More popcorn, please
It will be interesting to see what happens to XBox under Elop.
Top Windows exec Julie Larson-Green is moving sideways through Microsoft into a new job in the search and services business. Larson-Green had been running devices at Redmond, a job which is due to be handed over to former Nokia chief exec Stephen Elop once Microsoft has completed its acquisition of the Finnish firm's mobile- …
Elop, who was a rumoured contender for the position of top dog at Microsoft after the retirement of current CEO Steve Ballmer, will be working on devices like Xbox and Surface tablets
That's pure genius, put the guy who watned to get rid of the xbox division in charge of xbox. I mean, that is pure brilliance right there. Then again, while trying to make a success out of Nokia he single handedly drove them into the ground, so maybe by trying to drive something into the ground he'll actually make it better?
According to Tomi Ahonen's highly partisan writings they were at least profitable, with only a single quarter of loss (from the NSN division) and growing smartphone unit sales (not of course at Jobsian margins). The unit sales graph is saddening:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/.a/6a00e0097e337c8833019b010c6d00970d-pi
(from the splendid URL: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/11/nokia-under-elop-his-3-years-performance-review-worst-ceo-of-all-time-all-the-facts-in-pictures.html
Tomi gets very repetitive (and I'm in awe at his typing speed; rants on a keyboard faster than I do at a bar) but the picture he draws of Elop's time and especially of that astonishing $25M bonus for failure is boggleworthy (less ranty take here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/terokuittinen/2013/09/24/nokia-admits-giving-misleading-information-about-elops-compensation/
And yes, S60 was in trouble - long in dire need of a UI czar with real arse-kicking powers, too much consensus of the "oh gosh let's do both" sort achieved by senior managers unable to control [or understand] their subordinates, too many layers of shims and frameworks soaking up the performance advantage of the Symbian core beneath (and that performance increasingly less relevant in an era of big batteries and frequent recharging)... but had all the crap of competing Qt visions ("Orbit" - nobody could even explain to me how that made sense, let alone how it could work) been quickly stomped and Joy of QML world pursued with vigour then (just maybe) they'd have phoenixed (beyond the dying bird and blazing fire part - that bit happened for sure)
Reading between the lines I'm guessing that Satya wants to get rid of the money-draining XBox division, so who better than Mr Elop to see it dies a quick death?
As for Julie L-G, I don't care what division she works in as long as she never, ever, EVER has anything to do with interface design again.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single Exec in possession of a Vision, can usually screw a company up." 'pologies to J Austen
As most corporate infantry are well aware it's the nosiy ambitious generals that cause chaos at the expense of the troops. Genuine success is often supplied by the quiet calmer leaders nudging the troops and making sure they are well supplied and provisioned.
That just happens to be the title of the autobigraphy of Henry Ford.
Surface is an awesome product. Xbox is interesting even when consoles are lame. Stephen Elop should never be in charge of anything. He's the biggest joke in the industry. How can you expect that guy to do anything cool? His version of cool is a bright yellow telephone which he presents while wearing a tie and saying "the poor people in the third world will love this"
> Surface is an awesome product.
No it isn't; they can't give them away.
> Xbox is interesting even when consoles are lame.
So why are people buying PS4 instead?
> Stephen Elop should never be in charge of anything. He's the biggest joke in the industry.
... ok, can't argue there...
So if you loathe it so much, why not get LibreOffice? At least that has more recent features than Office 2000, reads its formats, and does cool extra stuff like outputting PDFs natively.
If you've got things like comments and track-changes embedded in your docs, I suppose that's not a good solution, but as an Office 2000 replacement, LibreOffice seems fine on basic principles.
Because I don;t want to spend ages learning to use something I use rarely. I can use most File Edit menued software to a standard I need just by playing.
Why do ribbon apologists forget about occasional users, the letter a week people?
The only software I have been trained in are the tools I use for developing software.
Tie a ribbon 'round her and send her on her way.....
As far as using office without a mouse, unless you left the /sarc tag off, why don't you go back to DOS where you can hotkey to your heart's content....maybe WordPerfect 0.5 would be enough...286-8 with 128 KB should do you fine....
Actually leaving Wordstar behind was one of the saddest things in computing. One of the first MS-DOS packages I had come across and used it for years.
Looking at the fallen software is so sad. Wordstar, Netware, Clipper, the high featured text editors, all things I miss.
Of course everyone will have their own list, my wife was a Word Perfect user.