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They haven't really added anything to Office since 2013, the last pre-subscription version. There were massive changes between Office 98 and 2013, including entirely new programs like OneNote. They just found a way to get their customers to rebuy the same product every year.

Same thing happened with Adobe and CS6; feature development slowed to a crawl after the change to a subscription.


> the last pre-subscription version

Heads up that you can still buy perpetual licenses to Office either directly from Microsoft or through other sellers throughout the internet.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-...


They're routinely cheap on Groupon as well, often under $30.https://www.groupon.com/deals/world-office-standard-2024

Not that I want to encourage people to keep using Microsoft products.


I want viable alternatives too. But Microsoft's stuff accounts for a million+ edge cases that you don't really encounter until you're neck deep into whatever you're working on.

For the sake of conversation, though, there's SoftMaker Office:

https://www.softmaker.com/en/products/softmaker-office

But they're a subscription too. You save only $20 a year for less features than Office 365 as well (especially the lack of an email program). For most people, that savings and "no Microsoft" isn't enough.

> LibreOffice

No.


About three years ago, I had a Macbook and I wanted to play with Flash/Animate again.

I went to Adobe's website, and couldn't find a non-subscription version to just buy, so I actually contacted customer support about it, and they said "nope, you have to pay for a subscription".

I could have of course sailed the high seas, but I opted to just buy a copy of Toonboom Harmony, which is fairly different than Flash but close enough and still offers perpetual licenses (and shockingly works pretty well with Wine/Proton on Linux).


People still appear to use Flash these days by downloading an old version and getting a license key from Reddit/YouTube/etc.


I didn't really want to resort to piracy; I think it's stupid that Adobe won't sell a perpetual license.

I got a license to Moho from a Humble Bundle like a year ago, and I think Toonz is open source nowadays, all in addition to the ToonBoom copy I have so I probably don't need the real Adobe Animate anymore.


Are you sure it still offers perpetual licenses? Because I just checked the Toonboom site and didn't see any.

Maybe you got in before they enshittified too :)?


Looks like you are correct: https://www.reddit.com/r/ToonBoomHarmony/comments/1ktuhtv/to...

Glad I snagged it when I did (though admittedly it was probably a bad impulse purchase since I don't really animate much anymore).


The pace has probably slowed down, but problem isn't so much that they're not adding anything, it's that the additions are either somewhat niche (e.g., new Excel formulas), don't work as well as they should (e.g., syncing), or are confusing (e.g., the new Outlook that lives alongside "classic" Outlook).


Multiple people being able to edit the same file simultaneously with no or minimal issues is pretty bug, though…


It generally doesn't work though. There are usually huge delays to the point of it being unusable.


Can confirm as someone who was using pre-subscription Office to write/read files while everyone else at work was using the 365 version. Now that I'm using 365 too, I do however appreciate the ability to do shared live editing in the office programs.


> 2013, the last pre-subscription version

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-...

I found this using my secret inside IT knowledge: searched "buy office perpetual" on the internet.

I know microsoft is the evil soulless megacorp on HN, but the least you could do is attack them for true things instead of totally made up, has-never-ever-been-true things.


There have been huge changes and improvements in Excel


now I wanna try running office 2013 in wine

running a VM just for occasional office use is annoying to deal with

edit: activation is probs the main issue


Only because you chose to walk through the port instead of through town. Google Maps' walking route is shorter than the route that goes through that road, entirely on sidewalks, and only requires crossing one road wider than one car lane per direction (and said road has a signalized crosswalk). There is also a pedestrian bridge across that road that could be used instead, but Google didn't pick it, likely because it connects with "private" property (the convention center's path).

https://maps.app.goo.gl/asfGrRLkLmtpqnps5


Someone didn't read the article.


The article that fails to consider that the sedans have changed in shape and size over the past 20 years?

The article that has all the cool plots, and no relevant information like the actual vehicles being discussed?

The article that doesn't even bother putting a 2000 Camry side-by-side with a 2025 Camry to make it blatantly obvious that it's not just SUVs?

That article?


>Someone didn't read the article.

Someone doesn't understand that any article that's drawing conclusions based on a workflow that involves putting a Chevy Suburban (functionally a chevy pickup from the B pillar forward) and a Honda HRV into the same category is sus at best and anyone uncritically accepting said conclusions is also sus at best.

If one wanted to be honest they'd look at GVW or some other metric that tracks size far more closely than a fairly arbitrary categorization that is highly gamed for regulatory reasons.

We're all just so sick of these shallow analysis. Shitting numbers and graphs onto them doesn't make them not shallow. Like what even is the point of a raw "deaths by state" map?[1]?

[1] https://xkcd.com/1138/


Suburbans are on truck chassis and are SUVs. HRVs are on car chassis and are crossovers. The bucket is called "trucks and SUVs" to make this less ambiguous.


>Suburbans are on truck chassis and are SUVs. HRVs are on car chassis and are crossovers. The bucket is called "trucks and SUVs" to make this less ambiguous.

TFA does not use data broken down in that way.

TFA cites "sales by body type" which puts a 'Burb (functionally a pickup for this discussion) into the same category as a 2002 Forester (which is an SUV on paper, but obviously a car).


As an adamant enthusiast of both cars and infrastructure design, if someone puts a crossover in the trucks and SUVs category, I am dubious of anything that follows. Crossovers are basically just cars with higher rollover risk. They're lighter, they have smaller engines, they can stop more quickly, and overall have much, much better safety characteristics.

Like I'm sorry but if you put crossovers and SUVs in the same bucket for a discussion anywhere, but especially in the realm of safety, I'm not taking your opinions seriously.


>Like what even is the point of a raw "deaths by state" map?

It does give slightly more insight than the map of US state population per capita[1].

[1] https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=710896291698831&id...


It most definitely is not. The vast majority of customers at European Starbucks are locals, not tourists.


that is indeed sad


Do you know if the knife still acts "sharp" when the physical blade is dull or does it still need regular sharpening like a normal knife?


This is likely a prototype for their folding phone, which are essentially just two ultra-thin phones stuck together.


Isn't it the hinge, the folding oled screen and general durability of moving parts that are the hard parts of a foldable? This has none of those.


I hope you're right, but this likely means having to wait another generation to see a folding iphone


You should tell Taiwan that.


In addition to being able to run any regular Windows application, it had the best and most intuitive feeling UX of any tablet in history. Amongst many other features, window management was gesture controlled and Internet Explorer had an alternate UI that moved the tabs to the bottom of the screen to make them easier to reach.

Sadly, Windows 10 removed all the good parts of Windows tablet mode, but its ideas were so good that Apple is still slowly copying bits of its interface for the iPad to this day.


This feels more like the OS is what you liked. Nothing really about the hardware which this thread is about regarding Microsoft making crap hardware products. Is the hardware so mediocre that the best thing about it was the OS where nothing about the hardware deserves comments? If that's the case, maybe that points to validating Microsoft makes crap hardware being a true comment.


The hardware was good but nothing that an iPad doesn’t have nowadays. It was revolutionary for the time with the detachable keyboard and trackpad and Wacom-like pen. The software was what made it an amazing device though.


Whatsapp when it was acquired cost $1/year (with a year long free trial) and had a billion users and 55 employees. They were printing money.


As far as I remember they didn't ever really collect that money though. I certainly never paid it. I'm not sure they ever even implemented payment on Android.

Obviously hard to source this old stuff but I found an old Reddit comment that backs up my recollection: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsapp/comments/xesw29/comment/io...


I'm fairly certain that I paid once for WhatsApp back in the day (on Android)

EDIT: just checked my payment history and in November 2013 I paid €0.89 for "One Year Service"


They were collecting. Everyone I knew was paying.


Google had mandatory return-to-office...


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