarios because there what you most value is maximum computing resources made available to the server applications (which tend to be heavy users of computing, memory, networking or a combination of those) and an integrated UI layer actually uses more of those just for the OS (both directly for its own work and indirectly from the added complexity of a bulkier OS resulting in less streamlined execution paths) making fewer resources available for the same hardware.

            If you look at the Linux distros and distro variants for server deployment they are actually vastly inferior to the Windows OS Desktop - for starters because they’re command-line only, though nowadays there’s often web-based management interfaces which are still a much lighter option than a directly integrated UI layer - exactly because absent an intergrated UI layer, not adding the UI support on top via something like XWindows or Wyland on a server Linux distro actually makes them better for server tasks.

            • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip
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              6 days ago

              But you know the UI is optional in the recent server versions? Can all be done in console, for an added layer of security and less overhead. Way too late they included that, but still…

                • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip
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                  6 days ago

                  lol yes, but close. Since server 2008/2008R2 there is the “core”-option. Since 2016 even a nano-core, with just basic container-options and one cannot even login locally. Plus a ton of corpo-stuff that is already there, and “easily” to setup (the gui seems so simple, but it’s still just a do-it-quick-stuff in the front, most of the actual work is scripted/console anyway). I must admit I do have all MS-titles and -certificates and it often is as trivial as it seems. But still more trivial than doing the exact same thing in linux.

                  Despite not ever have cared for MS-licenses (except for back then, when i still ran the buisiness), i still choose linux most of the time as it’s still much less overhead for simple tasks than even the lightest of core-installations.

  • Boiglenoight@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    We’re…never going to say any of that. It’s Microsoft 365, or 365 for short. Even that sounds stupid. Office is what people understand, 365 always requires explaining.

    MS is so exhausting.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      6 days ago

      I’m still pissed off about Entra, what the hell does that mean?

      Microsoft need to spend a less time renaming products with confusing names and more time fixing their applications so they actually run.

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      6 days ago

      I don’t talk to people about MS Office or do not know anyone particular who primarily works in it. But when talks touches writing an essay, spreadsheets or presentation - nobody says “In 365 I do this”. It is always Word, Excel, Power Point. Nobody even unifies all these programs as 365. It always is Office. Baffles me why MS haven’t figured out that literally no one calls it 365.

    • markovs_gun@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      This is the same culture that decided that X was a better name than Twitter. These people are so far removed from regular society that this idiotic shit actually makes sense to them

    • FosterMolasses@leminal.space
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      6 days ago

      Meanwhile, I never even caught onto calling the shit “Office”. I’m still out here shorthanding it to Word and Excel like a certified vaporwave pleb lmao

      “But what about the rest of-” “I use Google Slides, actually. But yeah, I guess there’s also Powerpoint…”