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MS Word and Schmidt’s Exit
by Andrew McCaskey
MS Word and Google
The ARS Technica piece on Twenty Years of Word and news of the forced resignation and ousting of Google’s Eric Schmidt from Apple’s board are two data points that some of us don’t want to be reminded of. They are symptomatic of two types of change.
The premise of the first article is that MS Word, for all it’s benefits has come to the end of it’s run, because the world that it was designed to automate – the preparation of documents to be printed, mailed, reviewed, signed, posted, and filed is quickly departing.
In the late 1980′s, the add on vertical black and white display for the Mac SE, combined with Microsoft Word, provided the first true WYSIWYG – what was on the tube was exactly what would appear on the paper. And, after you printed it out on the laser printer and let the static grab the paper onto the screen, you could prove it. MS Word optimized the printed sheet, replicating an improved version of typewritten correspondence that had been the standard for business communications the previous one hundred twenty years. And as it became first more capable, then more bloated, and finally, in 2007, a Marlon Brando parody of itself.
Eric Schmidt’s departure was a recognition that Google – in the online, cloud app future – is the true competitor to Apple as much as it is to Microsoft. It’s one half of the double change from dedicated apps to distributed software and the move from desktop power to the irrelevance of which hardware can deliver the most pleasant browsing experience in a connected world.
Neither change is going to revolutionize our business life overnight, but one has crested the hill.
I just hope that future tools have good outline mode. That’s most of what I use Word for anyway. {sharethis}
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