Did Apple pay them to drop support to boost their revamped Numbers/Pages/Keynote suite (ClarisWorks Infitniy.0).
Obviously this is a joke, though there was a period when Microsoft invested in Apple to serve as a stand-in foil for the anti-trust lawsuit. So tactical investing for something other than monetary ROI has precedent …
In a way it's not a joke. I was just considering that myself. I pay for a M365 family license, but when I think about it, I could do everything I actually use it for in Numbers and Pages. The only thing is file format compatibility, it is useful to be able to open word documents and be sure the formatting is correct, but even that is less important than it used to be. I used to make use of Office to edit work documents on my Mac, but security considerations prevent this now.
I agree the 1TB is a good deal. But our phones are Apple and our email is Google, so it’s all wonky sync via OneDrive (and when you have a lot of OneDrive the forced syncs to your windows login takes a lot of cache space).
Wish there was an open interface to use cloud storage, like a mount point, so Gmail or iPhotos could just write there rather than the hand carrying of data. But probably vendor lock-in is too compelling
This actually isn't that far-fetched, once Microsoft saw that the bundled competing suite went subscription, they were free to drop their "perpetual" support.
I would occasionally see the standalone MS for Mac on sale for ~$30 and considered getting a copy just in case I needed it for some compatibility reason, but I just knew there was a catch. So I just kept running Libre. Glad I didn't waste the money.
People keep saying that Microsoft invested in Apple to defeat anti-trust measures. They did not. They lost the Video for Windows lawsuit (Apple v San Francisco Canyon Company, Microsoft, Intel). Buying the non-voting stock was part of the remedy. Microsoft would gladly become a monopoly if they could get away with it.
I actually regularly used emdashes in my writing —- my kids complain I write like AI in fact — and now I have to consciously remove them.
Likewise, I often used literary flourish and pleasantries like that above article about email decompression; I’m from the south so I think structured formality comes with territory.
I do think using LLM to turn notes and bullets into narratives should be considered no different than rendering CSV text into an excel format, just making it more digestible by recipient.
Yeah saving statements is important but banks make it so hard to automate. 2FA for login, and statements have to be navigated to, sometimes time range set.
My bank just sends a note that a statement is available, rather than an actual statement.
> Yeah saving statements is important but banks make it so hard to automate. 2FA for login, and statements have to be navigated to, sometimes time range set.
Which is why all of my accounts mail a physical statement each month. Yes, just about every time I log on they beg me to switch to electronic only, I say no and move along.
> My bank just sends a note that a statement is available, rather than an actual statement.
Yep. If they had implemented it just like the mail, they'd just email me the PDF (encrypted if necessary). But they don't, so I don't ever agree to "go electronic statements".
I often hear on podcast such as this one giving career advice that folks should become AI native, and improve their AI skills. I’m not a software developer, so I am not using Claude Code or other frameworks — my office basically authorizes us to use a Gemini chat interface. For non programming jobs does that mean just getting better at prompts? Is there another avenue I should be learning?
The bantering of the podcast I found distracting and the breathless enthusiasm. I guess there was a way to make it more no nonsense? I found I lost content if tuned for brevity.
I just use elevenreader for this. I copy in essays or whatever text I want to listen to and it works decently well. It's far from perfect, but certainly good enough.
Sometimes I'll take deep research output and listen to it too that way.
Obviously this is a joke, though there was a period when Microsoft invested in Apple to serve as a stand-in foil for the anti-trust lawsuit. So tactical investing for something other than monetary ROI has precedent …
reply